The Psalms and Their Laments as a Resource for Social Healing in, through, and after Pandemic

It is a truism that as we seek social healing from here on in, we will not go back to the way we were, nor can we expect to enter the messianic age. So I suggest that one vital resource is the traditions of lament we know as Jews or Christians. Some – many – of these are shared. If we are ‘two people divided by a common Scripture’, then that common Scripture is evidently unafraid of lament. Of course, there is the nominatively obvious: the Book of Lamentations (Ekhah).[1] But there’s also the Bible’s other great (actually even greater, in terms of size) collection of laments: those within the Book of Psalms (Tehillim).

 

In attending to the Psalms, I am delighted I am in good company, here, within this virtual conference. We will have an “Invitation to Praise” with Psalm 100 in a workshop, later today, and we have the Concluding Plenary tomorrow: “Psalms in the Time of COVID: Prayer that Makes Us Human”. I suggest it is impossible to exhaust the wisdom of the Psalms, and so will continue.

 

The Jewish tradition of course makes great use of Psalms, including as set within the liturgies, and in wider customs. In Christian circles, it’s more complicated.

 

On the one hand, some (e.g. in monastic houses, but not only there) read/pray the psalms through, according to a perpetual cycle. The Rule of St Benedict (early 6^th century) envisages a weekly recital (though not in order). It notes that this is a concession, saying: the ancient Fathers recited the Book every day (Regula 18.22). The Anglican Book of Common Prayer (if you will allow me to focus on my own tradition for brevity’s sake) sets out a monthly (30-day) cycle, in strict order. The modern Church of England lectionary has a 7-week cycle. It is expected that ordained ministers will, other things being equal, stick to one of these cycles. Even this last still commits to reciting and hearing Psalms with remarkable dedication. The only parallel would be the Gospels.  

 

However, that sets up an ideal often observed in the breach. Most Anglicans come to Church on Sundays only. There, there is typically a Psalm, which picks up a theme of the First Reading from the Hebrew Bible. But anecdotal evidence suggests it is often treated as a musical interlude (sung by choir or cantor). I obviously claim that this de facto Christian neglect of the Psalms is regrettable. They are - as others at this conference along with me are also insisting - more honest about the human condition, and about the condition of the person of faith, than many a contemporary hymn/song book.

 

A note on a complication involved in the Christian use of the Psalms. For many Christians, it is emblematic that the psalmist is not only David (and others), but also Jesus. Jesus (on this reading) “recapitulates” the life of humankind, and the life of faith. So we pray the Psalms through Christ, or pray to or alongside Christ through the Psalms. Whether this is the best or even a legitimate way to read the Psalms, even on purely Christian terms, I leave for another place. It emphatically is not the only Christian way. No less a Christian than Calvin said that the Psalms described “the anatomy of the soul” – any soul.[2]

 

It is notoriously difficult to know quite how to categorise the Psalms (whether as lament, praise, royal, penitence, etc). There are no fixed, agreed criteria. Psalms often make radical swerves in theme and mood (and more).[3] But it’s not outrageous to suggest that more than a third of the corpus of the Psalms may be lament. Scholars Waktke, Houston and Moore make this claim,[4] and they go on to cite my old Hebrew teacher, Walter Moberly:

 

the predominance of laments at the very heart of Israel’s prayers means that the problems that give rise to lament are not something marginal or unusual but rather are central to the life of faith… Moreover they show that the experience of anguish and puzzlement... is not a sign of deficient faith, something to be outgrown or put behind one, but rather is intrinsic to the very nature of faith.

 

The scholar I want to move to is Walter Brueggermann, who in his 1984 book, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary,[5] speaks powerfully to our theme. He holds the Psalms in the highest regard:

 

The book of Psalms provides the most reliable theological, pastoral, and liturgical resource given us in the biblical tradition… a genuinely dialogical literature that expresses both sides of the conversation of faith. (15)

 

Crucially, he proposes a movement between three states:

 

1.     Orientation.
Human life consists in satisfied seasons of well-being that evoke gratitude for the constancy of blessing. (19)

2.     Disorientation.
Human life consists in anguished seasons of hurt, alienation, suffering, and death. These evoke rage, resentment, self-pity and hatred… This speech, the lament, has a recognizable shape that permits the extravagance, hyperbole, and abrasiveness needed for the experience. (19)

3.       New orientation.

Human life consists in turns of surprise when we are overwhelmed with the new gifts of God, when joy breaks through the despair. (19)

Each mode can be anything from deeply personal-and-intimate to societal and national.

 

These are not three stages, at least not in any simple way. There is not a linear movement, nor a simple cycle. Rather, they form a complex, organic network. The point is really the constant movement. There is no stasis; one is always moving either from orientation to disorientation, or from disorientation to new orientation.

 

Brueggermann on this basis commends the Psalms to all:

 

In a society that… grows numb by avoidance and denial, it is important to recover and use these Psalms that speak the truth about us – in terms of the governance of God…

 

The dominant ideology of our culture is committed to continuity and success and to the avoidance of pain, hurt, and loss. The dominant culture is also resistant to genuine newness and real surprise. It is curious but true, that surprise is as unwelcome as is loss. And our culture is organised to prevent the experience of both. (22, emphasis original)

 

We may think that this societal strategy has been threatened if not broken by the pandemic. But, even if so, that does not mean it will not rise again.

 

Arguably frustratingly, the Psalms give no content on how the new, wiser orientation concretely differs from the old, naive orientation. Brueggermann is clear that one psalm can be either or both, depending on what the reader brings (22). Again, they present no technique for living life in the healing of the new orientation. They tend to offer either lament, pure, or lament embedded in praise, including, as mentioned above, with the most sudden swerves from one to the other. These “swerving” psalms may be read as:

(a) containing an untold but implied story of problems solved, restoration granted, or

(b) of the psalmist’s decision to return to praise - anyway, nevertheless – “for the sheer heaven of it”, as it were.

We are not told which, and so we are not told which is the better approach.

  

I suggest we are simply (though not easily) invited to immerse ourselves in the streams (torrents?) of the movements mentioned above, moving from inauthentic orientation to authentic disorientation to authentic new orientation, all the time in intimate, familiar, familial, tensive dialogue with Gd, if only because (the praxis presupposes) we know that, when it comes to the big questions of justice and flourishing in this world, Gd is the ultimate interlocutor, with whom we just plain have to do.

 

Appendix

 

I had also been invited to speak more personally on the theme, but time prevented any serious autobiography. In the talk as given, I spoke of Psalm 137, saying that in my own way, I have made Psalm 137 (“By the rivers of Babylon”) my own Psalm of lament, in my prayers. This long predates the pandemic. I pray: “Gd, hear my lament, and cause me to make a good lament”, and then I recite. Ps 137 has its own challenges, supremely, its violent and vindictive ending. Tackling that would take a Workshop in its own right, and more. So I focused instead on the Psalm’s wistful-mournfulness: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand wither”. It happens that I have been at my happiest in Jerusalem (and I mean the physical place). So here is yet another way in which a psalm may resonate.

 

In the course of preparing the paper, I found myself drawn to Psalm 12, somewhat to my surprise. In this Psalm, it is manifestly clear that there is no resolution. The objective plight of the psalmist is exactly as bad in the last verse as in the first. Evil rules the roost. Words are twisted (surely a problem, for us as for them, before, during and after Covid). But Gd speaks into this. Not in abstract ways, but quite concretely. ‘I will rise up now’ says Gd, because Gd has heard the concrete cries of these concrete persons. Without any resolution, we are perhaps being invited to consider whether it makes any difference.

 

After the Hebrew, I offer a translation used liturgically in the Church of England (Common Worship)[6]. The reader/pray-er is encouraged to pause at the diamond.

 

Psalm 21, Massoretic Text, vv 2-9

 

 ² הוֹשִׁ֣יעָה יְ֭הוָה כִּי־גָמַ֣ר חָסִ֑יד כִּי־פַ֥סּוּ אֱ֜מוּנִ֗ים מִבְּנֵ֥י אָדָֽם׃

 ³ שָׁ֤וְא׀ יְֽדַבְּרוּ֮ אִ֤ישׁ אֶת־רֵ֫עֵ֥הוּ שְׂפַ֥ת חֲלָק֑וֹת בְּלֵ֖ב וָלֵ֣ב יְדַבֵּֽרוּ׃

 ⁴ יַכְרֵ֣ת יְ֭הוָה כָּל־שִׂפְתֵ֣י חֲלָק֑וֹת לָ֜שׁ֗וֹן מְדַבֶּ֥רֶת גְּדֹלֽוֹת׃

 ⁵ אֲשֶׁ֤ר אָֽמְר֙וּ׀ לִלְשֹׁנֵ֣נוּ נַ֭גְבִּיר שְׂפָתֵ֣ינוּ אִתָּ֑נוּ מִ֖י אָד֣וֹן לָֽנוּ׃

 ⁶ מִשֹּׁ֥ד עֲנִיִּים֮ מֵאַנְקַ֪ת אֶבְי֫וֹנִ֥ים עַתָּ֣ה אָ֭קוּם יֹאמַ֣ר יְהוָ֑ה אָשִׁ֥ית בְּ֜יֵ֗שַׁע יָפִ֥יחַֽ לֽוֹ׃

 ⁷ אִֽמֲר֣וֹת יְהוָה֮ אֲמָר֪וֹת טְהֹ֫ר֥וֹת כֶּ֣סֶף צָ֭רוּף בַּעֲלִ֣יל לָאָ֑רֶץ מְ֜זֻקָּ֗ק שִׁבְעָתָֽיִם׃

 ⁸ אַתָּֽה־יְהוָ֥ה תִּשְׁמְרֵ֑ם תִּצְּרֶ֓נּוּ׀ מִן־הַדּ֖וֹר ז֣וּ לְעוֹלָֽם׃

9סָבִ֗יב רְשָׁעִ֥ים יִתְהַלָּכ֑וּן כְּרֻ֥ם זֻ֜לּ֗וּת לִבְנֵ֥י אָדָֽם׃

 

 

Psalm 12

1.       Help me, Lord, for no one godly is left;  ♦

the faithful have vanished from the whole human race.

2.      They all speak falsely with their neighbour;  ♦

they flatter with their lips, but speak from a double heart.

3.      O that the Lord would cut off all flattering lips  ♦

and the tongue that speaks proud boasts!

4.      Those who say, ‘With our tongue will we prevail;  ♦

our lips we will use; who is lord over us?’

5.      Because of the oppression of the needy,

and the groaning of the poor,  ♦

I will rise up now,’ says the Lord,

‘and set them in the safety that they long for.’

6.      The words of the Lord are pure words,  ♦

like silver refined in the furnace

and purified seven times in the fire.

7.      You, O Lord, will watch over us  ♦

and guard us from this generation for ever.

8.      The wicked strut on every side,  ♦

when what is vile is exalted by the whole human race.

 

The Rev’d Patrick Morrow

A version (with supplementary material) of a paper delivered within the Theology Committee Workshop of the Virtual Conference of The International Council of Christians and Jews, 22 June, 2021. 

---

[1] Liturgically minded Jews of course honour this, and chant it in majestic and mournful fulness, on Tisha B’Av, which marks the destruction of both Temples, and other catastrophes. In the Western Christian liturgical tradition (by which I mean principally Roman Catholic but also daring to add my own tradition, the Anglican) they are most used in Holy Week. In this, they can feed into the unhappy history of Holy Week vis-à-vis Jewish-Christian relations (by magnifying the strain of guilt in the Book as Jewish guilt). But, in any event, it does not have great prominence. I think most Church of England people will be most familiar with Lamentations through 3.22f: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness”, which, while good news, is scarcely a summary of the book as a whole. These words are popular at - and indeed set for - Church of England funerals.

 

[2] Cited by Brueggermann, Walter, 1984, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary, Augsburg, Minneapolis, 17, as from Calvin’s Preface to his Commentary on the Book of Psalms. Brueggermann himself proposes maximal overlap for the Christian reader/prayer: all of “(a) focal movements of Christian faith (crucifixion and resurrection), (b) decisive inclinations of Jewish piety (suffering and hope), (c) psalmic expressions that are most recurrent (lament and praise), and (d) seasons in our own life of dying and being raised. “ 22.

[3] One parallel swerve which can make translation awkward is in grammatical person, moving from second to third person and back, or with the first person moving between Gd and the one praying.

It is my habit to write God “Gd”, since I have been convinced by R. Kendall Soulen that the Christian practice of writing nomina sacra in abbreviated form (DS for Deus, etc.) is not a practical matter but a form of reverence for the Divine which parallels Jewish practice. See Soulen, R. Kendall, 2011, The Divine Name(s) and Holy Trinity: Distinguishing the Voices, Westminster John Knox, Louisville, 31ff.

[4] Waltke, B. K., Houston J. M. & Moore, E.. 2014, The Psalms as Christian Lament: A Historical Commentary Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1.

[5] Op cit. Brueggermann owns his debt to Gunkel, Mowinkel, and Westermann, especially Westermann.

[6] © Archbishops’ Council, 2000. Note that as a liturgical text, this translation does not include the Psalms’ ‘superscriptions’. Hence the difference in verse numbers.