Proper 16 (8/26/07) “Bless the Lord, O My Soul”

Text: Psalm 103.1-8

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name!” Psalm 103, a portion of which we have sung together this morning, is surely one of the most beautiful of all the Psalms of David. Let’s walk through the first few verses of this wonderful hymn together, and see if we can find some new appreciation for what one scholar calls “one of the finest blossoms on the tree of Biblical faith.”

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name.” The first thing to notice is that this psalm is not addressed to God, but to ourselves. “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” It is as if the Psalmist David is aware that he needs to encourage himself, to remind himself to bless or praise God. How like us he is! I don’t know about you, but no matter how important something is that I have to do today, I’m very likely to forget it unless I write myself a note. The press of life is just too insistent; even important things can be forgotten. David acknowledges that, and so he speaks to himself—he writes himself a note, if you will, a reminder that blessing the Lord, or we might say “thanking and praising the Lord,” is something that absolutely must be done today, and every day.

The Hebrew word for “soul” here is a very broad word. It really can mean one’s whole life, one’s existence. David is expressing the desire that his whole life will be one of blessing and praise—not just his actions and words, but, as he puts it, “all that is within me.” Think about that phrase for a moment. What would it mean to praise God with all that is within you—with your noble impulses, your compassion, your love, your kindness; but also with the darker part of you: your selfishness, your anxieties, your fears. What would it mean to bless God with those things that are within you? Perhaps to take them out of the place where you hide them, and acknowledge them, then to offer them to God with the prayer that he might take them and transform them into something good and strong within you? Now that would be a difficult prayer, but a powerful one. “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name.” Would you say the words of that verse with me again? “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name.”

The next verse is quite similar: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” This line suggests how often we do forget God’s many graces to us. We learn in the Catechism that God “has given me and still preserves my body and soul with all their powers” and that “He provides me with food and clothing, home and family, daily work and all I need from day to day.” But we so often forget this, and somehow think that all the wonderful things we have are just there for us because we deserve them. We forget who the giver is.

Alice Johnson tells about the experience she had as a young mother with two preschoolers. Life for her was overwhelming and exhausting. One night as she lay awake in bed, she poured out her frustrations to God: “The kids won’t mind, the house is a mess, my husband doesn’t seem to care”—the list went on. Suddenly there was a voice in her heart: “Which one do you want me to take away?” Alice at once understood the point: all these things that were so frustrating to her were in fact her most precious blessings. She learned that night to see things in a different way, to thank God for those things which sometimes seemed so overwhelming; she learned, we might say, something of what it means to “forget not all his benefits.” “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” Will you say those words with me?“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.”

“He forgives all your sins, and heals all your infirmities.” One of the most important things to learn from this Psalm is the priority given to the gift of forgiveness. I think we often forget that. Perhaps sometimes at Thanksgiving time we engage in a little exercise of articulating that for which you are thankful. Those lists often include family, home, material blessings, or perhaps more abstract things like freedom. David’s list begins with forgiveness, and there is a very good reason. If you know the Old Testament, you know that King David, the chosen one, the ancestor of the Messiah, Israel’s greatest king, was at the same time a great sinner. Yet he was a forgiven sinner, and he never forgot it. For him the mercy of God was the absolute foundation of everything else.

You may have heard before the story of John Newton, author of the beloved hymn “Amazing Grace.” He was in the early part of his life a notorious slave trader and rebel against the pious Christianity of his mother. His tombstone reads as follows: “John Newton, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ preserved, restored, pardoned and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.” It is said that when Newton was 82, he once remarked, “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things, that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour.”

The line about “healing all your infirmities” sometimes causes us some trouble, for we know that in this life it is sometimes the case that literal physical healing does not take place, even in the most faithful Christian. But what David has in mind here is a larger view of healing. He means that God brings healing in a way that may not be what we have in mind, but which leads to the greater glory of God.

Eugene Orowitz was a skinny little Jewish kid in Maple Shade, NJ. He didn’t have much going for him; but one day in gym class, he was given the opportunity to throw a javelin. He threw it twice as far as anyone else in the class. Thinking he had finally found something athletic he could do, he began practicing his new sport. He ultimately got an athletic scholarship to USC, and was dreaming of the Olympics. Then one day Eugene tore the ligaments in his shoulder. That seemed like the end of everything—his javelin throwing, his scholarship, his dreams. He dropped out of school and got a job in a warehouse. There he met a struggling young actor, who got him interested in drama. I’ll cut the story short—young Eugene Orowitz, whose dreams were ripped apart along with his shoulder ligaments, became a television actor you knew as Michael Landon, who starred in and produced some of the most wholesome and uplifting television you’ve ever watched. When he died a few years ago, his courage and faith in the face of illness was an inspiration to millions. No doubt that faith came from his life experience; for God had healed that young man’s infirmities—not in the way he expected, perhaps, but in a way that was ultimately much more satisfying. “He forgives all your sins, and heals all your infirmities.” Will you say it with me? “He forgives all your sins, and heals all your infirmities.”

Then David goes on: “He redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with mercy and lovingkindness.” Most important here is David’s confidence even in the face of death. For him, as for us today, the prospect of death is perhaps the most difficult thing we face. We have no real sense of what it means, except that we are forced to leave behind everything that we hold dear. Yet, David says, even in that terrible prospect, even in the face of the utterly unknown, we find God’s mercy and lovingkindess.

One day a group of children in a church-run school were having a lesson in astronomy, looking at a map of the stars. Some of the kids had seen various movies about outer space aliens, and the talk turned to whether such creatures were good or bad. “Didn’t God create all the stars and planets?” said one young boy. The teacher assured him that this was correct. “Then I think the aliens must be good, because God is good.”

Because God is good, we can know, even in face of things we cannot understand, that we shall be safe, that our lives will be crowned with his mercy and lovingkindness. And that’s what the Psalmist says: “He redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with mercy and lovingkindness.” Will you say it with me? “He redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with mercy and lovingkindness.”

“He satisfies you with good things, and your youth is renewed like an eagle’s.” This section of the Psalm concludes with a poetic, but somewhat mysterious phrase. There are many ways to interpret it, but here’s how I like to read it: The King James Version translated this “he satisfieth thy mouth with good things.” The image is one of a hungry person who is given a lavish meal. Think about what it means to be hungry. We feel weak, perhaps a little disoriented. When our son Luke was three years old, he had his tonsils taken out. The doctor suggested that he wouldn’t be comfortable eating for a day or two, and we should just give him plenty of liquids and perhaps a popsickle. As the day wore on, he became more and more distraught and wouldn’t stop crying. His still not-too-experienced parents didn’t know what to do, and were about to call the doctor, when he finally cried out, “I’m hungry!” We offered him a peanut butter sandwich or whatever it was, which he gobbled down with no apparent discomfort, and almost instantly he was like a new person!

That’s the image David is using here. God’s lovingkindness and mercy is to us like food to the hungry. It restores us, strengthens us, makes us new, makes us feel again as if we could sore like an eagle. “He satisfies you with good things, and your youth is renewed like an eagle’s.” Say those words with me: “He satisfies you with good things, and your youth is renewed like an eagle’s.”

Well, that’s the end of the segment of the Psalm appointed for today. The rest of it is equally wonderful, and let me just note that the Psalm ends in the same way it began, with the line “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” It teaches us, St. Augustine said, to live our lives from blessing to blessing—so that all we do expresses praise and thanks for the great mercy God has shown us. Living from blessing to blessing—there could be no better way to live! --Pastor Richard O. Johnson