Psalm 149
“Praise and Sword”
November 3, 2019 – All Saints Sunday
My aunt said, “He belongs to a campus group called ‘Cru,’ but I don’t know what that is.” I smiled as she talked about one of her grandchildren. Then I told her that “Cru” is what used to be known as “Campus Crusade.” She nodded, “Oh, I know what Campus Crusade is. Why did they change it?”
I explained that, at least in part, the name was changed to avoid associations with the Crusades of the middle ages, during which Christians did many awful things and which are especially offensive to Muslim people. Connection with a history of warfare, even war of Christians upon Christians, was hampering the witness of that campus parachurch ministry, so they buried the old name under a superficially meaningless abbreviation.
Yet the term “crusade” derives from crux, the Latin word for cross. The Crusaders were so named because they went forth under the emblem of the Cross of Christ. You don’t have to look hard to see the irony of going forth to kill beneath the sign of the Lord who accepted His own death and who said what we read from Luke 6 verse 27 today, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.”
That same sort of irony strikes us pretty hard toward the end of Psalm 149 there at the bottom of page 162 in Poets. A joyful call to praise the Lord takes a turn that might leave us a little dizzy in what is traditionally marked as verse 7,
Let the praise of God be in their mouths,
and a sharp sword in their hands…
The tension and disconnect in that verse is even poetically striking, because it’s more literally,
Let the praise of God be in their throats
and a sword of mouths in their hands…
So while singing to God with their literal mouths, God’s faithful are to be wielding swords that swallow up lives like devouring mouths. Our translation “sharp” sword softens and obscures that a little.
What are we to make of that sort of tension and disconnect? Some of you have probably already noted that sort of thing in other psalms. This past week we also read the beautiful and mournful Psalm 137,
By the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept,
as we thought of Jerusalem.
But a sad reflection on what God’s people have lost when they were taken away from their homes and their city torn down suddenly turns nasty as the song ends crying for God to take vengeance on the Babylonians and concludes,
Happy is the one who takes your babies
and smashes them against the rocks!
Devouring swords and smashing babies probably doesn’t sound like a very nice turn for an All Saints Sunday sermon, when we are remembering loved ones and other saints of old with some tears in our eyes. Yet this 149th psalm is the one assigned for All Saints. I did not pick it myself from those we read last week. It has something to say to us about what saints look like, about what it means for you and I to be God’s people.
So I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that this song from which I’m preaching is first and foremost one of the five “Hallelujah” psalms that bring the Bible’s songbook to a close. Like the others, it starts and ends with that Hebrew word hallelujah, which we read together in English, “Praise the Lord!” And the first half pictures Israel, the people of Jerusalem, God’s holy city, doing just that… with gusto.
O Israel, rejoice in your Maker.
O people of Jerusalem, exult in your King.
Praise his name with dancing,
accompanied by tambourine and harp.
As we celebrate today, those verses apply to us. They call us to rejoice and exult, to play instruments and even dance to offer up praise to our God and King. Part of the reason for all the celebration is in the next two verses:
For the Lord delights in his people;
he crowns the humble with victory.
Let the faithful rejoice that he honors them.
Let them sing for joy as they lie on their beds.
We are rejoicing in God’s saints today, as we sang a moment ago, but let us remember that God also takes delight in them, and takes delight in us who are also part of that company, part of God’s people. We remember today that our Lord is delighted with us. As we become people of God through Jesus Christ, He honors us. He is so good to us that we may be able to go to bed singing for joy.
Yet that may not be how you feel today. The beloved saint you named for us may not be very long gone from this world and you can only remember him or her with sadness instead of joy. Or you may be thinking of those saints Trudy helped us remember, who are suffering right now for their faith in Jesus, risking their lives or their jobs or their homes to sing God’s praises. And very possibly you have your own burdens and struggles and pain to carry through this day, making it unlikely you will lie down tonight singing for joy.
That’s exactly why the second half of this psalm is there, with its sharp sword and promise of vengeance and shackles and chains for kings and leaders who oppose God’s people. It’s to remind us even as we might go to bed feeling defeated that the people of God, the people of the Lord Jesus Christ will ultimately overcome. Even in the first half there was that line, “he crowns the humble with victory.”
As we contemplate the sharp sword of victory, though, let’s not forget that word “humble.” We heard Jesus say it today in the beatitudes of Luke’s gospel, chapter 6, “Blessed are the poor… the hungry… the weeping… the hated.” We rejoice in a victory God will give us in the midst of all those humbling experiences. If we go off like the ancient crusaders did, proudly sharpening our swords and marching out to cut down our foes, we likely will have gotten something wrong.
There’s a hymn in our old red Covenant hymnal that didn’t make the cut for our newer, but twenty-year-old blue hymnal. It’s from a poem by G.K. Chesterton and I think it captures some of the tension of our Scriptures this morning, the tension between joy and praise now and the great victory of God’s people for which we are waiting. Chesterton wrote:
O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.
Those our perfect words for our divided time, with not only our country but nations all over the world divided and misguided by faltering, corrupt and foolish leaders. And the next verse is even more appropriate as it prays to God for relief from deception and corruption, for deliverance from the use of military force just for profit, and from the insidious temptations of sleepy indifference and apathy.
From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord.
The last verse is harder to understand. Chesterton talks about “prince and priest and thrall.” But don’t let that throw you. He is using old, simple words to signify government and church and ordinary citizens. He is asking God to somehow bring them all together in a unity they have never really had:
Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to thee.
From what I know of Chesterton I am guessing that he penned that poem as a prayer for his beloved England. He hoped God might bring together his own nation as a “single sword,” exulting, praising God in faith and freedom. Some of us might want to pray it for our own nation. But what we need to remember is that as beloved and even good as an earthly country might be, the people of God all over the world belong to the only nation for which that prayer might actually be granted.
It is God’s people who hope and trust in the true King Jesus Christ who can hold us all together, whatever our earthly citizenship is. It is Jesus who can do for us that great work Chesterton calls for in those wonderful words:
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all.
Now there is a truly brave and Christian prayer, “Smite us and save us all.” It acknowledges all our personal corruption and sin and trusts that the grace of God in Jesus can smite it all out of us and save us, make us people worthy of His love, make us saints.
So it is together as Christians, not English, Christians, not American, Christians, not Mexican, not Haitian, not Turkish, not Russian, not Chinese, but as Christians in all those places and many more that we await the day when God will put praise in our mouths and a sword in our hands to execute judgment on all the evil nations of the world, which includes all those I just named.
Notice that it is “the judgment written against them.” It’s God’s judgment, not our judgment about who is right or wrong. That’s the victory for which we wait together as people of God, as people of Jesus Christ. It’s the day which our reading from Ephesians 1 spoke of when Jesus takes His place above every power and authority and dominion on earth, when God has “put all things under his feet and made him the head over all things for the church.” That’s the victory God is giving His saints.
In the meantime, we do have praise for our mouths and a sword for our hands that we may offer up and wield right now. Ephesians 6:17 talks about “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” And Hebrews 4:12 says “the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword.” When we go out singing God’s praises and speaking the truth of His Word, even to the rich and powerful of this world, we are getting ready for that great and final judgment only God can bring.
I understand there is a fine new film, “Harriet,” about Harriet Tubman, the famous and only female conductor on the Underground Railroad. Inspired by her faith and by visions God sent her, she escaped slavery in 1849, then went back to slave-holding states to rescue others and lead them to freedom in the north. During the Civil War she served in the US army as a nurse, advisor, scout, and spy.
The movie exaggerates this a bit, but Tubman sang spirituals as she did her work of setting slaves free, songs like “Oh Hail Ye Happy Spirits” and “Go Down Moses.” She altered words or tempo sometimes as signals to those she was trying to rescue about whether it was safe or not to come out of hiding. A biographer of Tubman says she also sang “Bound for the Promised Land” as a goodbye song to her mother.[1]
Tubman had the praise of God on her lips while the sword of God’s Word about His love and care for all people, including black slaves, guided her hands. She is one of God’s saints. What she did leading people to freedom is a sign of what God wants to do everywhere and for everyone, to set all people free in Jesus Christ.
You may be thinking that you aren’t near as heroic as Harriet Tubman, that it’s hard enough for you to praise God while just holding on to your frayed nerves and aching body. But that may be just enough. The praise and sword of God’s people is hardly ever flashy and dramatic, hardly ever a literal battle. Thursday I saw a young college-age woman lay down her phone and pick up a Bible and start reading while she waited for the plane. I think she had God’s praise in her heart and His sword of Truth in her hands.
Maybe you hum a praise song while you change a diaper. Perhaps you quietly sing “Jesus Loves Me” as you work up enough courage to say something about Jesus to another kid at school. Maybe you remember the words to “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho,” as you refuse your boss’s direction to fake some numbers in a report. I don’t know. You are the saint on the ground in your situation. All I know is that when you place your trust in Jesus, He has praise and a sword for you to carry too. I hope you will find that praise of God in your mouth and that sword of His Word in your hands today and always.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2019 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] Information about Tubman drawn from an October 31, 2019 Christianity Today interview with biographer Kate Clifford Larson about the new film. Clifford was a consultant for the film.