Psalm 113 Commentary

Many of us have been taught that sometimes it is helpful to read passages from the perspective of those who find themselves on the underside of history.  This may be especially true of famous pieces of writing that we are perhaps too accustomed to reading from the vantage point of those who tend to come out on the winning side of life as often as not.  If we are people who possess various privileges as granted to us by whatever society we inhabit, then we need to discipline ourselves to remember that ours is not the only perspective and so is not the only lens through which to read books and other forms of writing.

Psalm 113 may be a good passage with which to be mindful about all this.  This is not to take anything away from the lyric nature of this psalm.  This is an upbeat poem if ever there were one.  And it is one of many psalms that opens and closes with that Hebrew praise imperative Hallelu Yah.  In between those hallelujahs is a consistent call to give Israel’s God proper and due worship.  Everywhere and at all times we are to praise this God.  From the rising of the sun to its setting and all across the span of God’s good creation we praise God.

And we praise God for his majesty as he sits high and exalted over all things.  But then as we have noted many times before in Psalm commentaries here on the CEP website, it is not the shining might of God that causes the psalmist the most awe and wonder.  Rather it is the fact that this huge and glorious God regularly stoops low to notice us in our little lives.  We matter to this God.   God notices the poor and reverses their fortunes.  God notices the woman struggling with infertility and sees to it that she ends up the happy mother of a whole houseful of children.  This for the psalmist elicits a profound and deep praise.

But it is also just here where we need to pause for a moment and consider reading this from a different perspective.  Because to state the merely obvious, this does not happen all the time or maybe not even all that often.  Or so it seems.  Plenty of downtrodden and impoverished people live in cycles of poverty without end.  They do not see their fortunes reversed and they surely do not very often get elevated to a place of honor among the political and societal elite, rubbing shoulders with the powerful at banquets and such.  And although those struggling with infertility sometimes manage to have children without medical intervention and although others conceive through things like IVF, not every couple that longs for children gets them.  Many of us pastors have known women who do not attend church on Mother’s Day.  It’s just too painful.

In short, there are lots of people in this world—and some of them occupy the pews and seats of church sanctuaries—who hear the closing words of Psalm 113 but are by no means moved to shout out a full-throated “Hallelujah” to God.  Instead, sentiments about the poor becoming rich and the infertile becoming parents might bring bitter tears to people’s eyes.

We have noted before that sunny-side-up songs like Psalm 113 are more than counterbalanced by those roughly 50 psalms that are in the modality of Lament.  And what gets lamented as much as anything is this: what Psalm 113 proclaims at the end of the song just does not pan out for altogether too many of us and if it ever does happen to any degree, it usually seems like it took far too long for God to act.  So there is nuance on these matters even within the Hebrew Psalter.

Then what is the preacher to do when dealing with a psalm like this one?  Well, certainly it is clear we cannot just make the promises of Psalm 113 a sure thing and pretend we don’t know there are people sitting in front of us preachers whose lives narrate a different story.  That seems too obvious to point out, although we have all heard sermons where a smiling preacher celebrates a miracle that one family in the congregation got while seemingly forgetting that another family who had faced the same crisis and prayed the same prayers did not receive such a miracle.  The miracle healing of a child did not happen or they did not get whatever else it was they had prayed for.

At the same time, we may find ourselves on thin theological and exegetical ice with some parishioners if we dismiss the end of Psalm 113 as magical thinking or as an unrealistic portrait borne of an overzealous burst of pious optimism.  Instead we accept the end of Psalm 113 and many similar statements in other psalms as God’s dearest wish for all of us and thus as the thing that will ultimately come true even if for the here and now the picture sketched in this psalm does not capture everyone’s lot in life.  Our God does see us in our pain, he does enter our pain through Christ and by his Holy Spirit, and he cares deeply about our pain and disappointments even if for whatever the reasons God does not for now alleviate every one of them or reverse or undo every sad circumstance.  And the reasons for that are myriad no doubt and likely well beyond the ken of mortals who are for now stuck with very finite minds and imaginations.

So yes, let us all praise the Lord for his majesty.  Let us praise the Lord for his might.  Let us praise the Lord for stooping low, for condescending to us in our weakness and smallness to take tender, loving note of each one of us.  And yes let us praise the Lord when he does bring healings and miracles and reversals of fortune even as we also praise him for one day undoing every one of life’s injustices and righting every wrong.  As Psalm 113 begins and ends, praise the Lord!

Illustration Idea

In a student sermon that I read quite recently, I encountered (not for the first time) the rather famous story about George Mueller, a man who ran many orphanages in Bristol, England, once upon a time.  One morning 300 orphans gathered for breakfast but on that day there was no food in the kitchen to give them.  So Mueller prayed to God for food and then along with the expectant children, he waited.  A knock came on the door from a baker who claimed he had not been able to sleep the night prior and so baked a lot of bread on the feeling these orphans might need it that day.  Next a man who delivered milk knocked on the door to say his cart had broken down and it could not be repaired in time enough to prevent the milk from spoiling and so the children got that milk.

As I said, the recent student sermon that included this story was not the first time I read a sermon that used this tale.  It may well be a true story—though like anything you can find contrary opinions on the internet—but it is used as a testament to the power of prayer.  Problem is that each time a student includes this story, I have to remind them—unless they already had thought of this to begin with—to include the caveat that prayer does not always work with such swiftness and success, though sometimes it does.

It reminds me of an episode of the classic TV series M*A*S*H in which the MASH unit’s priest, Father Mulcahy, has been complaining about not feeling as useful as the doctors and nurses and corpsmen who could actually do useful things for the wounded soldiers whereas all he could do was pray.  Then one day as a soldier on an operating table was going down the tubes, the Father prayed over him and suddenly the soldier came around and began to get well.  “You sure you’re not useful?” one of the doctors asked the priest.  “It’s not supposed to work that way, you know” was the Father’s reply!

Well, it kind of is supposed to work that way but the fact is that it doesn’t happen very often such that when it does, it typically takes us by surprise.  Still, as Psalm 113 reminds us, when we pray, we pray to a God who desires only good for us and in that thought there is more than a little comfort.