Preparing for worship with Psalm 54

Psalm 54 (TNIV) -

1 Save me, O God, by your name;
vindicate me by your might.

2 Hear my prayer, O God;
listen to the words of my mouth.

3 Arrogant foes are attacking me;
ruthless people seek my life—
people without regard for God.

4 Surely God is my help;
the Lord is the one who sustains me.

5 Let evil recoil on those who slander me;
in your faithfulness destroy them.

6 I will sacrifice a freewill offering to you;
I will praise your name, Lord, for it is good.

7 You have delivered me from all my troubles,
and my eyes have looked in triumph on my foes.

My thoughts -

According to my Bible, at least, this is a "maskil of David". A maskil, apparently, is a literary or musical term. There is also an instruction "for stringed instruments" given. Now, my understanding of the Psalms and, frankly, a whole lot of scripture, is quite limited so I can't say this with any great authority but it is my understanding that this was written to be sung in worship.

A lot seems to have changed in the last 3000 years of worship, hasn't it? We don't often sing about being attacked by our enemies. We don't often sing and in doing ask for God to "destroy" anything. It's just not the way we do things. I feel a little weird just reading it. Did David really want his enemies to be "destroyed" by God? And, while he mentions that "ruthless men" who are "without regard for God" seek his life, the ones that he's asking God to destroy he only accuses of "slander". Would we consider asking God to slay people who talk bad about us while we worship? That wouldn't go over very well, culturally, would it?

David lived a kind of crazy life. He spent a large chunk of it on the run from people trying to kill him, one of whom was his own son. I imagine that life was a fair amount more intense in David's age. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems like we are far more insulated from our own mortality than the ancients were. I've got to cut David some slack. He's not saying that God should kill people who say mean things about him. He's saying that he's got problems. Problems he can't face alone. Problems he needs God's help with.

Now, is that something that we do in worship? We love to praise God for all of the wonderful things that God does. We love to sing happy songs about how we have been saved and how awesome and wonderful God is. But are we willing to admit, honestly and openly that life is something that we can't handle alone. We've got problems. Problems we can't deal with. Problems we need God to help with.

When everything is going well I forget just how much I need God. I get comfortable and I forget that in this life, most of the time, I'm just hanging by a thread. There's so much I can't handle. There's so much I can't bear to face alone. There is so much that I am just powerless against. I need God. When we worship we profess that need for God. We sing and we tell stories about how wonderful God is and how much God has done for us. We fall on our knees and proclaim God's wonders and beg God to come into our lives and take over. We can't handle this life alone. We need God. And we need God to know how much we need God.

I don't know if this psalm used dominant sevenths, like we do in the blues. That probably wouldn't make sense to people of David's time. But that's kind of how I think about it. There's a certain intensity and desperation to the blues. It's cathartic. You don't sing the blues to feel sad. You sing the blues to get it out and feel better. David is, in this psalm, desperately asking for God's help. He's singing the blues. And there's nothing wrong with that.

But look at how this closes.

You have delivered me from all my troubles,
and my eyes have looked in triumph on my foes.

David has laid out his problem. He's asked God to help. No, I think he's BEGGED God to help. He has praised God for God's goodness. And then he has declared that God has delivered him. We know how this story ends. God wins.