For the director of music. To the tune of “A Dove on Distant Oaks.” Of David. A miktam. When the Philistines had seized him in Gath. Psalm 56:1
We don’t often read these superscriptions found at the beginning of so many psalms. In my youth, I always assumed they were added by the editors of English Bibles to give greater context to the psalms. It was an eye-opening experience, therefore, after learning a little Hebrew, to find in my Hebrew Bible that these words were actually part of the Hebrew text. By not skipping over these psalm “introductions,” we not only learn more about the context of these psalms, but we also learn a larger lesson about prayer—it’s not primarily self-focused, but community-focused. Don’t get me wrong, our individual prayer lives are of immeasurable importance. One powerful proof of that is the very personal way that David prays in this psalm and many others. And yet, his prayer, here, is pointedly written for use in community worship. We see this, clearly, in the instruction that introduces the psalm. I can’t say that I am familiar with the tune, “A Dove on the Distant Oaks,” as lovely as it sounds, but I am familiar with the idea of prayers set to tunes which are meant to be sung in community by the people of God. Isn’t this what the church has been doing every Sunday all over the globe for nearly 2,000 years? In spite of the fact that I grew up “going” to church, I don’t think I really grasped the community nature of prayer and praise in my youth. My natural tendency was to view the expression of my faith in worship as a primarily individualistic pursuit—a perspective that many church-goers have absorbed from our culture’s very hyper-individualistic paradigm. Certainly, I had moments when I was able to see that prayer is not primarily individually focused. The summer before my junior year in high school I was exposed to a student-led prayer movement called “prayer warriors” at Christian camp. So impacted was I by the power of praying together that I launched, together with two friends, a weekly “prayer warrior” meeting at my public high school. So sweet were these times together that this group quickly swelled to 20-25 kids meeting at 6am every Tuesday to pray. And yet, as significant as this experience was, I still strongly held to the primacy of my individual prayer life over and above prayer together. It’s amazing how entrenched our deeply held beliefs and unquestioned assumptions can be. However, time is a tremendous teacher. And it has been over a long period of time that I have begun to see that, in Biblical Christianity, the locus of faith is not my personal experiences, but the Word of God as it is expounded among the people of God by the power of the Spirit of God for the purpose of the glory of God. In other words, it’s not first and foremost about me. It’s about the work God is doing in and through His people for His glory! This is a message powerfully proclaimed in the psalms. The psalms are often referred to as the Christian’s hymnbook. But hymnbooks are not first and foremost meant for my individual spiritual consumption. They are written and meant to be used among the people of God. Well-known pastor and author Eugene Peterson provides great insight into this idea in his book, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer. He contrasts a self-focused version of faith with a more Biblical version in a section titled, “The Unselfing of Prayer”: But when we take our place in a worshiping congregation we are not in charge. Someone else has built the place of prayer; someone else has established the time for prayer; someone else tells us to begin to pray. All of this takes place in a context in which the word of God is primary: God’s word audible in scripture and sermon, God’s word visible in baptism and eucharist. This is the center in which we learn to pray. We do not, of course, remain in this center: lines of praying radiate and lead us outwards. From this center we go to our closets or the mountains, into the streets and the markets, and continue our praying. But it is essential to understand that the prayer goes from the center outwards; if we suppose that it proceeds inwards from the convergence of praying individuals we are at cross-purposes with the praying experience of Israel and the church. The center of spiritual life, Biblically speaking, is not me and my experience of God, but Christ and His church. Even if I never recognized it in the imperfect church I grew up in, it was really in that place, among those believers, that the seed of faith was sown and took root in my own life. And even to this day, it continues to be the local expression of His church, as imperfect as it may be, and as imperfect as I might be in it, which is ground zero for my continued spiritual growth. Thank you, Jesus, for the gift of praying in community! Thank you for the gift of your church!
0 Comments
|
Dan GannonDan has ministered at Renton Bible Church, with his wife Debbie, since 2003. Archives
June 2022
Categories |