Saturday, February 28, 2015

Psalm 25 (further thoughts)

1. Good poetry is specific. Good liturgical poetry is specifically generic. For example, when the Psalmist writes "Do not remember the sins of my youth," he is referring to a specific genus of sins (sins of his youth), neither his sins in general but also neither a particular sin of his youth. Thus, when this Psalm is recited or sung by the congregation, each person can find him or herself in the text. You know your youthful sin. I know mine. We can recite together "Do not remember the sins of my youth" and mean it individually and communally. Brilliant liturgy. Specifically generic.

2. In the previous post I asked "Is the enemy without or within?" and I answered, "Yes." I am the enemy, but I also want to be clear that we do have real, external enemies, enemies who wantonly seek to do us harm. We do. But the point of the psalm, I think, is that we must never forget that we are not without sin. We cannot, then, wantonly cast stones (or drones!) at our enemies, thanking God that we are not like those evil sinners. Our primary act is to repent and wait on God, to trust God, and to resist taking matters into our own hands.

And these real enemies can cause us to lose sleep, not because of who they are or what they do, but because God seems not to notice them or our plight. God seems absent.

And that takes us to our next post on Psalm 77.


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