Just Do It
Psalm 150
Over the past two months, we have been reading all sorts of psalms. We started with Psalm 1 as a wisdom psalm. Then we read a thanksgiving psalm and then a psalm of lament. We read different types of royal psalms, such as Zion psalms and enthronement psalms.
Now we come to the end of the book, and we end with praise. I must admit that this praise psalm—all 33 words of it—may be among the most challenging. Why do we praise God?
Before switching to percussion in sixth grade, I got a D in fifth grade trombone. I switched to percussion. But, still, you don’t want me taking the advice of the psalmist here and picking up random musical instruments. I might be able to pull my weight crashing some cymbals.
If we limit praise to making music, why is praising God so important? Does God hear our music? Does that matter? And, if so, what’s God taste in praise? Do you think we can get away with something garbled and off-pitch?
Despite not being musical and rudimentary in my percussion skills, I do like making music with other people. People seem to connect differently. There is something unifying about it; it is almost transcendental. But is that why we praise God?
And aren’t there bigger things to worry about? 13 million children in the United States are food insecure. Severe weather events are redrawing our maps and displacing entire peoples. There were twenty-one mass shootings in the first nine months of 2019.
And for many of you, I wonder if it feels too irrational, and, perhaps, inconsequential to praise God. What is God going to do with all that praise?
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Why do you praise God?
The Book of Psalms offers countless reasons to praise God, and the book concludes with five psalms of praise. It is a five-fold doxology of praise. The first and last words in each of these psalms is hallelujah which is translated praise the Lord! And in between these hallelujah bookends, we are given reasons why to praise God: “Praise God because…”
In Psalm 146:
I will sing praise to the Lord as long as I live
Because the Lord sets prisoners free
Because the Lord open the eyes of the blind and
And lifts up those who are bowed down
Loves the righteous
Watches over the foreigner
Upholds the orphan and widow
In Psalm 147:
Praise the Lord…
because God is gracious…
because Gods builds…heals…strengthens…grants peace…and so on
Psalm 148:
Praise the name of the Lord
For God’s s name alone is exalted
God’s glory is above earth and heaven.
Psalm 149:
Praise the lord!
For the Lord take pleasure in God’s people!
There are plenty of great reasons to praise God.
But guess what? You don’t need a reason to praise God.
Psalm 150 stands out in this five-fold doxology because it doesn’t bother with why we praise God. We are simply given the instruction to praise God. There are no profound theological declarations. No abiding hope is expressed. There are no promises—no moral teachings.
Psalm 150 gives us no reasons. The psalmist just gives us the imperative to praise God—over and over and over again.
Versions of the world hallelu are used 13 times in just six verses. Hallelu—used most commonly—it means “all of you praise.” All people have an imperative to praise God.
We need no more of a reason to offer God our praise than a bird needs a reason to sing in the morning—or a grasshopper to chirp—or a reason for a tree to blossom in the spring.
You were created to praise God; you don’t need any reasons.
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Sometimes, though, we come up with reasons not to praise God. Something goes wrong. We don’t feel adequately amused. We wonder if praising God is really relevant. Does it really add anything to my life?
Or sometimes there is a disruption in our life, and we wonder: How can I ever praise God again?
There is a story about jazz great Wynton Marsalis.[i] He plays the trumpet like it was what he was born to do. The Village Vanguard is a small jazz club in New York City. For decades, people would go to the club on weekdays hoping for a surprise visitor. Jazz greats sometimes show up and gather around the microphone. People go on weeknights hoping to be treated by something special.
One Tuesday evening Wynton was playing with a small combo. Their set began rather pedestrian—mostly bee-bop favorites. Then it came time to play “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You.”
During this song, Wynton approached the microphone, put his trumpet to his lips, and just broke out. Every murmur and sigh of the melancholy song was accentuated. Wynton was on fire.
He played right up to the climax and played the final notes where you could almost a singer crone: “I don’t stand ... a ghost ... of ... a ... chance ...”
Silence. The crowd was entranced
Boop—dee-do—dee-do—ding. Someone’s cell phone started ringing in the middle of the room.
The tacky, digital sound pierced the silence. The spell was broken. The owner of the cell phone jumped up and sprinted to the door—embarrassed. Murmuring and conversations began to build.
Wynton had every reason to despair. He had every reason to stop playing his song. He had every reason to feel slighted. He could’ve quit. A couple of people were already shaking their heads.
Wynton swallowed and put his trumpet back to his lips. He played that blasted cell phone melody note for note. Then he played it again. He began improvising—adding and taking away. Syncopating. People began to listen again. He changed keys—at least once—maybe twice. And then he eased back into to where left off: “I don’t stand ... a ghost ... of ... a ... chance ... with ... you ...”
This time, everyone in the room was brought to their feet.
* * *
We might have plenty of reasons to stop our song. You don’t need a reason to praise God. You were made to praise God. Nothing can take that song away from you.
* * *
The book of Psalms with an unqualified praise of God.
The significance of that might make more sense if we were to rename the Book of Psalms. The Hebrew title of the book is telhilim—which means Praises. Maybe we should rename Psalms to Praises. As we have read together this fall, not all the psalms always seem like praises. There is bemoaning, grief, and loss followed by uncontainable joy and swells of God’s glory.
All of these songs—all of our experiences—all of our faith—lead to the praise of God.
The ending point—the punctuation of the psalms—is unqualified praise.
Writer Eugene Petersen insists that this call to praise God is not the same a “word of praise” slapped on to whatever mess we are in at moment. Rather, he suggests, that Psalm 150 “tells us that our prayers are going to end in praise. It might take a while—years or decades—to arrive at the hallelujahs.”
He shares about how a life of prayer becomes a life of praise: “Prayer is always reaching towards praise and will finally arrive there. If we persist in prayer, laugh and cry, doubt and believe, struggle and dance and then struggle again, we will surely end up at Psalm 150, on our feet, applauding, ‘Encore! Encore!’”
In this grand finale of the psalms, there is a sense that everything contained in this book can be simplified by a great hope that we are to praise God. Maybe we don’t know yet why we praise God, because not all the reasons have played out yet. Maybe the reasons to praise God will come to you once you start to praise God.
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The five-fold doxology that ends the Psalms begins with Psalm 146, verses 1 and 2.
“Praise the Lord, O my soul!
I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
I will sing praises to my God all my life long.”
The psalmist does something rare by offering a call to worship not to other people but to their own self. Usually, the psalmist’s sentient is this: Look at what God has done, so come and praise God with me.
146 begins with the self and by the time we get to 148, perhaps the climax of these five psalms, the psalmist calls the stars and moons to worship God. The psalmist calls sea monsters and the water above the earth to worship God. This is along with the mountains and hills, and the fruit trees and cedars. Everything animate and inanimate is being invited to praise God. Everything—all of creation—is being re-oriented to God through praise.
By the time we get to Psalm 150, we hear over and over again that is time for all people to praise God. Some scholars imagine that the call for the flute, lyre, clanging and clashing cymbals, trumpets and harps, are a note to the temple orchestra.
There is one instrument, tough, that sticks out. Notice the trumpet—or perhaps the ram horn’s blast. That would have been used for a sign of a new kingdom—a new realm—a new world. Our praise of God orients us to a whole new world, where we can’t—for example—accept the hunger rate, the degradation of creation, or a culture of violence.
Then Psalm 150 ends with this verse: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”
We are a new creation. Our praise ensures it. When God creates the human out of the earth, God breathes breath into a pile of the earth and crates. Even here where the psalm ends we meet our beginning. We were made to praise God.
We don’t praise God because it makes is feel good. We don’t praise God because we get something out of it. We don’t praise God so that we can become better people.
We simply praise God because it is what we are created to do. There are plenty of good reasons, but we don’t need one more reason. For example, I praised God when I was called to the church. You might praise God when a child is born healthy. You might praise God because your nine months sober. You might praise God you have been healed after cancer treatment. But if you are waiting for a reason to praise God; don’t wait any longer. You don’t need one. Just do it.
* * *
Mary Jane was a longtime resident of Middletown.
She lived in the neighborhood around the church. For years she and her husband would come out on their front porch at noon. They wanted to hear the church bells from our steeple.
They never wanted to miss it. Mary Jane would call the church to say thank you once a year.
After her husband died, she moved in across the street where the Woodlands is now.
There is a legendary period of church history, where Mary Jane would come over to the church every day. She’d never bother looking before crossing the street. She would come knock on the door, and the intercom would come on. All of the sudden, people in the office would hear this voice shout out: “I want to talk to your preacher; I want those bells turned up! I can’t hear them.”
I’m starting to think that maybe Mary Jane wrote Psalm 150. She certainly speaks with the psalmist’s voice.
Turn up the bells. We want to hear your trumpets. Bring out the guitar and praise God. Dance. Shake a tambourine. Turn up the organ. Turn everything up. Your cymbals might clang or they might clash—it doesn’t matter! Just praise God.
You were made to praise God. You don’t need a reason.
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
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Endnotes:
[i] I read this account at: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/wyntons-blues/302684/