Christchurch Parish News, November 2016
As Jonah prays in the belly of the great fish, what can we learn about the importance of the psalms in our own prayer lives?
‘When preparing to die, what hymns do you want remember?’ Such was the bracing question the Scottish hymn writer John Bell once posed many years ago. He was bewailing some of the hymns that our children are encouraged to learn. ‘When you lie there on your deathbed,’ he continued, ‘do you really want the words “If were a fuzzy-wuzzy bear, I’d thank you Lord for my fuzzy-wuzzy hair” to be the last words of praise you remember?’ (the lyric is taken from the Butterfly Song by Rettino). Bell’s point being that the songs we learn when we’re young have a habit of staying with us till the day we die.
It’s not just when we’re young that this can happen. Music that we hear even by chance at a pivotal moment in our lives can have the same kind of aural stickiness. For example, the chorus of ‘Shine, Jesus, shine’ will always be associated for me with my daughter’s baptism as we joined the procession at the end of the Sunday Eucharist. Every time I hear the chorus, I can’t help but be transported back to that sunny June morning, with Andrew Post whipping through it on the organ.
Our singing spiritual songs and hymns has always been a key activity of the people of God when we gather. The central body of such songs, of course, has been the book of Psalms. As such, it is no surprise then that when Jonah finds himself in the belly of the great fish, it is there that he prays something which, whilst not exactly one of the ones that the have in the book of Psalms, nonetheless is a prayer which makes constant allusion to them.
There are lots of different types of psalms. One of the more common types is psalms of thanksgiving and that’s what Jonah’s psalm-like prayer is: a prayer of thanksgiving. In its shape too, it is very psalm-like. The first half depicts the desperate plight of the one praying. Then there is a turning point; here it happens in the second half of verse six: ‘Yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O LORD my God.’ The narrator of the story of Jonah is keen to depict the reluctant prophet as a devout worshipper of God whose prayer life has been utterly shaped by the psalms. And because this is a provocative story which is meant to catch us off guard, make us think, and make us smile by turns, there’s also a good deal of wry humour in the text, too.
For example, the allusions to the psalms in Jonah’s prayer feature metaphors such as ‘You cast me down into the deep and the flood surrounded me.’ This is a combination of quotations from Psalms 42 and 88. In those original psalms, the language is metaphorical. The psalmist hasn’t really been thrown into the depths of the sea. The sea stands for the chaos of creation opposed to God’s good intentions for it. But here in the story of Jonah, the reluctant prophet has really been thrown into the sea and has been sent into the depths, the heart of the sea. Suddenly a metaphor has become literal. But of course, there’s another layer to this. As the story is not a work of historical reportage but is more appropriately read as an extended parable, the listener knows that in quoting the psalms, the narrator has taken a metaphor, wrapped it up in a literal image (Jonah in the story being being thrown into the sea), but then made this literal depiction work as part of a larger metaphor (the whole story of Jonah). This kind of wordplay would have been intended to bring a smile to the listener’s face; provided the listener was already well-versed in the psalms and their imaginative landscape.
The humour continues as this self-pitying prophet’s prayer is finally heard. For note that in response to Jonah’s prayer, the LORD does not speak to Jonah. No, here at the centre of the story, the LORD instead speaks to the fish and instructs it to return Jonah to the safety of dry land by vomiting him on to the shore. Jonah — Fish-Puke Prophet — at your service.
Before we leave Jonah wiping himself down as he finally heads off to Nineveh, I’ve noticed from many conversations over the years, that praying the psalms, be it by singing them or saying them silently in our heads, is something that most of us find hard. Perhaps it’s because there are 150 of them and many of them are rather alike in the words and images they use that we find them tricky to get our heads round. Some of them are very long (Ps 119); some of them are over in a heartbeat (Ps 117). Some even give voice to emotions that are frightening in their brutal candour, for example the final two lines of Ps 137 where the psalmist, speaking of the Babylonians who had sent the people of God into exile, writes ‘Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock’. But nevertheless, despite such barriers we need to recognise that the psalms have formed a core part of both Jewish and Christian worship for thousands of years. Which is why it is so encouraging to see of late a resurgence in their use. For example, the lead singer of the Irish rock band U2, Bono, recently recorded an interview about the rawness and beauty of the psalms with Eugene Peterson. Peterson is a theologian and biblical scholar who is most well-known for translating all of the Scriptures, including the Psalms, into contemporary English in The Message. You can watch the interview on YouTube.
Another encouraging sign is the appearance of books such as ‘My Rock, My Refuge’ by Timothy Keller, a minister in New York. Keller’s book consists of a collection of reflections, one for each day of the year, on each of the psalms with some guidance for prayer arising out of the psalm in question for the day. It’s a useful devotional resource. I commend both Peterson’s translation of the Bible and Keller’s book of reflections on the Psalms to you. I hope you enjoy the YouTube interview, too. It’s an unlikely combination (Bono being a rockstar and Peterson a theologian), but it works and maybe their enthusiasm for the psalms will encourage you to read them afresh, too.
All of which brings me back to the hymnodist, John Bell, with whom I started. In the talk he gave, he was desperate for the church to rediscover the songbook/prayer book – he spoke of them interchangeably – of the Psalms for one simple reason. This collection of 150 songs of praise was Jesus’ prayerbook. These are the prayers that would have shaped his prayer life. So, however we find our way into them, be it by singing them, be it by praying them silently in our heads, may our imagination and our prayers be likewise shaped so that when we find ourselves at our limit, or even on our death bead, as with Jonah, as with the Psalmist, we too may pray with all our heart, ‘Salvation belongs to the LORD!’, confident that the Lord hears our prayers.