In Praise of Praise

Psalm 34: (Taste and See)

 We adults love to see our children not just smiling, but truly happy.  We delight in their delight.  That observation gave birth in me to a theological curiosity:  does God delight in our delight in a similar fashion?

 The psalmist gives a hint, I believe, that God does delight in our delight.  “I will bless the Lord at all times;” begins Psalm 34, chosen for this day.  “God’s praise shall continually be in my mouth.”  Continually.  Does that mean habitually – as a habit of the heart, a discipline?  Continually.  Does that mean as a spiritual discipline, a commitment as much as an accident?

 Perhaps.  Because the psalmist moves quickly from confessing his own praise to inviting us to share it:  “O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt God’s name together.”  Praise, it seems, is important, very important, in both its individual and its communal expression.

 Thank God for this call to praise.  We need it.  So many of us, for too long, have engaged in a pursuit of desperately doing good, dutifully measuring up, diligently getting things in order, desperately having a good life, depressively living a faithful life.  Along the way, we get so caught up in ourselves that we forget to notice the wonders of God’s generous love.  We fail to look up from our cribs and see God leaning over us, hoping that we’ll take a look at the world and delight in it, enjoy it.  Maybe even laugh.  Or, at the very least, crack a smile.

 A prose poem by Louis Jenkins entitled, “The Speaker,” points up this natural human tendency to sleep walk through our lives.  Listen: “The speaker points out that we don't really have much of a grasp of things, not only the big things, the important questions, but the small everyday things. ‘How many steps up to your front door? What kind of tree grows in your backyard? What is the name of your district representative? What is your wife's shoe size? Can you tell me the color of your sweetheart's eyes? Do you remember where you parked the car?’ The evidence is overwhelming. Most of us never truly experience life. ‘We drift through life in a daydream, missing the true richness and joy that life has to offer.’ When the speaker has finished we gather around to sing a few inspirational songs. You and I stand at the back of the group and hum along since we have forgotten most of the words.”  (Quoted by Garrison Keillor in The Writer’s Almanac, October 22, 2009.)

 Has Jenkins found us out?  Have we forgotten the words to life’s joyful songs?  Have we lost sight of our world, and thereby dismissed our delight, and thereby denied God the delight for which even the Almighty longs? Is life all duty and therefore too little joy?  I hope not.  We don’t want that for Jordan, do we?  Surely not.  Just as surely, we know that God wants better for him; and for us.

 Maybe our duty is to come alive to our lives.  Or, as the Psalmist puts it a bit later, “O taste and see that the Lord is good….” Taste and see.  Taste.  See. 

 In other words, come back to the sensual joy of embodied life.  We suspect the adjective, “sensual,” as decadent, but that’s a sin of which we can repent.  After all, God made us as we are. God bestows senses gifts of both protection and delight:  taste, smell, sight, touch, and hearing.  What better way to regain our delight than to enjoy the world through these five doors into the world?  What better lesson to give Jordan, for we are all his teachers, than to show him that we want him to enjoy this life by enjoying our life with him?

 In this season, let us discover the sensual joys of warm sunlight and cool breeze; let us see the maples and the oaks ablaze with God’s glory of color; let us taste the crisp sweet joy of fresh apples; let us hear the subtle promise of leaves falling to the earth, and the wind pushing them toward the resurrected life of returning to earth in the hope of one day return to the tree.  Let us enjoy this time, every day that God makes and gives and yearns that we enjoy.

 Living in true affirmation of life’s goodness, its richness, and its bounty, brothers and sisters, is not faithless, but truly faithful.  It may be that we take our lives too seriously, including the part of our lives that centers on our faith.  Yes, we need to learn.  Yes, we need to attend to the needs of others.  Yes, the world can be a fearful place, and we need to be wise.

 But it’s okay to enjoy the life that God shares with us.  Listen again the truth God gives through our psalmist:  “I sought the Lord, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.”  Therefore, the psalm continues, “Look to God, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed.”  Yes, confesses the psalmist, there are in this world real problems, real threats, persons and systems and powers to be feared.  But God is greater than all our fears.  Did you hear?  “This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord, and was saved from every trouble.”  What is our belief in Christ as risen Lord, if not an affirmation that God’s power has defeated the evil powers of this world?

 Therefore we praise.  We sing.  We laugh.  We delight in every way possible.  Yes, we do it in various fashions, each of us as we have been taught and as we are comfortable.  Some of us merely smile and nod; others shout “Amen.”  Some of us sing songs of praise, but in an orderly way; others of us sway, even dance, and clap our hands.  The style we use to praise is insignificant.  The but that we praise God is crucial.  Hallelujah.  However we say that word, it’s an expression that is deeply human and, it seems, wonderfully encouraging both to ourselves, our neighbors, and to God.  What’s your word?  Hallelujah!?  Holy cow!?  Hot dog!? Hooray!?  How we give praise varies with cultures.  And praise varies through each successive generation.  But in every culture, and in every life, giving our praise is infectious; giving our praise is soul-shaping and soul-deepening; giving our praise is inevitable, if we just take a moment to taste and to see the goodness of God. I find myself agreeing; I note my own nodding; I surprise myself by saying “amen” with theologian Walter Brueggemann, who affirms that the church itself is a community of holy delight.  The church is, in his words, “humanity in praise, ceding its life over to God.”  (“Praise and the Psalms:  A Politics of Glad Abandonment,” in The Psalms and the Life of Faith, Fortress Press:  Minneapolis, page 113.)

 Walter Brueggemann hasn’t yet met little Jordan and his friends, both in the church and outside of it.  But I’ll bet he would delight to see him smile.  Walter and Jordan have this in common: each of them knows, as we all do, the deep human need for praise.  We all need the joy of true faith as a healing balm in a deadly and dangerous world.  So let’s strengthen timid hearts, and offer ourselves to a bit of joy.  Let’s pray for God’s graceful hearts of praise.  For the sake of Jordan and his brother Cameron, and for Walter Brueggemann and for his students, including us, for all the faithful and for the entire world, let’s give our lives to God in our praise. 

 O magnify the Lord with me: 

God is good!  All the time!

Hallelujah!

Hallelujah!

Hallelujah!