Читать книгу The Psalms - Herbert O'Driscoll - Страница 36

Psalm 29

The Lord shall give strength to his people;

the Lord shall give his people the blessing of peace.

after the Falklands War, the English prime minister requested a service of worship to give thanks for the victory. In his homily the then Archbishop of Canterbury did not so much celebrate a victory as ask forgiveness for the agony of war. In doing so he provoked much anger.

However, if a victory psalm had been chosen for that service, it could have been this one. “Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength … The voice of the Lord is a powerful voice … the Lord sits enthroned as king for evermore.”

This song celebrates the fact that the God of the singers is not only more powerful than the gods of other nations, but is the ruler of all creation. “The Lord is upon the mighty waters … breaks the cedars of Lebanon … makes Lebanon skip … splits the flames of fire … shakes the wilderness … strips the forests bare.” Meanwhile, “in the temple of the Lord all are crying, ‘Glory!’” while claiming to be “his people.”

When we sing this psalm in our own time, we have difficulty assenting to these meanings. We live in a different age and share a different world. We are no longer prepared to say, “Ascribe to the Lord, you gods,” as we consider the other great faith traditions of the planet. Ironically, we can concur with the images describing the relationship of God to the natural environment, acknowledging readily that we must bow before a power above our own in these matters.

But the image of the temple where “all are crying, ‘Glory!’” is not possible for us in an increasingly secular and fragmented society This reality makes it increasingly difficult for us to think of ourselves as one people, let alone the people of one God. We may claim hopefully to be one people among many, but this is not the same as the psalmist’s idea of one people.

For us, the psalm can be a song giving glory to God. We do not see this deity as the adversary of other visions of God, but as the ultimate reality beyond all such visions. We acknowledge the rule of God over creation, of which we are a part, and for which we have been given responsibility. We worship this God, knowing that others worship in other ways.

Our prayer is that this planet may become the temple of God in which humanity cries “Glory,” and that this same humanity may grow to see itself as a single people under God, not merely seeking, but finding, “the blessing of peace.”

Consider that all nature, including the earth, is the temple of God, and that all living things, including yourself, are temples of God. Pray that all people may grow to perceive the divine unity in all things, and learn to reverence creation and each other.