We Bless God

Psalm 103 - Read the psalm text online here »

St. Athanasius was one of the most influential of the theologians in the Early Church. Athanasius observed the following about the Psalms:

“In the Psalter you learn about yourself. You find depicted in it all the movements of your soul, all its changes, its ups and downs, its failures and [its] recoveries.”

This morning we are beginning a summer mini-series in the Psalms. Over the next five weeks, we will look at five psalms. They are listed in the bulletin for you to read and ponder ahead of time. I hope we will learn something about ourselves and something about God as we look at these psalms. I hope we will see how the movements of our souls connect with the movement of God’s “soul” – God’s character. And I pray that each of us will be strengthened in our faith as we listen to the heartbeat of the psalmists for God.

Psalm 103 is a psalm written by King David hundreds of years before Jesus was born. Yet it still conveys for us in the 21st century – some 3,000 thousand years after it was written! – that timeless connection between a human being and God. It is a connection that is intensely personal but not private. It is personal and at the same time relational because the psalmist is in a “soul” relationship with God. He is obviously open to God: he welcomes God to touch his entire life – his mind, his body and his soul. And the psalmist responds to God.

The psalmist begins – intriguingly – talking to himself and telling himself “Bless God.” He begins with himself. He tells his soul why he should bless God. He tells his soul not to forget a single one of God’s blessings. But he also can’t remain quiet about who else should bless God. The blessing of God cannot linger solely in his soul. So he concludes his hymn by calling upon God’s entire creation, including all the angels, to bless God too!

“Bless God, O my soul.” What does it mean to bless someone? It means to express appreciation, gratitude, respect, relationship and goodwill for the one being blessed. I often express blessings to people and I hope people on the receiving end sense one or two of those meanings. When we bless God, we are expressing similar meanings. When we bless God, we can never go wrong in saying simply “Praise to you, O God.” Indeed, some translations of verse 1 say, “Praise the Lord, my soul.”

When the psalmist blesses or praises God, he models for us his relationship with God. The Good News Bible says: “Bless God, my soul, and all my being, bless God’s holy name.” The Message Bible expresses it this way: “O my soul, bless God. From head to toe, I’ll bless his holy name!” In other words, soul, bless God with everything you’ve got and with everything you are – with your entire being! That is the psalmist’s wholehearted way of blessing or praising God.

When we bless God, the psalmist also hopes that we too will never forget a single one of the ways God blesses us. The psalmist reminded himself not to forget that

• God forgives
• God heals
• God redeems his life from the pit (or the grave)
• God crowns him with love and mercy
• God surrounds him with goodness and renewal. (David would even say this in his familiar 23rd Psalm in the midst of weariness, dark valleys and enemies.)

The psalmist knew himself well enough to feel he might forget God’s great kindnesses to him. That is easier to do than we might think, especially during busy times or difficult times or even times of leisure when we might say this is my time to think about myself and enjoy myself. So we begin to leave God out of our lives at some point. I must confess that this kind of forgetfulness concerns me. Could I forget the significant ways God has blessed me and continues to bless me? Do you ever feel you might forget how good God has been and still is to you? Could I -- or could you -- even virtually forget God himself? A remarkable observation from the late English writer G. K. Chesterton helped me with this notion of forgetting and remembering. Chesterton wrote: “The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.”

If I feel that something significant from God whom I love might be lost to my memory, then I want to love (in this case) God with every fibre of my being. Is it possible to lose sight of God’s love? I wonder if one reason for church – for the need to be together regularly -- is to remind ourselves to love God and to love our neighbour. So we get together and we pray, we praise, we worship, we sing, we listen, we talk together, we ponder what we hear, we question and we give ourselves to God who is rich in mercy and grace and love to us.

Now remember, in this psalm the psalmist is talking to his soul. If I were to paraphrase what he is saying and what he wants me to hear, it might sound something like this:

Soul, when I praise God, don’t forget God is the author and giver of all that is good. When I am blessing God, I am praising the character of God. So I will love and praise God with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul and with all my strength. Soul, remember God’s nature and character at all times. The God I am praising is full of mercy, grace, love and compassion -- to all those who honour God. God doesn’t treat me as my sins deserve. So, soul, keep on honouring God! God knows I am fragile like a wildflower that springs up and blossoms for only a little while. I will remember too that, one day, my life will be snuffed out just as quickly. But, soul, don’t forget this: God has planned a way to redeem me from the grave -- from death! God’s love is strong enough to hold onto me forever! So I will keep on honouring God my whole life through. One other thing: I must love my neighbour too because God is on the side of all those who are treated unjustly and who have no one to help them. So, soul, I need to be on their side too and love them too. There will come a day when God will make everything right for them. So I want to be on God’s side in all my living.

For all kinds of reasons, there are many in our society who are not part of any church or community of faith. I hunch, though, there are more than a few who talk to their soul something like the psalmist did. I can imagine they have a personal conversation with themselves and remind themselves that, even in the midst of their troubles, God is on their side. Here is the story of one such individual.

Theologian Leonard Sweet, in his book A Cup of Coffee at the Soul Café [Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998, pp. 161-163.], tells of two filmmakers making a film about street people in London, England, in 1971. The film captured the daily rituals of people who were homeless -- their trials and joys. Some were drunk. Others mentally disturbed. Some were articulate and others unintelligible. One of England’s leading composers, Gavin Bryars, agreed to help with the audio in the film. During his work, he became aware of a constant undercurrent of sound that appeared whenever one certain homeless man was filmed. At first, the sound seemed like muttered gibberish. But after removing the background noise, Bryars discovered the old man was singing.
Bryars learned that this man did not drink or socialize with others. The old man was alone, filthy and homeless but he also had a sunny demeanour. What distinguished him from the others was his quiet singing. He would sing the same simple phrases over and over – for hours. The man’s weak voice was untrained but it never wavered from pitch.

One day Bryars was working in his office, looping together the first 13 bars of the homeless man’s song and preparing to add orchestration to the piece. He left the loop running while he went downstairs for a cup of coffee. When he returned, he found his fellow workers listening in subdued silence. A few were even weeping. They could hear the old man’s quiet, trembling voice from the recording room and it transformed the atmosphere of the office. Here is what he sang:

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet,
Never failed me yet.
Jesus’ blood never failed me yet.
There’s one thing I know
For he loves me so.

Although Bryars was not a Christian, he produced a musical accompaniment to this homeless man’s song of trust in Jesus. (You can Google search Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet and listen on YouTube.) Unfortunately, the homeless man died before he heard it.

Even in the midst of his life on the street – in the midst of his loneliness and the dirt – this homeless man could say: “There’s one thing I know for Jesus loves me so.” If you are like me, it is not easy to comprehend his devotion and heart. Frankly, if I were in his circumstances, I don’t know how I would respond. But there are times in my life when I do sit quietly, overwhelmed by God’s love, and praise God for God’s amazing goodness, grace, mercy and forgiveness to me.

I often praise God for the good gifts in my life. I am not homeless. I live quite comfortably. I could have been born in some other place under very different circumstances.

And I often praise God for his forgiveness. Someone has said that guilt is the hangover from our sins. Too many people go through life with a chronic hangover of guilt. But God has planned a way to make his forgiveness possible. And the good news of God’s forgiveness should be built into our worship as a reminder. Forever feeling shame and guilt and not knowing forgiveness impacts the way we may see others and even how we may see God.

In an article for the Internet version of the magazine Christianity Today entitled “Our Divine Distortion,” Christian songwriter Carolyn Arends shared a personal story about shame and guilt and forgiveness. Her story could belong to any of us. She wrote:

When I found a brand new lap-top for half price on eBay, I told my friend and musical colleague Spencer about my bargain of a find. He was worried: “Usually when something’s too good to be true … ”

“I know,” I replied impatiently, “but the seller has a 100 per cent approval rating.”

“Be careful,” warned Spencer.

“Of course,” I assured him, annoyed. I wasn’t born yesterday.

I sent the seller $1,300 and discovered in very short, sickening order that I had fallen prey to a classic scam. A fraudster had hacked someone’s eBay identity in order to relieve easy marks like me of our money.

I felt [like a] fool -- and didn’t want to tell Spencer. The next time I saw his number on my caller ID, I didn’t answer. I could just imagine his “I told you so.”

Soon I was avoiding Spencer completely. And I started to resent him. Why did he have to be so judgmental? Why couldn’t he be on my side? Why was I ever friends with that jerk?

Eventually, we had to fly together to perform at a concert. “Whatever happened with that computer thing?” he asked an hour into the flight. Cornered, I finally confessed my foolishness, dreading the inevitable response. But as soon as I told Spencer about my mistake, a strange thing happened. The enemy I had turned him into evaporated. Spencer turned into Spencer again -- my teasing but deeply empathetic buddy.

As embarrassed as I was by my eBay error, I felt even dumber about the way I had allowed my shame to distort my perception of a best friend. If my hand had not been forced, I would have remained estranged from him indefinitely.

[Carolyn wrote further:] I’ve always considered myself perceptive but, the longer I live, the more I discover my susceptibility to misinterpretation. This is true of the way I view my friends, truer of the way I see my enemies and, perhaps, truest of the way I perceive God.

How do we perceive God? The psalmist perceived and experienced God as rich in mercy, rich in grace, rich in forgiveness, rich in compassion, rich in goodness and rich of justice. But how do we perceive God?

In Psalm 103 and throughout the Bible, there is a constant theme: God cares about the oppressed. Near the beginning of his ministry, Jesus returned to his hometown of Nazareth. He came home as an honored rabbi, so the leaders of the synagogue asked Jesus to read the Scripture and make a comment. Jesus read from Isaiah where it is written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.” [Luke 4:18–19 NRSV]

Jesus then made his comment: “This passage of scripture has come true today, as you heard it being read” [GNT].

The psalmist would most certainly have connected Jesus and his care for those who are treated unjustly with the character of God whom he praises. It is as if the psalmist anticipates Jesus when he says in verse 6: “The LORD judges in favour of the oppressed and gives them their rights” [GNT]. Or “The LORD works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed” [NRSV]. We ought to bless God because God’s nature – God’s character-- is to care about and work justice for those who are oppressed, who are treated unjustly and who have no one to defend them. God cares for them; therefore, we ought to care as well.

“O my soul, bless God, and all that is within me, bless God’s holy name.” “O my soul, bless God and don’t forget a single one of God’s blessings.” But as I mentioned in the beginning, the psalmist’s personal response to bless God cannot remain private as if that were enough. Blessing God has to go public. So the psalmist concludes his hymn of praise exhorting God’s angels and God’s entire creation to bless God! Listen to The Message Bible’s rendering of the concluding verses of Psalm 103:

GOD has set his throne in heaven;
God rules over us all. God is the King!
So bless GOD, you angels,
ready and able to fly at God’s bidding,
quick to hear and do what God says.
Bless GOD, all you armies of angels,
alert to respond to whatever God wills.
Bless GOD, all creatures, wherever you are --
everything and everyone made by GOD.
And you, O my soul, bless GOD!

May this be so for you and for me.


Rev. Chris Miller
August 1, 2010
OYM United Church, Toronto - website »