Psalm 89:9-13 Your Strong Arm

You rule over the surging sea;
    when its waves mount up, you still them.
 You crushed Rahab like one of the slain;

 with your strong arm you scattered your enemies.

 The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth;
you founded the world and all that is in it.

You created the north and the south;

 Tabor and Hermon sing for joy at your name.

Your arm is endowed with power;

    your hand is strong, your right hand exalted

Brueggemann contends that the managerial and therapeutic models of life so prevalent in our time screen out “the savage, ominous power of violence and vengeance.” In trying to “explain” everything, they make the Bible simplistic and reduce life to mere psychological transactions. Reading the David narrative, he says brings us to the “recognition that there is one more character in our life story than modernity concedes.”

         Remember that “the David Story” is found not only in the texts of 1 and 2 Samuel but also in the Psalms. Tradition connects 2 Samuel 11 with Psalm 51, but many other “Psalms of David” give voice to the agony and hope of genuine confession. To call David a poet is to say that he shared in God’s creativity through words. To call him a psalm writer is to say he prayer the vulnerable, passionate prayers of a confessing sinner who lived his life – sins, confessions and all- before God. In fact, Brueggemann claims that David “embodies the antiphon of Israel’s faith – moving between raw narrative and the sure Psalm. (Power, Providence & Personality, 85)

       . . . the prophet’s harder truth: that the sin outside remains always the co-conspirator of the sinner standing here. . . The same God who preaches “the good news to the poor” and “proclaims release to the captives,” “recovery of the sight to the blind,” and “liberty to those who are oppressed also “desireth truth in the inmost being.” How stringent and piercing is the true confession that does not exclude even the one who is much more the prophet than the politician. How deep the hope that the “one more character in our life story” makes it possible for even us to live honestly before God and others. The people after God’s own heart, after all, are not those who are morally perfect, but those who can still be moved to genuine repentance. They are the ones who walk in the vast land where a  transformative God is at work in the jagged, ambiguous places – between the narrative and the psalm.  From: http://www.ekklesiaproject.org/blog/2012/07/between-the-narrative-and-the-psalm/

Jim Mcoy