Psalm 29 Commentary

This is the Sunday to observe things related to the Baptism of Jesus and each of the four assigned Year C readings tie in with baptism.  The Acts 8 passage is a little bit of an outlier in that no water is involved but instead baptism is mentioned even as the Holy Spirit gets poured out on those who somehow were baptized into the name of Father and Son but not apparently of the Spirit too.

Isaiah 43 famously promises God’s presence with his people when they pass through the waters, and of course Luke 3 is Jesus’s actually getting plunged into the water of the Jordan River.  And then there is Psalm 29 that deals with water in a rather different way.  Because this poem is an ode to the sheer violent power of thunderstorms.

In the modern world when it comes to strong storms, we mostly view them through the lens of the potential threats to life and property they can pose.  The National Weather Service issues Severe Thunderstorm Watches and Warnings and now and again those shift to a Tornado Warning and we are told to take immediate shelter when that happens.  Unlike the psalmist, we don’t usually just watch the unfolding of a storm all the while shouting “Glory!” at the power of God on display.

But that is pretty much what this poet does in the 29^th Psalm.  It seems as the psalm begins that he is standing on the shore of some body of water.  Those of us who live in Michigan know how this can go.  Storms tend to come from the west from the direction of Wisconsin over Lake Michigan.  The big lake is on average around 118 miles across but sound travels very well across bodies of water and so a storm can be a good ways off yet when on the Michigan side you begin to hear those first rumbles of thunder.

Soon enough the horizon darkens, those rumbles get louder and more incessant.  Lightning appears and as the storm gets much closer, the wind whips up kicking up ever higher waves.  Thunderstorms are essentially giant heat pumps whose purpose is to re-stabilize an unstable atmosphere by redistributing masses of cold and hot air.  The cold air starts at the top (as high as 35,000 feet) but once the storm gets rolling, that cold air is pumped downward, and you feel it right away.  I have seen storms that dropped the outdoor temperate over 20 degrees in a matter of minutes.  On its way down that very cold air can interact with rain and generate hail.  And if you’ve ever been reasonably near an actual lightning bolt, you know that the thunderclap that such a 300 million volt discharge of electricity generates can be deafening and, as Psalm 29 depicts it, the earth is set to reeling and shaking because of it.

Storms are such a powerful spectacle you can readily conclude that there is not a drop of hyperbole in Psalm 29’s descriptions!

But we would be missing the real message of Psalm 29 if we left it at the level of celebrating the awesome nature of storms.  The framing of this psalm is the key.  First we are called to ascribe or give to God the glory and strength due to his holy Name even as we do this while worshiping in the splendor of holiness (such a great line!).  Yes, God is strong, glorious, mighty, and holy.  And all of that in the psalm’s opening verses is what leads the psalmist to then as much as say, “For instance . . .” and then we’re off and running in describing a thunderstorm.

Then in verse 10 we are reminded that not only does Israel’s God have the power to pull off a storm capable of all that had been described, this God sits in glory high above it all too.  But then comes verse 11 and the real bottom line here: All that majesty, might, power, glory, and holiness somehow gets funneled right into the hearts of God’s people. This majestic God’s strength becomes our strength.  And yet somehow, like Moses’s Burning Bush, God’s power is within us yet we are not consumed.  In fact, the dearest dividend this internal divine power yields for God’s people is peace.  And yes, the final word in the Hebrew of Psalm 29 is shalom. 

If it seems like the Psalm sermon commentaries here on CEP say this pretty often it is a reflection of how often the psalms themselves say this: the truest wonder of Israel’s God is not that he is so big and powerful but rather that this huge God manages to see and care for us in all our littleness.  That the raw power we see reflected in a thunderstorm can get hard-wired into our hearts and yet we are not obliterated by it is a grace of singular wonder.

And although Psalm 29 may seem a long ways away from having a lot to do with the Baptism of Jesus on this First Sunday after Epiphany, perhaps there is a connection after all.  Paul reminded the Romans that if in baptism we get buried into death along with Jesus, then we will also be resurrected to new life with Jesus.  All of Jesus’s new life gets hard-wired into us.  It does not consume us.  No, instead it leads to God’s fondest desire for us and for this creation: it leads to shalom.

Illustration Idea

The success of various TV shows that follow the exploits of storm chasers is probably an indication that we are fascinated by the spectacle of thunderstorms and even tornadoes.  Similarly the popularity of the movie Twister and more recently a sequel that upped the ante a bit by having the plural title of Twisters indicates that especially when we can watch a storm unfold from the safe vantage point of our living room sofa or a movie theater seat, we are drawn to these powerful displays of nature’s (Psalm 29 would remind us that it is actually God’s) power.  It’s not that we are unaware of the terror of these storms, however.

Maybe in a better world storms would unfold in ways that would wow us but without ever posing a threat to life and limb.  But since we live in a broken world and in the midst of a fallen order, that’s not the case.  So it can feel a little weird to watch storm chasers whopping it up with glee when they get close to a really significant tornado when you know that same twister may be causing whole families to be screaming in terror.  That may be why in the original Twister movie all of the storm chasers’ passion was framed as a necessary exercise in science to create better early warning systems to get people into shelters sooner rather than later.  Sure they were whooping it up but it was in the service of a noble cause!

In any event, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hurricanes do wow us even as they can terrify us too.  But Psalm 29 reminds us to look at such things theologically too: our God is that powerful and then some but in the end all of that power is in the service of saving God’s people.  And for that all in God’s Temple shout “Glory!”