Scripture Sunday: Lives of Praise

by Ashtyn Adams

Psalm 147:1-11, 20c (CEB)
1 Praise the Lord!
    Because it is good to sing praise to our God!
    Because it is a pleasure to make beautiful praise!
2  The Lord rebuilds Jerusalem, gathering up Israel’s exiles.
3 God heals the brokenhearted
    and bandages their wounds.
4 God counts the stars by number,
    giving each one a name.
5 Our Lord is great and so strong!
    God’s knowledge can’t be grasped!
6 The Lord helps the poor,
    but throws the wicked down on the dirt!
7 Sing to the Lord with thanks;
    sing praises to our God with a lyre!
8 God covers the skies with clouds;
    God makes rain for the earth;
God makes the mountains sprout green grass.
9 God gives food to the animals--
    even to the baby ravens when they cry out.
10 God doesn’t prize the strength of a horse;
    God doesn’t treasure the legs of a runner.
11 No. The Lord treasures the people
who honor him,
    the people who wait for his faithful love.
20 Praise the Lord!

Last week, my professor Dr. Winner challenged me with these words: “we often assume that redemption is easy for God.” She wrote them in her book Wearing God, where she outlines the overlooked ways we meet the divine. In Isaiah 42:14, one such overlooked image appears, when God says, “I’ve kept still for a very long time. I’ve been silent and restrained myself. Like a woman in labor I will moan; I will pant, I will gasp.” Isaiah uses three different verbs for words relating to breath because breath signals the active participation of a woman in labor. God does not fight the pain but works from within the pain. Shortly before, Isaiah also says to his audience, “Sing to the Lord a new song.” Music is often key to finding any sort of relief to women in labor. When we praise God, we offer such music; we participate in and support God in birthing newness of life. After reading Dr. Winner's research and insights, I thought to myself, “I will never look at liturgy the same.”

Here, the lectionary presents us with one liturgy, a praise psalm. It, at first glance, paints a picture that does imply easy redemption, listing out God’s impressive resume, cheering: “Our Lord is great and so strong!” In all honesty, it initially felt quite presumptuous. Is God really healing the brokenhearted, the marginalized facing the cruelties of climate change? Are the wicked being thrown into the dirt, the companies who are the biggest GHG contributors? Does God hear the baby animals on the brink of extinction? I wondered, where on Earth is the triumph declared in this psalm for us today? ​

However, after sitting with this psalm for a few days, I could swim a little deeper in its depth. It struck me that these words of praise come from the place of wounds. They are not the sayings of a North American, middle-class, white woman like myself. These are the echoes of exiles who understand complexity with the land, who have a deeply intimate relationship with creation. They have lost, and, now, returning from exile, they have found. God is rebuilding Jerusalem as the opening line discloses to us, whispering to contemporary readers a reminder that redemption is not a one-time, one-and-done act for God either. So, how do we, strangers and enemies to our own lands, reach reconciliation and rebuilding?

Key to this psalm is an exaltation of strength that finds resonance with Isaiah's image of God as a laboring woman: “God doesn’t prize the strength of a horse; God doesn’t treasure the legs of a runner. No. The Lord treasures the people who honor him, the people who wait for his faithful love.” No, the Psalmist implores, we must not assume our definition of strength is God’s definition of strength. We cannot think God treasures mighty speed when it is stiff, shaky legs that birth new life. No wonder the Lord, like a mother in labor, treasures those who patiently wait with her, who honor her with song. What a gift we can give to our common Creator, to the one whom we love. Indeed, as the Psalmist proclaims, what “pleasure" to have a role in something so beautiful. ​

 We cannot think God treasures mighty speed when it is stiff, shaky legs that birth new life.

The implied flip side of the psalm though is dishonor, the hindrance we can also inflict on God. Whether we are comfortable with it or not, as Dr. Ellen Davis reminds us, vulnerability is the condition that enables covenant. God loves because God is vulnerable to our words and actions. In the Anthropocene, it is nearly impossible to say that our lives are “beautiful praise,” that our praise is “fitting” to the God who loves to "make the mountains sprout with green grass." Instead of aiding God’s movement in sprouting grass, we dishonor creation, a source of divine delight and a site of divine display. One particular and frequent way we do this is through our plastic consumption. As stated in CJM’s Earth Day Resource, not only does plastic surround our food and pollute our soil, but there are even traces of it found in breast milk. What if we were to think about these as microplastics in God’s breast? Might this uncomfortable image, certainly foreign to Scripture, awaken us to the damage we are inflicting on the created order? Might we take more seriously our midwifing role, faithfully acting, eagerly waiting for restoration? These questions are very different from the ones I entered the text with. The living God whom I meet in Scripture has a funny way of turning our presumptions and expectations on their head. I hope and pray we can all better learn to "praise the Lord!"

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Ashtyn Adams is a Seminary Intern at Creation Justice Ministries. Ashtyn earned her B.A. in Religion
​from Pepperdine University and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Divinity at Duke University.

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