Psalm 150 Commentary

Psalm 150 is the giant exclamation mark that closes out the Book of Psalms.  In six swift and short verses the psalmist looks back on the previous 149 songs in the Hebrew Psalter and then as much as says, “Here’s what this whole book has been saying all along.”  The psalms—each of them and all of them together collectively—mean precisely one thing: Hallelu Yah.  Praise Yahweh!  If you’ve got breath in your lungs, use it to belt out a song of joy and praise and thanksgiving to the one true God of Israel.  That is what it all boils down to in the Psalms.

This is the end of the matter.  Yes, almost one-third of the 149 songs that came prior to this concluding psalm were in the modality of laments.  God received his fair share of complaints and even accusations along the way to this final exultation.  The psalmists were not shy about admitting that life is sometimes pretty brutal in this broken world and it is not always by any means easy to spy the wonderful works of God.  It certainly is not always easy to detect the working out of justice in the broader society or world.  The world sometimes not only looks like an unjust place but at times it very simply is unjust.  All the wrong people get ahead in life and all the wrong people get the short end of too many of life’s sticks.

None of this was hidden or denied or obscured in the Book of Psalms.  Even so, however, again and again the psalms turn back to praising God for all God’s worth.  And now with the closing song of the collection this is reinforced in a powerful way with command after command to praise God with everything we’ve got.  This is what I have frequently called the Praise Imperative of the psalms.  This is not some soft-spoken or polite invitation to praise Yahweh.  This is a holy drill sergeant barking out orders to join the choir and to do it right now.

Because despite all of life’s ups and downs, despite the struggles that even faithful followers of God experience, in the end we cling to the persistent belief that God is good.  We praise God for who God is.  We praise God for what God does.  We praise because that is what we were created to do as God’s image-bearers.  This is our human vocation.  The theologian Irenaeus once wrote “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.”  But clearly one part of what it means to be “fully alive” is to be aware of who God is and then glorifying that God accordingly.

On the Sunday after Easter in the Year C Lectionary, this is one of the psalm options (along with a portion of Psalm 118 once again).  And it is easy to see why the posture of Psalm 150 is so fitting in this season that celebrates the resurrection.  All through Scripture writers—and most especially the psalmist writers—knew of a wide welter of reasons for praising God with all the verve and enthusiasm evinced by the 150^th psalm.  But what in all Scripture or in all history compares with God’s raising his Son from the dead!?  That cosmic victory of Life over death reverberates through all things that exist.

Also on this Second Sunday in Easter a reading from Revelation 1 is assigned.  Although not in that chapter specifically, we know that very soon in the Book of Revelation God is going to pull back the curtain between heaven and earth to allow John of Patmos to see what is going on in heaven right at this very moment.  What we read in especially Revelation 4 and 5 are not visions of some future heavenly worship service but of that is happening right now.  And what is that?  Never-ending songs to the Lamb upon his throne.  He is declared worthy of praise for having created all things.  The Lamb is declared worthy of praise for his life, death, and resurrection.  And as John reports on these things, he keeps turning up the volume until everything in all creation is said to be thundering forth the song, just as the conclusion of Psalm 150 suggests we all should do.

In this Eastertide season we want to participate in that heavenly worship right here and now on this earth.  As we do, Psalm 150 is blazing a trail for us to follow.  Praise the Lord!

Illustration Idea

In a sermon he preached years ago at the Calvin Symposium on Worship, Trygve Johnson opened with a very clever image.  He said he had grown up in the Pacific Northwest and on Whidbey Island specifically.  That part of the world is, of course, known for its mist, fog, and frequent rains.  But every once in a while things would clear.  And when the skies do clear, the locals have a curious way to react to that circumstance.  They say to one another, “Did you see it?  The mountains are out today.”  Because indeed from Whidbey Island there are several glorious mountain peaks that can be seen but, of course, most days they are not visible due to low-hanging clouds, mist, fog, and rain.  But when the mountains are out, people pull their cars over to the side of the road to take a gander.  They stop what they are doing to step outside and take in the mountains for that brief time they are visible before soon enough disappearing again for a time.

They knew the mountains were always there.  It’s just you could not always see them.  Johnson said that is sort of like what we know of the chorus of divine praise before the throne of God.  It’s always there but we catch glimpses of it only now and again, as John of Patmos did when God blew those clouds away to allow him to glimpses the worship that always surrounds us but that we typically don’t see.  But it’s there.  And in Eastertide as in all times it is our privilege to make a little something of that heavenly worship visible in our own lives and in the worship services we hold in our congregations.  In this life, C.S. Lewis famously observed, we are but tuning up our instruments for the full symphony of praise in heaven.  But even in the tuning up, there is glory to be seen and praise to be uttered for all our God in Christ is worth.