Psalm 138 Commentary

The 138^th psalm covers a lot of ground.  It also reflects both high aspirations and hopes and also notes of utter realism from the hardscrabble reality of life in a broken world.  On the one hand we encounter here the opening sentiments of full-throated, full-hearted praise of Israel’s wonderful and faithful and gracious God.  God is praised for not just keeping covenantal promises but for keeping them over and above what might be expected and this only adds to the proper renown of God.

The psalmist is so exuberant and confident that he is certain all the kings of the earth need to come around, recognize the life-giving decrees of God, and then join Israel’s choir in praising the one true God of the cosmos.  We also read here something that pops up all over in the Hebrew Psalter and that my sermon commentaries here on CEP have often noted; namely, that the psalmists praise God not only for his almighty power and majestic grandeur but for the fact that despite how big God is, God is never too big to notice us in all our littleness.  God does take loving and tender note of the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and all kinds of just ordinary folks.  The psalms seem often to be saying that while it’s just fine to be gob-smacked by God’s glory, it is also important to praise God for how personal God can be in caring for us in the ordinary run of our days.

But then the psalm concludes with a note of utter realism: despite all the high-flying rhetoric of praise and adoration that fills up much of this psalm, the psalmist still has to be honest enough to admit that he walks through many troubles in his life.  He’s got real foes and enemies who are out to get him.  That is not a pleasant thing to acknowledge but it is honest.  Yet even so the poet here is sure God will defend him, vindicate him.  There seems to be little doubt in his mind about that.  But perhaps just to be sure, the psalm concludes with the only actual petition in Psalm 138: a plea for God not to abandon the work of his hands and in this case the “work” in question is the psalmist himself!  Others can be included in that too, of course, but it seems pretty likely the poet is referring mostly to himself in this case.

Again, the psalm covers a lot of ground.  But because it ends on that note of realism we just observed, the whole song is retrospectively changed from something that could come across as too sunny and confident by half into something that can fit anyone’s actual lived experience.  A person of faith does not need to be trouble-free and leading what appears to be a charmed existence to express the kind of exuberant praise we find in most of this psalm.  You can be that confident in God AND admit that you need such confidence precisely because life is not always a picnic.

Scholars have long noted that this is part of the genius of the Hebrew Psalter.  First, most of the psalms are general enough that we can adapt them to our own situations.  If the psalms got super specific about who the psalmist’s “enemies” were or in describing the “trouble” that the psalmist of Psalm 138 mentions, then that greater specificity could become a hindrance to our being able to see ourselves reflected in the psalm.  “Well, that’s not quite my situation” we might end up thinking and in so doing, the psalm would stay at arm’s length from us.  Thus the more general nature of most of the psalms makes them evergreen across the ages and the myriad of different circumstances in which something like Psalm 138 has been read and applied.

Second, although there are some psalms (that I have commented on in the past) that really do come across as so sunny as to feel a touch forced, most of the songs in the Hebrew Psalter sound those notes of realism as well.  And even the sunny-side-up psalms are more than nuanced by the fact that fully one-third of the Psalter are Lament Psalms (either full-blown laments from beginning to end or at least psalms that include sentiments of lament).   As the Prayer Book for Jews and Christians, then, we know that there is virtually no real-life situation that is not reflected at some point in the Psalms.  Some years back the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship helped to produce a large hymnal titled “Psalms for All Seasons.”  That title gets it exactly right: for every season of life, there are psalms that fit, psalms that speak into the situation, psalms that express praise where needed, lament where needed, confession of sin where needed, thanksgiving where needed, cries of desperation where needed.

Preaching on Psalm 138, then, can become a gateway for us preachers to convey all this to our congregations.  Globally just now there is a lot of trouble.  There are terribly upsetting wars that go on and on in Europe and the Middle East.  Children are dying daily.  There are tragic storms whose floodwaters sweep away little girls from a Christian summer camp.  There are political arguments that divide families and congregations.  People in the pews need to know now more than ever that God sees all this.  Nothing and no one is too small to escape God’s loving gaze.  Psalm 138 assures us of this as well.

If we preach hope but do so in ways that seem to block from sight the features of daily life that seem hellbent on challenging if not destroying our hope, then such proclaimed hope comes off as artificial.  But if we proclaim hope that is nestled in the thorns and thickets of life on a Monday morning or a Wednesday afternoon, then we give people a hope that can endure.  That becomes a hope they can carry home with them and not have to check at the church door in that it cannot survive the harshness of life beyond the stained glass of a church sanctuary.

That is the gift something like Psalm 138 gives to the people who follow the God who sees us every day.

Illustration Idea

At one point in the movie The Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne suggests to his good friend Otis “Red” Redding that he needs to have hope.  Red disagrees saying that to have hope in that gray place that just was Shawshank Prison was a dangerous thing—having hope there could drive a man insane.  But Andy points out that it is precisely in such a cruel place of suffering that hope is needed the most.  Red is clearly not convinced.

Yet at the end of the movie after Andy had escaped Shawshank and landed in Mexico and after Red is at long last paroled, Red decides to violate his parole and join Andy in Mexico.  As we watch Red riding on a Trailways bus to the border, his voiceover on the film says “I hope I can make it across the border.  I hope to see my friend and shake his hand.  I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.  I hope.”