"Singing Us Forward" on Psalm 16 by Michelle Ellis — July 14, 2024

We’ve been exploring the Psalms together this summer as a kind of ‘anatomy of the soul’ — that’s how John Calvin described the Psalms. He said there is no emotion that anyone can experience that is not expressed in the book of Psalms. And that is so true! The Psalms give expression to a huge range of human emotions, and as the prayer book of the Jesus’ church, they also give permission and invitation to bring all that we experience to God. Everything — the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between, knowing that God invites us to bring the whole depth and breadth of our experience of being human to him.

Another theologian named Walter Bruggemann also gives a helpful structure for understanding the Psalms. He describes how there are three categories of Psalms: Psalms of Orientation, Psalms of Disorientation, and Psalms of Re-orientation.

Psalms of Orientation are ones where the psalmist’s heart is oriented towards God. They describe security, joy, peace and the knowledge of God’s presence.

Psalms of Disorientation are ones that express confusion, anger, feeling lost, grief, or shame.

Psalms of Re-orientation describe the movement away from being disoriented, being in a place of trouble, to then being oriented again towards God, entering again into trust, being rescued, moving from a place of being lost, to being found.

Bruggemann says each Psalm can be understood as being in one of these three categories: Orientation, Disorientation or Re-orientation. Because the book of Psalms expresses the hugely broad range of human emotion, it can be relatively easy and quite helpful to find a Psalm to pray from that aligns with the kind of emotion you are experiencing, whether it be Orientation, Disorientation or Re-orientation. You might find that some Psalms you’ve spent some time with or maybe even memorized come to your heart when you are feeling a particular emotion and want to pray to God from that place. They give words to what you are already feeling and it is a beautiful and fitting thing to pray from the Psalms in this way, to join your voice and your spirit with the voice of thousands of others throughout history who have gone before you in expressing their hearts to God through the words of the Psalms. One way to pray the Psalms is to pray from a Psalm that fits with the emotional place that you find yourself in and use the words of the Psalm to express your heart to God.

The example that comes right away to my heart when I think about praying the Psalms this way is when I got married to Joe. Psalm 16 is the text we chose together to be the scripture for our wedding. I remember wondering what text to choose for the day and noticing all the underlining in my Bible around different texts, and then I came to this one and noted that years before I had underlined Psalm 16 as a great one for a wedding. I actually wrote that beside Psalm 16 in my Bible. What especially struck me about it at the time I underlined it was verse 2, “You are my Lord; apart from you, I have no good thing.” I remember thinking what a beautiful posture it would be going into marriage to name that nothing that is good can come apart from God, even the anticipated good of finding a partner. What’s also true is that this whole Psalm was such a rich reflection of my heart at that time. The words aligned so deeply with my own experience. I felt that the boundary lines that came with marrying Joe were so good and pleasing. My heart was glad, my body rested secure. I felt that God had filled me with His joy in Joe’s presence, in knowing Joe, in loving Joe. I remember thinking that falling in love and being in love was kind of like getting a sneak peak at how good things would be when God made all things new, that I was kind of getting a taste of the coming kingdom and how beautiful it would be, like falling in love. In all those ways, this Psalm gave voice to what I was feeling. I’m sure you can tell that Psalm 16 is a Psalm of Orientation, and it was a joy to pray with these words anticipating getting married, and then on my wedding day feeling myself oriented, turned towards God in trust, in joy, in hope.

That’s just one example of praying the Psalms when they fit right with where you are. You likely have some, too. Maybe you’ve looked out at a beautiful view and prayed, “the heavens are telling the glory of God” or maybe you’ve known God’s help in a pointed way and with Psalm 121 you could pray the words, “I lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” Maybe you’ve enjoyed how good it feels to go for a bike ride or a run or the feeling on the sun on your skin and you’ve prayed, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made!”

Similarly, it can be a good and grounding thing to pray a Psalm of Disorientation when you are feeling disoriented, to speak out words from the psalmist of your despair, fear, anger, or confusion. There is an alignment and a comfort that comes from being given words that express to God what you are feeling, knowing that by reading them others, too, have turned towards God with their anger, hurt, confusion, or with their sense of abandonment. You know you have permission to speak out these things, and it is good to pray in this way.

One way to pray the Psalms is to pray the ones that align with what you are feeling to give words to your heart. To find Psalms of Orientation to pray when you are feeling oriented towards God, to find Psalms of Disorientation to pray when you are feeling disoriented. This is a good and fitting way to pray, to school our hearts in turning towards God wherever we are at and to be given words to speak out what is in our hearts.

However, there is another way to pray the Psalms that I’d like to explore together. You might be familiar with the singer and song-writer Sandra McCracken. Sometimes we sing her songs here at church. When she was reflecting on writing the song, “God’s Highway,” she shared about how she was going through a dark season at the time she was writing that song. And at first, she was trying to write lyrics that expressed where she was at, which was feeling lost, tired, weak. Then a friend reminded her that in many of the old spiritual songs, they sing not about where they are at, not “My feet are weak,” but instead they sing about where they want to be. So, though they were actually feeling weak, the words of the song would say, “My feet are strong.” Sandra McCracken describes how this was a way of singing yourself forward from the place that you find yourself in. And sometimes this singing yourself forward would happen with tears, sometimes with defiance, sometimes with great celebration. If you listen to her song, “God’s Highway”, you’ll hear this, you’ll hear her singing herself forward.

This singing yourself forward is the other way to pray the Psalms. To pray from Psalm 23, for example, a Psalm of Orientation, when you are in a place of Disorientation, to pray the Psalm of the Good Shepherd, when you are feeling lost and alone, is a way of singing yourself forward. You pray the words and sing yourself forward, like Sandra says, sometimes with defiance, sometimes with tears, sometimes with great celebration.

I have another memory associated with Psalm 16, besides my wedding. That was a number of years later when I found myself being flown by air ambulance from Smithers to a hospital in Prince George because I was in pre-term labour with our son, Ben. This time, the verse from Psalm 16 that I clung onto was verse 8. “I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” What was true, however, was that I was deeply shaken. I was having significant contractions on a tiny airplane two months before my due date, and I was alone and afraid. I remember clasping my right hand onto the bar of the gurney I was lying on in the plane with this verse in my heart, “because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken,” willing myself to know and trust that God was more real, more sturdy and strong, than that metal bar I was holding onto, and that he would keep me and my little one safe. This time, I wasn’t feeling in alignment with what this Psalm was expressing. But the words of the Psalm were grounding. They had a way of singing me forward, of singing me into trust, into defiant dependence, in a way that praying a Psalm about how lost, afraid, or alone I felt wouldn’t have. Praying Psalm 16 was almost like following God’s lead at speaking light into the darkness when he created the world. It was a way of speaking trust into being, even though I was feeling very shaken, very afraid. And I was so thankful for those words coming into my heart, to sing me into the truth that God is always before me, ever at my right hand, close enough to reach out and clasp His hand. When our son safely made his way into the world a month and a bit later we named him Benjamin, which means ‘son of my right hand’ as a way of giving witness to Psalm 16, that God was with us at that time, that we need not be shaken because God is as close as our right hand, just like Psalm 16 says. This is a witness we’ve been thankful to have throughout the many health scares that Ben has experienced in the first few years of his life.

Psalms of Orientation, like Psalm 16 can help give expression to our hearts when we are oriented towards God, when we feel that boundary lines have fallen for us in pleasant places, when we feel sturdy, strong, secure and joyful. They can also be a help to sing ourselves forward, to sing ourselves on in our journey always towards fuller hope, towards deeper trust, and in that way they can sing us into something deeper and truer than our own present experience. Maybe you’ve found yourself in a place of lack, feeling need for friendship or finances, and as a way of singing yourself forward, you might pray from Psalm 23 and speak out, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing.” Or when you don’t have eyes to see any good ahead of you, you might pray from Psalm 16 expressing trust that you will receive a wonderful inheritance in God.

Biblical authors, too, allowed words of the Psalms to speak to more than what they may have been expressing on the surface. They heard a deeper prayer, a pointing to something more than the experiences which they describe. Psalm 16 is quoted twice in the book of Acts, in Peter’s sermon at Pentecost in Acts 2 and in Paul’s sermon in Acts 13. In both of these instances, Peter and Paul quote Psalm 16 as describing not just an expression of the psalmist’s present condition, but also as pointing to a reality deeper and wider than what the author even knew.

In Acts, Peter looks at Psalm 16 and sees a foreshadowing of Jesus’ resurrection. Peter points to verses 8-11 in particular as ones that point to the coming reality of Jesus’ defeat over death. The author of this Psalm in these verses was likely talking about avoiding death, or being saved from dying. But Peter points to this Psalm as naming a deeper and truer reality than being saved from dying, which we will all have to face one day. Peter points to this and names that for Jesus, death was not an end, but a door. Jesus would not be saved from dying or avoid an earthly death. Instead, Jesus would rise in confidence from the actual stronghold of death, having defeated it. Jesus leads the way on this new path of life with joy in God’s presence and eternal pleasures at his right hand. In this way, Peter wasn’t singing himself forward with this Psalm in the way we just talked about, but he is singing himself further in, to the depth and breadth of God’s story. The Psalms of Orientation like this one can name our current reality, they can help ‘sing us forward,’ and they can sing us deeper, wider.

Psalm 16 names the truth of what at the moment we only see dimly—that though now we die, no one is abandoned to the grave. That though now we may lose our way, God has made known to us the path of life through Jesus, and that though now we suffer, one day we will enjoy together eternal pleasures at God’s right hand. David sang us forward in this Psalm, he sings us further up and further in, inspired by the Spirit though he wasn’t aware of it yet himself. He’s singing us forward into Jesus’ defeat of death, into the restoration of all things through his blood.

In a moment, we’re about to come to the Lord’s table together. As we do, I’d like to invite you to join in this meal, as a way of singing us forward. Singing us from our current realities of Disorientation, of brokenness, to the truth that thousands of years ago God sent His Son to reconcile all things to Himself, that though the fight lingers on, the battle has been won and that even now God is working to make all things new in you, in me, in this community, and in His world. Amen.