Lectionary Reflection for Pentecost A on Psalm 104:24–34, 35b

PROBLEMATIC PRAISE

There is a little independent church on a busy road near to where I live. Every time I drive past, I reenter my ongoing debate with the large billboard that proclaims to all passersby, “When praises go up, blessings come down! Praise your way out!”. As a new Christian in my teens, I spent weeks trying to release the power of praise in my life after reading a book that made the act of praising God sound like the ultimate fix for every problem I could ever face. When it didn’t seem to make any difference, I blamed my lack of faith and enthusiasm and tried even harder to convince God that my praise was heartfelt and sincere. It took longer than it should have for me to recognise the soul-sapping delusion of this kind of transactional faith.

I cannot count how many sermons I have heard about how King Jehoshaphat won a great victory over his enemies by sending praise-singing musicians into the battle ahead of the army (2 Chron. 20:5–30). The message is always the same: when we face trials and struggles, all we need to do is praise God and God will swoop in and save us. But the Bible doesn’t actually teach this. I’m not saying that it’s bad to express praise in troubled times. I’m simply saying praise is not a coin we drop into a divine slot machine hoping to win a jackpot. It is not a transaction; it is a natural response when we encounter awe, beauty, and transcendence. As Anne Lamott writes, ”’Wow’ is about having one’s mind blown by the mesmerizing or the miraculous: the veins in a leaf, birdsong, volcanoes”.^¹ Primarily, praise is not forced. It is drawn out of us spontaneously in moments of wonder. And when it is embraced as an intentional, habitual sacred practice, the purpose is not to flatter God into doing our bidding. It is to remind ourselves of the divine beauty, truth, and goodness, and to synchronise our own values, priorities, and habits with their sacred rhythm.

But what happens when the only appropriate response to the world is lament? What happens when God seems absent or fails to live up to all the biblical promises we are told to claim? In a conversation about prayer, a colleague in ministry once said, “The problem is that God is not trustworthy.” If we are honest about the state of our world and the impact some dominant versions of Christianity have had on global peace and justice, we cannot help but conclude that praise of God is complicated. If praise is not at least a little problematic for us in times like these, we’re not paying attention. And unfortunately, the Psalms, which are meant to inspire our praises, often contribute to the problem.

A PROBLEMATIC PSALM

The Lectionary psalm for Pentecost Sunday (Ps. 104:24-34, 35b) is a great example of a hymn of praise that raises awkward questions. As a pair, Psalms 103 and 104 celebrate God’s works of salvation and creation. They both start and end with the motivational instruction to the self to “Bless the LORD, O my soul”.² But while many commentators view this psalm in an almost completely positive light, some of the reasons this psalm celebrates God are the very reasons many people today reject the notion of God altogether. Things that were applauded in ancient Israel may not be viewed so positively now. As Kathleen Norris puts it:

…how in the world can we read, let alone pray, these angry and often violent poems from an ancient warrior culture? At a glance they seem overwhelmingly patriarchal, ill-tempered, moralistic, vengeful, and often seem to reflect precisely what is wrong with our world”.³

It’s not that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is distant, judgmental, and violent, while the New Testament God is gracious and loving. As Marcus Borg rightly states, this stereotype is simply wrong.⁴ But human beings cannot help but make God in our image, at least to some extent, and so we all struggle with aspects of our faith in God that are distorted, partisan, and theologically indefensible.

In Psalm 104, there is much to inspire sincere and joyous praise. There are echoes of the creation account in Genesis 1 in which all of God’s creative works are very good. The psalmist describes God as creating a home for all creatures, beginning with God’s Self, and moving to the waters, the birds and animals, and the creatures of the sea.⁵ According to the writer, all the homes God creates are secure and filled with abundance. All of creation is peacefully and joyfully interdependent, and God’s sovereign will guides and sustains it all.⁶ Even Leviathan, the ancient symbol of chaos and opposition to God’s order, is viewed not as an enemy but God’s “pet dragon” (104:26 MSG) playing in the ocean.⁷ It’s a wonderful vision of a perfect God-controlled world of peace and prosperity for all.

But hidden in this utopian picture are some disturbing images that challenge all but the most fundamental of believers. To begin with, the psalmist’s description of the world is false. Creation is not always the joyful, abundant, peaceful place that the psalm depicts it to be. Droughts leave God’s creatures hungry. Floods destroy the homes (habitats) that God created. And included in the food God gives to some creatures are other creatures. Consider the young lions who “roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.” (21). What are we to make of God who creates a world of predators and prey?

Then there is God’s role in the lives of God’s creatures. After speaking about how all of God’s creatures are “filled with good things” (v28), the psalm then speaks of what happens when God hides God’s face and takes away the breath of these same creatures—they die. And when God sends God’s Spirit, they live (vss. 29-30). In this psalm, death and life are completely in God’s hands and happen by God’s whim. While many believers still espouse this view of God, more and more of us are rejecting this idea of God, because such a cruel and unfeeling God would be unworthy of our praise.

And finally, there is the problem of verse 35a, which is left out of the Lectionary and which celebrates “sinners” being “consumed from the earth” and “the wicked” becoming no more. As William Brown puts it, “The psalm’s cosmic purview, which includes even the monstrous Leviathan within the orbit of God’s providential care, has no room for the wicked”.⁸

So how do we engage meaningfully with a psalm like this without writing it off, crossing our fingers, or going through the motions without conviction? What are we to do with a God who “behaves in the psalms in ways he is not allowed to behave in systematic theology”?⁹ And why would the Lectionary connect a psalm like this with Pentecost Sunday—the day when we celebrate God’s creation of a new, Spirit-empowered community based on the values and priorities of hospitality, grace, diversity, equality, peace, serving, and love?