Psalms

Prayer begins with the inhale.  Before we are able to utter anything with our lips we must first draw through them the air that fills us, enabling not only our speech but also our life.  And we must remember that humanity did not take the first breath but that it was given to us.  God’s exhale became humanity’s first inhale, filling us not only with life, but the ability to participate in the creative power of breathing.  For it was God’s breath that uttered the world into existence, and God’s breath that filled humanity with life.

And so before we gather words to give to our God, we must first realize that this activity of prayer is itself a gift from God.  It is the very breath that God breathed into humanity that we in turn direct back to God.  Taking in and breathing out this breath of God is no trifling matter. “This is not an enterprise to be entered into lightly,” Eugene Peterson notes. “When we pray we are using words that bring us into proximity with words that break cedars, shake the wilderness, make the oaks whirl, and strip forests bare (Ps. 29:5-9).”

Psalms are sung prayers. They can express the broken heart of a believer and the broken spirit of whole communities. They can launch into soaring anthems that enjoin choirs and orchestras to the heights of ecstasy and joy, or express the simple gratitude of a trusting soul toward God. Some can be sweetly hummed in the morning and lightly whispered before going to bed. Others rumble like the blues or rage like a rap. Love, hope, praise, awe, disillusionment, loss, sin, sickness and exile--the whole range of human experience has been offered to God in these prayer/songs throughout the millennia by Israel and the Church.

The pastor welcomes us, calls us to worship and prays a blessing over our work ahead. Everything is set except the table. As we leaf through our hymnals for the first song, the bread and cup are conspicuously absent.

The rousing strains of the opening hymn draw our attention to the notes and words on the page before us, but out of the corner of our eye we catch a glimpse of two people with the missing elements. As we follow their course to the front of the church they pause, raise the elements and place them on the table. The two volunteers find a seat as we try to find our place on the page. Verse two ends with some of us attempting to regain our composure while others beam like insiders of a private joke. Fortunately the service continues, and the distraction lasts only a moment.

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.