April 3, 2022 (Lent Week 5)

 

 

 

It is sometimes difficult to see clear areas of overlap between lectionary readings for any given day. That is not the case today, the fifth Sunday of Lent. Beginning with Exodus 3, we see Moses wondering how the people of Israel will know that his message is truly from God. In Jeremiah 23, God reproaches his people for attending to false prophets who do not actually express the divine will. In Romans 12, St. Paul encourages the people of God to “be transformed by the renewing of your minds” in order to know God’s will, and then sets out what the translators of the NRSV call “the marks of a true Christian.” Jesus himself explains how people can know that he is the embodiment of God’s will in John 8. Throughout, both knowing God’s will and testing those who claim to represent God’s will involves practice: in order to know, it is we who have to be transformed by what we do, by how we orient ourselves toward God. It is in this light that inclusion of Psalm 118 and 145, which might otherwise seem to be outliers, can be seen to make perfect sense.

         In the NRSV, Psalm 145 reads almost as a series of promises made to God: “I will extol you, my God and king” (verse 1), “every day I will bless you” (v. 2), “one generation shall laud your works” (v. 4), “on your wondrous works, I will meditate” (v. 5). Robert Alter, in his influential translation of the Hebrew Bible, changes the resonance slightly so that these same verses sound less like promises and more like aspirations: “Let me exalt You, my God the king,” “every day let me bless you,” “let one generation to the next extol your deeds,” “of the grandeur of Your glorious majesty/and Your wondrous acts let me treat.” In both cases, the emphasis is on practice, something done continuously, even transcending the individual lifetime to go “from one generation to the next.” As Alter points out, in the original Hebrew, the poet is comfortable switching perspective from that of the speaker to the that of the future generations, seen in verses five to six: “Of the grandeur of Your glorious majesty/and Your wondrous acts let me treat./And the power of Your awesome deeds let them say,/and Your greatness let me recount.” Learning discernment through the process of being transformed is something for God’s people as much as it is for any individual. Psalm 118 has a similar abundance of imperatives, and a similar shifting of focus from the individual to the people:

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;

his steadfast love endures forever!

Let Israel say,

‘His steadfast love endures forever.’

Let the House of Aaron say,

‘His steadfast love endures forever.’

Let those who fear the Lord say,

‘His steadfast love endures forever.’

 

         As if to deepen the emphasis on knowing in practice, Psalm 145 is an alphabetic acrostic, with each verse beginning with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This was a technique thought to aid memorization, as if the author considered it especially important that this psalm be internalized and carried along through life, to teach God’s people the practices that will transform them. It is also, according to Alter, the only psalm specifically designated as a psalm of praise. The act of praise – especially when regular and internalized – is transformative, a vital part of knowing God. 

 

- Eric Bateman