Psalm 4: 1-9 (links validated 3/23/24)

I read a snarky comment once that when you talk to God, it is called prayer but when God talks to you, it is called schizophrenia. In addition to the fact that we should never use a psychiatric condition in a cheeky way, the impulse behind this bit of snark is also wrong theologically. In Psalm 4 the psalmist prays and somehow God answers. Did the psalmist literally hear a voice? Probably not. But maybe. In the Spring Semester of my freshman year at Calvin College I was attending an on-campus worship service one Sunday morning. The preacher that day was my pastor at the time and someone whom I had known and respected for a good four or five years by then. In the middle of the sermon I heard someone (Someone?) say “Be a preacher.” It was vivid enough I was tempted to turn around to see who had said that. No person had. I believe the Spirit had spoken. I freely admit I have never had an experience like that ever again. But when we pray and meditate on God’s Word, we do properly expect that God will speak to us somehow, reveal Godself to us in some fashion, whisper by the indwelling Holy Spirit things we need to know and to apply from the Bible. So yes, it would be really unusual if during a time of prayer or meditation Jesus appeared to us or we heard an audible voice (at least it would be unusual if this happened on even a semi-regular basis). But it is not at all unusual to “hear” God speaking “in accents loud and clear” as the old hymn once put it.

I read a semi-snarky comment once that when you talk to God, it is called prayer but when God talks to you, it is called schizophrenia. In addition to the fact that we should never use a psychiatric condition in a cheeky way, the impulse behind this bit of snark is also wrong theologically. In Psalm 4 the psalmist prays and somehow God answers. Did the psalmist literally hear a voice? Probably not. But when we pray and meditate on God’s Word, we do properly expect that God will speak to us, reveal Godself to us, whisper by the indwelling Holy Spirit things we need to know and to apply from the Bible. So yes, it would be really unusual if during a time of prayer or meditation Jesus appeared to us or we heard an audible voice. But it is not at all unusual to hear God speaking “in accents loud and clear” as the old hymn once put it.

Walter Brueggemann offers an example of the most common answer given to the question of verse 6, “Who can show us any good?” He says that the dominant script/story in the U.S. is “therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarism.” By “therapeutic” he means “the assumption that there is a product or a treatment to counteract every ache and pain and discomfort and trouble, so that life may be lived without any inconvenience.” By “technological” he means “the assumption that everything can be fixed and made right according to human ingenuity.” The script is “consumerist” because “we live in a culture that believes that the whole world and all of its resources are available to us without regard to the neighbor.” And by “militarism” he is referring to “the myth of U.S. exceptionalism” that “serves to protect and maintain a monopoly than can deliver and guarantee all that is needed for the therapeutic, technological, consumerist society.” In other words, as people ask, “Who can show us any good?” they look everywhere, except to the God can “meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

Depending on which internet source you trust(!), it was the Romans or the Egyptians who settled midnight as the beginning of a new day. The pivot point was noon - the time of day when the sun was at its highest point, and there was no shadow on the sundial. That is the meridian. Opposite noon is midnight, which was the dividing point between ante-meridian (before the meridian, or a.m.) and post-meridian (after the meridian, or p.m.). The Romans may have taken their idea from the Greeks who got it from the Babylonians and so on. But in our story of Creation, a new day begins when the sun disappears. We are charged to begin a new day with a meal and then with rest.

“When you are on your beds,” the psalmist says to worshipers, “search your hearts and be silent” (4). She also speaks of lying down and sleeping in peace (8). Winston Churchill was one of the 20th century’s greatest leaders. However, while he spent prodigious amounts of time in bed, he didn’t spend most of it either in silence or peacefully sleeping. He generally awoke around 7:30 a.m. Yet he remained in bed to eat a large breakfast, as well as read his mail and the national newspapers. For the next few hours Churchill remained in bed while he dictated to his secretaries. He would even discuss matters of great state importance while lying in bed. Churchill would summon military leaders for bedside conversations. It’s rumored he even had a special breakfast table to fit his bed so that he could have important discussions while he ate breakfast in bed.

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