Psalm 90:1-8, (9-11), 12 Commentary

Psalm 90 is very much a unified psalm and so despite the Lectionary’s chopping it up and stopping short of the last 5 verses, one may as well preach on the whole poem.  Psalm 90 is one of several psalms that bears a striking resemblance to the primary themes found in the Book of Ecclesiastes.  The brevity of life, the seeming futility of human endeavor, the need to get a heart of wisdom, and finally (and despite everything else) there is a plea to God to make something out of the work we manage to do during our too-brief sojourn in this world.  That all sounds consonant with what you hear from The Preacher in Ecclesiastes.  

We have here a curious set of at times almost contradictory stances (which also reminds one of Ecclesiastes).  On the one hand is the lovely opening of the psalm with its assurance that God has been our dwelling place throughout all generations.  God is with us.  God is our home even if we endure seasons of not having a home to call our own.  On the other hand, this same God is depicted as having anger over our sins (the list of which God is said to set before us like some grim accounting of our misdeeds) and this divine anger seems to be enough to lay us out flat.

On the one hand we are told that our years pass by so quickly that we can but bemoan their passing and that even at their best, our years add up to only toil and sorrow.  On the other hand, there is the petition for God to make us glad, to find ways to help us sing with joy.  It’s all kind of jumbled together in Psalm 90 until you start to get the feeling that what we have here is a kind of cameo of how life goes and how we all feel from time to time.  

We can likely relate to this.  On our best days we feel good about the work God has given us to do and for the gifts God has provided for us to do the work.  On our less-good days we look around us in this broken world and wonder if we’ve ever made anything like a lasting difference for anyone or on any front.  

It reminds me of a scene from the movie Clear and Present Danger.  The CIA chief Admiral Greer (played by James Earl Jones) is dying of pancreatic cancer when he is shown some photographic evidence by his colleague Jack Ryan (Harrison Ford) that some people working for the President of the United States were engaging in highly illegal activities.  This prompts Greer to say, “You know what you think about when you’re lying here?  That you’re going to die but it’s all right.  You lived a long time.  You had a family who loved you.  You had a job that you thought made a difference, that you thought was honorable.  And then you see this . . .”  And the implication is clear: was it all worthwhile after all?  Or did you in fact not make a difference in the end, as nefarious people keep getting away with it?

Human life goes like that and we have all felt the ups and downs, the highs and the lows reflected in Psalm 90.  God is present, God is faithful, God has been our dwelling place.  Jesus is faithful to the promise “Surely, I am with you, always.”  And so we lived our lives and some of us were privileged to have raised our children and we did the work to which we felt we had been called and on the best of days, it’s enough.  But then things happen.  And we wonder what it was all about.  

Some of us know pastors—and some of us are these pastors—who thought they had established a meaningful ministry in a congregation, who thought their people loved them as much as they loved the sheep of that particular flock.  And then something like COVID came along and it was all shattered.  Pastors who took the pandemic seriously were mocked by those convinced it was a hoax.  People chose a favorite politician over their own spiritual leader and not a few such faithful pastors soon found themselves out of work.  One pastor I know had to conclude what had been 18 years of faithful ministry on as sour and bitter a note as is imaginable.  You get the sense he’ll never fully recover from this sorrow.  What was it all for?  All those sermons on love and grace and then . . . 

What else can we do in such a moment but turn to God and cry for help, for succor, for reassurance?  What else can we do but turn it all over to God and ask God to somehow (and despite all the brokenness all around us) establish the work of our hands?  There are moments when the whole of human life seems futile and scandalously short.  So then we join the psalmist in crying to God to show us some favor, to somehow make us glad again, to somehow burst some joy back into our hurting hearts.  

Psalm 90 is the first psalm in Book Four within the Hebrew Psalter.  It follows the closing two psalms of Book Three, both of which were somewhat dark.  Psalm 88 is the only Psalm of Lament never to turn a corner back to the light (or even to suggest such a turn will come).  “Darkness is my best friend” is the last line of the 88th psalm.  Psalm 89 begins a bit more brightly but in the end is also a long cry to God to return to a psalmist who overall feels abandoned by God.

The fourth book in the Psalter will be a bit more upbeat.  It will include in Psalms 91-98 many poems that call on people to sing to the Lord new songs.  It will include the well-known 100th psalm as well as the celebrative Psalms 103 and 104.  But before we get to that, Psalm 90 is a kind of hinge from the darker musings of the end of Book Three and the brighter psalms of praise and thanksgiving to come in Book Four.  As such, Psalm 90 points toward better things while still acknowledging that we all have periods in our lives when we are in a spiritual and emotional trough.  

For believers, both things can be true: utter dependence on the God who is our forever home and utter honesty that in this world and during our too-short lives, sometimes things just don’t seem to be adding up in any sensible way.  The God who is our dwelling place is with us in all those varying times.  And so no matter where a given person may be at any given moment, the Good News is God is there and God understands.

Illustration Idea

The superscriptions on the psalms need—so I have been taught—to be held somewhat lightly by us readers.  Claims as to who wrote a given psalm (as well as here and there claims as to the historical event that gave rise to a given psalm) are not considered part of the canonical text.  They were added later and may reflect some longstanding traditions (like the idea that David wrote a lot of the psalms) or even they may reflect some editor’s best guess as to what Bible story might fit a given psalm (so claiming, for instance, that Psalm 51 was David’s response to being convicted of his sin with Bathsheba and Uriah).  But we cannot know for sure and we certainly know the superscriptions were tacked on much later than the writing of any psalm.

Psalm 90 is attributed to Moses and it is the only one of the 150 psalms that is so designated.  If this was added later and represents someone’s guess that this poem could have come from Moses, you could sense why.  Moses was the leader of God’s people through 40 years of wilderness wandering.  They were effectively homeless that whole time.  Yet Psalm 90 begins with the assurance that God has been our dwelling place throughout all generations.  And that would include the homeless generation of the wilderness time.  And in that wilderness there were ups and downs as reflected in this song.  There were times when God’s anger came to a rebellious people but also moments when God relented, sending them manna and water and quail and above all forgiveness.  That all sounds like Psalm 90 too.

Moses may not have written Psalm 90.  But if the superscription suggests that he certainly could have written this, we can understand why!