It is that time of the year again when pastors or church members are on their holidays and each Sunday morning has something of the feeling of a one-off service.
Sometimes we can have as many visitors as regulars.
Over the years I have found weeks like these ideal for preaching on the Psalms. I have probably preached on most of the 150 psalms in this way. I have preached on the shortest psalm (117) and the longest (119) which incidentally sits almost next to the shortest psalm.
I have preached on the Hallelujah psalms, in particular the Hallelujah Chorus of Psalms 146–150, and the sad songs 3 and 13. I have even ventured to preach on Psalm 137, trying to navigate its almost unbearable language of vengeance.
The good thing about preaching on a psalm is that although it has to be read in the context of the whole book of Psalms and each of its five component parts, it can be read as a single stand-alone unit.
This week I am preparing to preach on Psalm 88 for the first time. It has been described as the saddest song in the Psalter and the psalm it lives up to its name. It is one the few psalms that does not provide a sense of resolution, ending finally in unrelieved darkness.
Perhaps I will tell you next week how I got on with preaching it.
One of the things I always like about preaching the psalms is that they tell me what the psalmist is thinking but also show me how he is feeling. Often when I am short of words, or simply cannot put what I feel into coherent sentences, the psalms speak for me.
This summer I have been reviewing a new monumental four-volume commentary on the Psalms by Christopher Ash, who is a scholar in residence at Tyndale House in Cambridge. (The review should appear in the October edition of Evangelicals Now).
His particular take on Psalms is that they are to be read as the songs of Christ. This builds on Bonhoeffer’s book Prayerbook of the Bible, in which he argues in line with most biblical commentaries written in the first 1900 years of church history that the psalms are the prayer book of Jesus.
By contrast, in the past century or so, many commentaries on Psalms focus mainly on the original setting of the psalms and have little in the way of reflection on how they fit into the whole biblical story. This is even the case when the New Testament itself sees the psalm being fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus. Christopher Ash attempts to read all 150 psalms through the eyes of Jesus.
Some preachers might feel that Ash overdoes this at times. Preachers need to be more Jesus focused in their preaching but when preaching the psalms we also need to discern the voice of the psalmist and our own voices as believers who need to pray, praise, lament and rejoice.
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