What do you think of the Psalms?
John Calvin said: ‘You cannot read anywhere more glorious praises of God’s peculiar grace towards his church or of his works’.
The book of Psalms is the praise powerhouse of the Bible. The beauty, character and glory of God pervades every verse, with spiritual food to satisfy even the hungriest soul. At the same time, the calls to faith, repentance, grief and thanksgiving are so wide-ranging that they encompass every emotion of the Christian disciple.
I wouldn’t be able to go as far as some do in saying that we should sing only the Psalms in the congregational meeting, because we would miss singing about central truths like the resurrection of Christ or the glories of the New Creation. But if we believe that God speaks by his Spirit through his Word, then the corporate proclamation of the Psalms gives us a great opportunity to show where our confidence and assurance lies.
I was a cathedral chorister
I know that there’s a problem with this. As a cathedral chorister I sang the Psalms every day (though only half of them, as we never sang the ones attributed to ‘Morning Prayer’!) The beauty of Anglican chant is that pure Scripture is sung unadulterated, but the problem is that it is difficult for a congregation to join in. It seems a pity that the singing of God’s praises should be limited only to the musical professionals.
Metrical Psalms
To try and solve this problem, some have attempted to write the Psalms in metrical form so that they can be sung as hymns.
But sadly, though there have been some great and hugely honourable attempts, there are very few which have been really successful.
The other pity is that, by necessity, these hymns become less than pure Scripture because the lines have to be paraphrased in order to make them fit the meter and rhyming patterns.
Interestingly, I think the wordsmiths have been more successful than our tunesmiths. From personal experience I had a go at writing a tune for Jim Sayers’ version of Psalm 2. Verdict: Words – great; Tune – could do better. This is borne out by the fact that there are so few musical versions of Psalms that are known well, e.g. ‘Praise, my soul’ (103), ‘All people that on earth do dwell’ (100), ‘The Lord’s my shepherd’ (23). In all of these cases the tunes are the main reason these Psalms have kept such a strong presence in our repertoire, highlighting the point that the dearth of congregational versions of other famous Psalms is not because of the poverty of the words!
Shouting and whispering?
What can we do then, to make sure our congregations are enjoying and feeding on the vast treasures found in the Psalms? Here’s one suggestion that may work, but which may cut against the grain of a music-focussed column: we don’t need to sing the Psalms! Yes, of course, sing Psalms that the congregation are able to ‘sing lustily and with good courage’ (John Wesley), but I don’t think we’re told that it’s compulsory to sing them all. Some of them would be more appropriate to shout, and some maybe even to whisper in corporate grief for sin.
I’m spending some time in Psalm 101 at the moment. It would be very hard to find a catchy tune that would suit the line ‘I hate the work of those who fall away’, but it’s a line that would be very healthy for a congregation to proclaim (with all the caveats that this is primarily King David’s line to sing).
To that end I’ve been writing out as many of the Psalms as I can in a way that would be easy for a congregation to say together (either alternately with the meeting leader or as a block of Scripture). It’s only one idea, and not all of it works well, but it’s been refreshing to recapture some of the discipline of ‘truthing’ each other in such a pure form.
Whatever might work for your congregation, whether chant, metrical or spoken, please let’s keep the songs of God’s King and people on our lips and in our hearts, so that together we can delight in the law of the LORD (Psalm 1.2)
