Psalm 80:1-7 Commentary

If you pay close attention to the Psalm readings across the three-year cycle of the Revised Common Lectionary, then you know the Lectionary likes Psalm 80.  But it never manages to assign the whole psalm.  Either you get just the first seven verses (as here for Advent 4C) or nine verses from the middle of the poem (for Proper 22A) or you get the first seven verses plus the last two (as in Advent 1B and Advent 4A).  But never all nineteen verses for some reason.

But as we just saw, that means that Years A, B, and C all assign part of Psalm 80 for Advent: the first Advent Sunday for Year B and the fourth Advent Sunday in Years A and C.  Psalm 80 is a kind of utility player for this season: you can start with it and also end with it!  Although it can be difficult always to discern just why a certain text got chosen for any given Sunday in the Church Year, my guess is that Psalm 80’s emphasis on shining light is what makes this an Adventy poem.  The opening verse asks God to shine forth upon his people.  And then the refrain about having God’s face shine upon us comes up in verses 3, 7, and 19.

As we have noted before in past commentaries on Psalm 80, one cannot read this poem without flashing back to Numbers 6 and the great Aaronic Benediction that we find there.  Perhaps every pastor in the world has that blessing memorized in their home language:

May the Lord bless you and keep, may the Lord turn his face to you and be gracious unto you, may the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace.  Amen.

Years ago when I was a student worship leader at Calvin College (now University), I noticed that at the end of the morning service each week some students seated in the balcony would sneak out of the service before the closing blessing was given.  Since it was always an 11am service, the reason for their departure was obvious enough: they wanted to get in line to eat lunch before the 600 or so other students attending the service left and formed long lines in The Commons.  But this prompted the chaplain to say to me at one point how sad he was that some students did this.  “If the only part of the service they caught was the closing Benediction, it would have been worth their while.”  In other words, missing out on a blessing was a sad and bad choice on their parts.

In my tradition there are certain words and actions a pastor says and does that seminarians cannot do until they graduate and get formally ordained.  The sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are two of those official acts of ministry reserved for the ordained clergy but so is lifting one’s hands to impart either God’s Greeting at the opening of a service or the Benediction at the conclusion of the service.  Seminarians may read blessings from Scripture but they may not raise their arms to impart an actual blessing.

I wonder how often we think of a Benediction as being that special and, dare we say, as that powerful.  Something really happens in the imparting of such an official blessing.  It reminds one of the time when Jacob (with his mother’s sly complicity) stole the family blessing from his father Isaac that rightfully belonged to the older son, Esau.  I remember years ago reading that story as a younger child and thinking, “Well, OK, Isaac blessed Jacob but for goodness sake can’t you just do the same for Esau now?”  Well, no.  Apparently not.  The blessing was a real thing and Isaac had just the one to impart and when that was done, Isaac was plumb out of gas on the blessing front.  There was just the one blessing to give in Isaac’s heart and once Jacob got it, Esau could not.

Whether or not something like the Aaronic Blessing is just like that is not clear, and someone could perhaps make the case that there is nothing specifically in the Bible that makes my denomination’s rule about only ordained clergy giving a blessing a requirement.  But it is still worth pondering that something actually happens to people when they receive God’s blessing in worship.  Something real is being given or imparted.

And Psalm 80 knows for certain that this is something the people of God need.  When for whatever the reason it seems like God’s face is not shining upon us, we feel at sea, lost, bereft.  We need that shining light of God’s countenance.  We need the peace it yields when our very salvation is confirmed.  Psalm 80 is also quite graphic in describing what life is like without God’s blessing: bowlfuls of tears, being fed the bread of tears, being an object of ridicule and derision.  Not a happy picture.  So we pine for God’s face to shine upon us once again.

In Advent we celebrate the fact that God’s face is now perhaps best seen in the very human face of the Son of God incarnate.  God’s face does not shine upon us from afar since God in Christ Jesus the Lord has drawn near, has become one of us.  That is the heart of the Good News that we celebrate and rehearse each Advent and Christmas.  God has turned his face to us, has shined upon us.  The light shines in the darkness of this sad world and the darkness cannot extinguish it.  Psalm 80 gives us a wonderful window on all that and so the RCL is right: this psalm very much belongs in Advent.

Illustration Idea

In the very fine film The Queen, there is a scene in which the newly elected British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife are brought to Buckingham Palace for the new P.M. to meet with Queen Elizabeth, who will formally authorize his forming a government in the Queen’s name.  Mrs. Blair is no fan of the royals and so chafes a bit under the tutelage they are given by the Queen’s chief valet as he prepares Prime Minister Blair to meet with the Queen for the first time.  “When you are in The Presence . . .” he says.  Causing Mr. Blair to exclaim, “The Presence?”  “Yes, that is what we call it when you are in her Majesty’s company.”  They are then told to bow from the neck, to remember that it is “Ma’am as in the rhyme for ‘ham.’”  And one is never to turn one’s back to the Queen, which in the scene makes for a bit of comedy as they eventually back out of the room literally walking backwards.  You can watch the scene here—it’s worth watching!

To many of us it all seems rather elaborate.  We’re too democratic in our thinking, too egalitarian to think such a fuss should be made over just another person.  But throughout most of history—and certainly back in ancient Israel’s time—such things were common when meeting a king or queen or other powerful figure.  If the monarch turned his face toward you, it was a big deal.  And for Israel such things were to be magnified a thousand-fold when it came to appearing before God’s face and having the face of God shine upon you as Psalm 80 well displays.