Dear Saints,

In our previous Magazine, questions were raised like: “Is there more to being a Christian than just living individual nice lives. Being nice people, making everybody feel nice about themselves, not taking everything too seriously? Do we leave all decisions made that impact the majority of people in the world to a few elite men and maybe a woman or two in between? Do you sometimes struggle with questions like this, or have you given up trying to understand?”

For our Lenten Course/Bible Study, we are engaging these questions by looking at the Psalms. We have engaged with the psalms during Advent, letting a more formal English translation be read alongside a more contemporary translation and interpretation in the Message Bible, as presented by Eugene Peterson, who is both an Old Testament Scholar and Pastor. Now, during Lent, we are following Jesus’ passion through the eyes of Matthew and the other Gospel writers, and scripture witnesses to the fact that Jesus recited Psalm 22 when he was hanging on the Cross.

As we dig into the Psalms, we are engaging the work of the Old Testament Scholar Walter Brueggemann, who has developed a very helpful way of categorising the Psalms and bringing them into our personal lives and the lives of our communities. He suggests that we regularly find ourselves in one of three places:

1. a place of orientation, in which everything makes sense in our lives;

2. a place of disorientation, in which we feel we have sunk into the pit; and

3. a place of new orientation, in which we realise that God has lifted us out of the pit and we are in a new place full of gratitude and awareness about our lives and our God.

Accordingly, the psalms generally match those places, so he identifies psalms of orientation, disorientation, and new orientation.

Psalms of Orientation: Psalms 8, 24, 33, 104, 133 and 145 are great examples of this type of psalm. They are the psalms we are most comfortable with. They are psalms of gratitude for God’s ordering of life. These psalms reflect life the way it is expected to be: full of blessing for the saints. These are psalms in which the Torah is celebrated, and the God of creation is praised.

Psalms of Disorientation: Psalms 13, 35, 74, 86, 95, and 137 are great examples of this type of psalm. These psalms are the reaction of the faithful to God when the world they knew was broken. These are psalms of lament that move and deepen the faith of the worshiper. They reflect times of great despair. There is a sense of urgency to them. They reflect the pain of people communicating with their God in world-shattering circumstances. The content and context of these circumstances are painful, and the words reflect that.

Psalms of New Orientation, of which Psalms 29, 42, 47, 93, 97, 98, 99, 114, 148 and 150 are good examples. These are deeper versions of the orientation psalms. Disorientation is now past, and the singe praises God for salvation. This new orientation includes the victory hymns of Yahweh, of which Miriam’s song in Exodus 15, although not part of the book of Psalms, is a great example.

Brueggemann suggests that recognising this pattern of organisation can help us identify psalms that fit our personal lives and moments in the life of our communities. He further points out that our collective use of the psalms is not just moments of communication with God, but that this communication has a generative function, whereby transformation takes place in the here and now. We are people of the Word, and the Word becomes flesh.

The publication we are engaging with is “Spirituality of the Psalms” by Walter Brueggemann. I suggest you read this booklet during Lent and listen to the Brueggemann lectures on this topic, which can be found on YouTube, for which this is the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpwWULfDWEY
You can also join our Lenten Course/Bible Study on Saturdays during Lent at 10:00 in the Hut or online on Mondays at 19:00 via Zoom.

The psalms won’t, even with Brueggemann’s help, answer all our questions. But they can help us to grow in Christ, whose passion we remember during Lent and whose resurrection at Easter promises renewed life through us, for us, for our communities and for the world we live in.

May you have a holy and blessed Lent.

Yours in Christ as always,

Revd Jacque