Today we are immersed in singing and thinking about Psalm 148. This is clearly a psalm of praise. It is, as they say, positive and upbeat. It admonishes everyone and everything to praise the Lord - angels, sun and moon, heavens and waters above the heavens, sea monsters, fire and hail, snow and frost and stormy wind, mountains and hills, fruit trees and cedars, wild animals, cattle, creeping things and flying birds, kings and princes and rulers, men and women, old and young - all are to praise the Lord for the glory of creation and for his people Israel.
This is, for us, truly a song of spring-time - like the weather we had last week - when the whole earth seems glorious and beautiful, when even the air is our friend, when the trees and flowers blossom, the sky is cloudless, the sun is bright, and all is well. It captures a spirit of rapture, of joyous praise, that even the most curmudgeonly of us feel on certain days in certain seasons, and which some people, especially young ones, seem to feel more often. The mood it expresses is one that some of us know in passing. others in more constancy. For some of us it is expresses a rare moment of praise, for others a more abiding wonder. But it is a rare and sad person who has never felt the overwhelming joy that it proclaims. Certainly, as one who is healing from a life-threatening illness, I hear the joy of recovery and confidence in the goodness of God, echoing throughout these words.
And yet - and yet: certain events of the last year - the tsunami in south Asia, the earthquakes in Pakistan, the flood in New Orleans, the tornadoes in Tennessee - mock the confident words of the psalm, which assert that God established the of the waters, and fixed their bounds which can not be passed. (v. 6) All is not always joyful. or well-ordered in nature, it seems. The natural disasters we have seen this year - not to mention the human disasters of war and poverty - may lead us to conclude that God is either uncaring, or not powerful enough to prevent catastrophe. So it seems to many thoughtful people. The mood of praise and joy in this psalm is to them an example either of wishful thinking or of a lack of attention to the world.
When we, in a mood of joy that assures us that God is in his heaven and all is right with the world, are confronted with those enormous tragedies that have occurred, we may struggle briefly to reconcile our faith in God's goodness with the suffering and death that characterize natural life. We may say, for example, that human beings are responsible for the suffering. Thus, New Orleans was flooded and many people lost life and loved ones, we might say, not because of the hurricane, but because of the errors of engineers who built the faulty levees, or of disaster workers who were not adequately prepared, or because of greed and poverty. And in regard to the disasters in Asia, one could say that the tsunami killed so many because people lived too close to the sea, or built houses in unsafe, earthquake zones. Sometimes people struggle to preserve a pristine picture of nature by blaming disaster on human beings. And of course, sometimes that is right. I do not believe, for example, that God had anything to do with the death of Americans on 9/ll nor the deaths of thousands of Iraqis during the American invasion. We can not blame God for those things; human beings are clearly responsible. But tsunamis? It's hard to fault people for being on the beach.
So what are we to conclude? Are we to say that psalms like this one, full of pure praise to God, exhorting all of nature to praise God, are severely flawed? Are we to say that nature is in fact red in tooth and claw, and that those who would see in it only harmony and beauty are willfully blind? That is one response, but I do not believe it is the most adequate and appropriate one. Rather, I would say that this psalm is to be treasured as the expression of a mood, a perception, and a faith. Rare days in June (or even March and April) when the sun warms the earth, bringing flowers out of the ground, bears out of hibernation, birds to nest-building and Dartmouth students out onto the green - those perfect joyful days are not a picture of reality as we in fact always experience it; they are rather a glimpse of a reality that can be. They are clues to redemption. We do not see, we can not know, how the tragedies of life, which are undeniably many, can ever be redeemed. The war in Iraq or in Darfur, the drought in Kenya, the now undeniable fact of global warming, as well as the tsunami and earthquakes and Katrina are real and disturbing and, for many, devastating. Our faith teaches us to hope, and to believe, that these events, in all their destruction, can somehow be redeemed in the mystery of God's purposes.
We are in the midst of an early spring, which brings joy to the hearts of northern new Englanders. That joy is a clue to the nature of reality, just as are the tears of suffering. In Lent, as we approach Holy Week, we think of the suffering of Christ, which is real. Jesus did not smile all the way through the via dolorosa - even though, as we now know, the result of his suffering and death was not that suffering and death defeated him, but rather that he defeated them. Psalm 148 is a clue - a premonition, and admonition concerning the triumph of hope and goodness. The exhortation to praise sometimes comes hard to us; sometimes it comes more easily. The psalm ends by reminding people that the hope of redemption and joy - the reason for praise - is anchored in the history of the people Israel, who were redeemed from slavery and brought into freedom. We Christians believe that the history of Israel includes the death and resurrection of Jesus - the event which allows us to be hopeful people, no matter what.
More than that we do not know, and perhaps we can not know, and perhaps we do not need to know. Amen.
Copyright © 2006 Richard R. Crocker
