A sermon on Psalm 16 by the Revd Dr Geoff Leslie
A video recording of the whole liturgy, including this sermon, is available here.
Every Tuesday night at Compline, we read together Psalm 16 which is the Psalm we have sung together today. When we read it, I often feel some frustration at the translation. Firstly, it doesn’t recognise the many references in the psalm to land and farming. I want to call that the Old Reading. And secondly, it doesn’t recognise the potential this psalm has to refer to Christ’s resurrection. I call this the New Reading. Let’s look at it as we heard it sung tonight.
1 Preserve me, O God, I turn to you for help.
2 I profess, “You are my Lord, my greatest good.”
3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight. (this verse was omitted)
4 I once put faith in false gods, the idols of the land. Now I make no offering to them, nor invoke their names. Those who chase after them add grief upon grief.
5 Lord, you measure out my portion, the shape of my future;
6 You mark off the best place for me to enjoy my inheritance.
7 I bless God who teaches me,
Who schools my heart even at night.
8 I am sure God is here, right beside me.
I cannot be shaken.
9 So my heart rejoices, my body thrills with life,
My whole being rests secure.
10 For you will not abandon me to Sheol,
nor send your faithful one to death.
11 You show me the road to life; boundless joy at your side forever!
So the last 5 verses are quoted by Peter in his sermon in Acts 2 and he finds in it a reference to resurrection. And that was probably not in the mind of the farmer who wrote it.
The Old Reading
The old reading sees this psalm as a rather hopeful and grounded psalm expressing the belief that he is one of the good guys and expects that God will look after him.
- He has his religion right – he doesn’t follow those who worship other gods
- And this is unusual – he has good farmland. ‘The saints in the land are the excellent ones in whom is my delight’. He honours the farming community as being set aside by God for their holy calling of working the land.
Then he uses six synonyms to describe his farm (v5 &6): my portion, my cup, my lot, my boundary lines, my pleasant place and my inheritance. He feels that this land entrusted to him by God is good and he loves it and he will work it and he’ll sing ‘This land is my land, this land’s not your land, God gave me this land, and it is good land’. It disappointed me that one of the commentaries I looked up says, ‘Of course this is just a metaphor, he is really saying that his inheritance is his relationship with the Lord, and he feels secure in it.’ I say that sounds like the comment of a city person sitting in his study who has never owned land. His trust in God and his connection to his land are all intertwined. Like indigenous people feel. There is an earth connection in his God-connection.
- He has his heart right – he is putting God first, trusting him ‘always before me’.
- So with 1 – 3 in place, he goes on to express his confidence that God will see him right and won’t let him die prematurely – God will not abandon him to Sheol, and then in parallel, he will not allow his flesh to see decomposition = die. Nathan’s translation understands this interpretation of the last point: ‘You’ll never give me up to the grave; or leave your dedicated servant to rot.’
This makes this psalm what Brueggemann calls ‘a psalm of Orientation’. It’s a psalm that says, “when you live right, God’s in his heaven and all’s well with the world. I’ve been blessed so far and I reckon that blessing will continue.”
There’s more to the spiritual life than this kind of confidence, because sometimes when we have everything lined up, God is in his heaven and it can still go terribly wrong, as many other psalms attest. But psalms of orientation and confidence are still valid. It holds to a certain resilience of the way God has made the world, that it will work out right somehow. Sometimes that’s how life feels – I’ve got a good house, a good family, a great church and I love God for it and through it.
The New Reading
But this way of reading it changes. Peter sees the resurrection of Christ in this psalm.
When they translated this into Greek in about 200BC, they found the phrase ‘You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor allow your Holy One to see corruption.’
The phrase ‘lisheol’ in Hebrew is translated ‘eis Hades’, which means ‘to Hades’. Both Hades and Sheol are the names of places of the dead, one Greek one Hebrew. It’s a place where all the ghosts hang out, not particularly pleasant but not a place of torture either. Everyone must go there in the end, but God will keep the psalmist from going there too early. Both Hebrew and Greek at this point suggest it means ‘God will not let me die’ because I am a good bloke, a faithful one, a holy one.
Switch forward to the year 30AD and Peter has a look at this phrase in the Greek and can see a different meaning. The Hebrew says ‘you will not abandon me TO Sheol’ and so does the Greek, but the Greek word ‘eis’ can also mean ‘you will not abandon me IN Sheol’. You can die, but that won’t be the end. And in the case of Jesus, God did not abandon him in Sheol but brought him out of there before his body could decompose.
This is the beginning of a whole new theology which is not found in the Hebrew Bible but begins to permeate the New Testament. An extension of God’s care to the afterlife.
So this psalm and its place in the religious life of the faithful has taken a new fork. The old reading was as a psalm for good and godly farmers, expressing gratitude and love for the land and a great trust in God.
Now it becomes a messianic psalm about Christ’s resurrection and a basis for hope in the afterlife. With that turn, some of the other phrases take on new meanings. There is a suggestion to the pious NT reader that only the soul goes to Sheol, and is later joined to a new resurrection body. My trust and hope in God may not protect me in this life, but there will be reckoning and restoration in the afterlife. To be fair, Peter did not invent this. It had become a way of looking at life that became more pressing in the previous couple of centuries as Israel realised they were going to be subjects in one great indifferent empire after another without any earthly hope of justice. They thought if God is real, there needs to be a reckoning.
The singer Brandi Carlisle has a song called “&encoded_url=aHR0cHM6Ly95b3V0dS5iZS9LSnFMMXlJbTllMD9zaT1FMW1ZNTNxaVIxckhtUXFQ&email_id=7cef960807cdb9b8920c1abbf3409a30" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Joke,” where she sings about people who have been bullied and ridiculed. She says don’t worry about the bullies because the joke is actually on them:
“Let ’em laugh while they can
Let ’em spin, let ’em scatter in the wind
I have been to the movies, I’ve seen how it ends
And the joke’s on them.”
I have been to the movies, I’ve seen how it ends. That is exactly what the writer of Wisdom of Solomon says. He describes the end of the movie like this:
“Then the righteous will stand with great confidence in the presence of those who have oppressed them. . .When the wicked see them, they will be shaken with dreadful fear, and they will be amazed at the unexpected salvation of the righteous. They will speak to one another in repentance, and in anguish of spirit they will groan, ‘These are people we once held in derision and made a byword of reproach—what fools that we were!’” (5:1-4; NRSVUE).
Wisdom of Solomon, probably written in Egypt about 100 AD, a book from the OT Apocrypha. The great dream of ultimate justice, the bullies getting their comeuppance.
So Peter says, This Jesus whom YOU crucified, God has raised up, He has now become the Lord and Christ. [And you’re gonna be in trouble!]
But it invites us to read ALL the psalms with a thought of God preserving us and setting things right in the next life, not just here and now. The phrases about life become eternal life, about the presence of God or the House of the Lord become a reference to heaven, it extends God’s care beyond death; it promises vindication, but it may be later.
This new reading powered the Christians. God will not stop persecutors persecuting you, but God will be with you in that suffering and bring you through it. God will not stop you suffering but will show incredible grace which is sufficient for you. You may die but God’s care will be real and strong and warm and reassuring even if you go ‘to Sheol’, because when you’re ‘In Sheol’ all will be made well.
Problems with the New Reading
- We have lost the old sense of earth-connection and the holiness of serving God and trusting God in daily work. In the embrace of a new metaphysic and a vast cosmic hope in the afterlife, we have diminished our caring for the earth and for justice in this life.
- Unfortunately, Christians then are led to endless speculation about the nature of the resurrection, the nature of heaven and hell, (and purgatory), Some of this has been very helpful, but sometimes it has led to an array of abuses.
It has given incredible courage to the persecuted, because though their persecutors could do unspeakable things to them, God would bring things right in the next life.
But then it becomes an excuse not to help those who are suffering or under oppression. Tell the slaves, glory awaits you, Jesus will rock your soul in the bosom of Abraham, soon you’ll cross the river and can lay your burdens down by the riverside. Now get back out in those cottonfields …
Or we have said: Heaven is a wonderful place – this world is not my home I’m just a passing through, I won’t be here that long so who cares what I do.
What I want to see is a reading of this psalm that captures something of the earthiness and landedness of the Old Reading, where people look at their circumstances and opportunities in life as God’s entrustment, God’s allocation and they learn to trust and serve and be faithful in their calling.
And I also value some of the New Reading – there is a spiritual life, a way to experience God transcendently, that recognises the kingdom of Heaven as present in our world, and our citizenship in it that transforms the way we live now, and only gets stronger when we die. I
We need to live well now, we need to love the earth and care for it now. We need to stand for justice and mercy for those around us and find the path of life for now but also recognise this path leads us into eternity. In fact, there is very much in the whole Bible that tells us that in many ways, judgment is now, eternal life is now, heaven is all around, intimate connection with God is for now.
It is a powerful affirmation of hope and faith in God and the life God has given us here on our land or in our work whatever it may be. We cannot read it now without some kind of echo that God’s care lasts beyond this life to the afterlife.
So this psalm gives me courage. It strengthens my bones, it puts a glint in my eye, set to my jaw, I will set God always before me and I will not be shaken. I will never be pushed off track.
It gives me perspective. God’s put me in this place , he’s set me up with a bright future, and I need to do my best and God will finally look after me.
It gives me hope. We know how the story ends. God is faithful and right and those who misuse God’s name and bring disgrace to it will be corrected, perhaps severely, and those who have been misunderstood and bullied will be vindicated.
It gives me value. My life matters, who I am is a privilege and significant. I hear Jesus’ say, As the father sent me so send I you. God has invited me to work together and bring blessing to our world, our families, our communities. Following the One who is risen, who has gone before, who has showed us how to live and how to be. Here on this earth, our home, we help prepare it for its restoration and live every day for the renewal God is promising us.