The lectionary many churches use, like a nanny with young children, ‘sanitises’ the readings from Scripture to avoid upsetting people. Well, Psalm 95 does need a ‘trigger warning’, and what follows would be censored in many churches. But Lent is a time when we should face up to the disturbing things about God in the Bible, and in turn let ourselves be disturbed – but it is wiser and safer to be disturbed in the presence of God than simply be perplexed by the troubles of the world.
Psalm 95: 1-2, 6-11
O come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
O come, let us worship and bow down,
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
O that today you would listen to his voice!
Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your ancestors tested me,
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty years I loathed that generation and said,
“They are a people whose hearts go astray,
And they do not regard my ways.”
Therefore in my anger I swore, “They shall not enter my rest.”
The psalm begins with a call to shout God’s praise, and leads on to a call to listen to the voice of God (a voice which breaks the cedars of Lebanon, Psalm 29). But it ends with God shouting at his people in frustration. Now of course, as Calvin put it, God speaks extra simply to his people in Scripture, indeed like a nanny with young children, and so there is no end to books ‘explaining God’. But in a psalm like this we are confronted with God in holiness, majesty, and even frustration – things which a snowflake generation ought not simply to explain away.
95 Shouting Sober
Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot,
I am about to spit you out of my mouth (Revelation 3:16)
Forty days of fasting
to clear the head of compromise,
lose the ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’.
Forty years of loathing
to clear the tribe of disaffection,
throttle sentimental views of love.
Five books of Hebrew psalms
to clear the church of unreal hymns,
bring us, humble, to our senses.
Twelve lines of Hebrew text
to clear the throat of pious praise,
awake a pure and joyful noise.
We do not often think of God ‘shouting’, far less of our Lord Jesus spitting. But Lent is a time of stripping away illusions, a time of clearing house spiritually, and the five books of Hebrew Psalms in our Old Testament Bibles will do that for us if we let them.
Jock Stein