Praise the Lord! – April 3, 2012

Lent brings to mind images, symbols, and a “photo album” of memories – standing in line in the middle aisle of the sanctuary and very quietly moving forward through the stillness to have the dark, grainy ashes imposed on the forehead; long days with no nourishment, a fasting that produces a gnawing hunger continuously reminding us that we are in a season of sacrifice; a person with knees bent and head bowed pouring out words from a penitent heart and soul; baptismal candidates robed in white awaiting the plunge into holy waters. We know Lent as a time of lament, confession, relinquishment, sacrifice, and repentance, when the sounds around us, the music we sing, is in minor key.
How strange it is, then, to title this meditation “Praise the Lord”! Praise and doxology are often spirited, loud, accompanied with dance and celebration. This does not seem appropriate for Lent!
Psalm 146, like the four psalms which follow, begins with the imperative – Praise the LORD!
The psalmist continues, Praise the LORD, O my soul; I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have being. Unlike other psalms that invite the worshiper to praise God for all the wonderful deeds God has done in the past (for example, delivering Moses and the Israelites through the Red Sea), this psalm calls the worshiper to praise God for what God is doing NOW. The psalmist, using a long string of active verbs, points overwhelmingly to the liberating work of the one who created the world and everything in it. God keeps faith forever; executes justice for the oppressed; gives food to the hungry; sets the prisoners free; opens the eyes of the blind; lifts up those who are bowed down; loves the righteous; watches over the strangers; upholds the orphan and the widow; brings the wicked (those guided only by self interest) to ruin. With each of these verbs, there is no doubt a story about a God who is working to “mend the world.” About this kind of God who is doing the work of liberation, the psalmist ends with these words The LORD will reign forever, thy God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the LORD!
Lent is a time of remembering the stories of those who are in need of a redemptive, sustaining, liberating word from God, and giving praise to a listening God who hears those cries and calls us to agency, calls us to action, calls us to lay down our complacency and the apathy which feel so comfortable and familiar and secure. The call to evangelism may frighten us. But it need not. It is simply a call to tell our own praise- filled, joyful, celebrative story of a God who is alive and at work in our world. Surely this kind of storytelling holds a rightful place in our Lenten journey….
Hallelujah!
Prayer: God, open me eyes, lift me up, love me, watch over me. Help me open
others’ eyes, lift others us, love others, and watch over them.
Amen.
Mary Donovan Turner is the Dean of Disciples Seminary Foundation
(Berkeley Campus) and active in Tapestry Ministries in Berkeley