BIBLE STUDY-NIGHT # 2- 9/27/06 PT #1& 2

BIBLE STUDY -NIGHT #2 - 9/27/06
PT 1

Westermann thinks a fragment of Psalm 103:1-2 is a good place to start a Psalm-study:


Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.


Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:


He notes first the self-referential nature of the composition. O my soul is the the subject of the address. But the source of blessing ,make no mistake , is a name and a personal name for the divine. And that name is herein praised! Westermann calls this: " a summons to praise from a distant world". The critic calls our attention to the phenomenon ...this summons transcends time and place for many believers...no longer to be silenced.
What is it about the transcendental symbols of life leadership that evoke from us seekers praise? " To praise is never to forget"

Toda- to praise in Hebrew is also the word for giving thanks

This specific experience of the divine breaks through the counterfeit value systems to a concrete reality and must find its expression in worship.


Two Laws Of Worship:
1) Everyone needs to worship(needs remembrance of the praiseworthy)
2) Humans become what they worship(what they know by heart)


Never forgetting the benefits , the gifts that the energy of life provides; this Yahweh, " I am who am" I am Being itself; I am Existence itself; I am the energy of life itself;the beyond; the incomprehensible(so far)

To remember blessings is to be present in gratitude even in times of loss and logical ungratefulness. These thanks-filled memorials are built by faith,risk,trust in the soul, at the core of our very being,existence,life...


The opening verses of this holy song stand for all time as a re-MIND-er... Mind the memory of the gratitude that is truly there in your life story- sometimes hidden ...seemingly forgotten ...overshadowed by loss and defeat. In loss and defeat we experience the silence ,the distance of the divine... A psalm of praise is a song that breaks the silence with a call to remembrance- Visit those memorials! ,it commands ...walk through the halls of the great heroic memories of your and your families , your communities' and your world's life story.


What about our life ,day to day, prevents this remembrance?


What in your life reinforces the accursedness and not the blessedness of your lifestory?

The essential power of blessing-remembrance is its power to integrate our lives and help us to real-ize meaning .

This be-attitude however is inextricably bound to experiences of loss and defeat . Otherwise we would be creating a fantasy of denial . Psalm 103 refuses this escapist perversion of authentic religious imagination and re-MINDS us that these experiences of gratitude are often grounded in forgiveness,healing, redemption-none of which can happen without sin, sickness, death or the death-like depths into which anyone and everyone's life can sink.

PT 2

Ps 103

3 Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;


4 Who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies;

here in just 4 verses from this great ancient song we can hear the eternal two dramatic acts in human life: Praise from lamentation and Lamentation from praise. The people of trouble experienced reversal, deliverance, the awakening of the jubilation of the liberated, the saved... These religious affections are not well-represented in the post-exilic Psalter- the segment of the hymnal of Israel the colony, the defeated province less aware of the acts of deliverance.

Earlier , the "jubiliant shout" of Ex 15:1, inspired the psalms 124 and 129-songs of praise looking back in relief. Later the lamentations looked back to find hope for a new day and in a way they too became songs of broken silence...

Westermamm writes: " The psalms embrace these great contrasts. In never-ending and yet-ever-new ways they always circle about one center: human existence in its mighty, terrifying and glorious rhthym of loss and rescue, cry for help and shout of exultation, capture and release, laughter and weeping".

Whitehead says that first we know God as a void, then God the enemy and later God the friend.
Westermann notes the cycles of being near to god and being far from God: " Turning away, revolting, and being indifferent to God can all be restored and healed by ' the one who forgives all your iniquities'.

Consider that once we relinquish the godly man-up stairs , we still find that the life experiences that inspired this earlier naive theological reflection are ever capable of delivering life-meaning of the dimensions of reconciliation and atonement. The energy of LIFEITSELF continues to call out to us long after we have outgrown the unrefined imagery of animist ,polytheist and even monothist speculation. Freed from past obsolete ideas of the divine , we find ourselves still inundated in the religious life experiences that have always caused humans to exult: In, With,Through, as the prayer of Spirit-Unity which evokes the inner ectasy of glory and honor that carry feelings of might and timelessness.

11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.


12 As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us


Remember, according to Westermann: " The God whom the Psalms praise is not the God of religious conceptualizations but the Lord of the great universe,the Commander of cosmic dimensions". The Psalm-God is the transcendant reality that encompasses the vertical axis of the heavens and the earth and the horizontal reaches of the sunrise east and the sunset west. Thus this ubiquitous divine presence,by nature, is able to give meaning and integrationto both the high and low points of life.