Ralph W. Klein

Christ Seminary-Seminex Professor of Old Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and editor of Currents in Theology and Mission

The Lutheran Book of Worship and the Hymnal Companion to the LBW inform us that Canticle 16 "I Will Sing the Story of Your Love" is based on parts of Psalm 89 and Jeremiah 33, not noting that a quotation from Psalm 100 also appears in the canticle. Five times the leader or the congregation sing "I will sing the story of your love, O Lord, and proclaim your faithfulness forever." After the leader and the congregation exchange this refrain at the beginning of the canticle, the congregation repeats it like a great Amen after two quotations from Jeremiah 33 and one from Psalm 100. The overall effect of the canticle is a celebration of the enduring story of the love and fidelity of the Lord, which brings joy in the place of sadness. The Lord is good and he is the bestower of everlasting love and fidelity. Our everlasting praise is the only fitting response to divine love and faithfulness that are without end. The fivefold repetition of the refrain and the inclusio formed by its use at the beginning and end of the canticle paint a picture of stability, normalcy, and expectedness about the availability of God’s love and fidelity. The Westminster Confession of 1648 has it right: The chief duty of humankind is to praise God and to magnify God forever. Small wonder then that the National Conference of the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians made the first line of Canticle 16 the theme of its 1997 conference. When all is said and done, church music in the evangelical tradition deals with the A-C-T-S of worship: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. One can only hope that many a worshiper will store this memorable refrain from Canticle 16 in her memory bank so that in good times and bad, in living and in dying, she may rely on the story of God’s love and the record of God’s faithfulness. As Luther said in his explanations to the three articles of the creed, this is most certainly true. Walter Brueggemann has called poems like this canticle in the Bible "Psalms of Orientation." They affirm central verities of the faith, what is true always, everywhere, and for everyone.

I want to hold up alongside this eternal truth other truths contained in Scripture, embedded in fact in the very passages noted as the basis for this canticle. Daniel Moe, the composer of Canticle 16, included only the first verse from Psalm 89, but I would like to think through with you the message contained in all of its fifty-two verses, not at all to correct Moe, but to look at theological reality from another angle, another social location, from a time when divine love and fidelity were very much in question, very much in doubt, from Israel’s exile when this Psalm was given its present shape. Many of you could cite dozens of examples in the church’s musical literature that deal with similar moments of consternation and dismay at the apparent contradiction between the goodness of God and the realities of individual and communal history.

Psalm 89 indeed focuses on the faithfulness of the Lord, using that word faithfulness exactly seven times. This fidelity is part of God’s incomparable character, setting him above every other divine being (vv 5-6). This faithfulness is bound up inextricably with God’s matchless power (v. 8). Such fidelity with power enabled God at the beginning to create the world and defeat the powers of chaos and now this mixture of faithfulness and power gives credibility to his promise to destroy Israel’s enemies (v. 10). This same divine fidelity surrounds and embraces Israel’s king and enables him to preside over a wide empire (vv. 24-25). Fidelity means that God pledges Godself to stick with the king through thick and thin, punishing the royal descendants to be sure when they err, but never violating his everlasting obligation to the line of David (v. 33). But by the end of the Psalm an honest look at contemporary history forces the Psalmist to call God’s fidelity into question as he comes to the seventh use of the faithfulness in the poem. As the Psalmist surveys a land in ruins, he concludes that God has clearly now become furious with his anointed king, defiled the king’s crown in the dust, cut short his days, and wrapped him in shame (vv. 38-45). How do these present realities square with the notion that God swore to David that he would be faithful? (v. 49). The Psalmist leaves that startling question unanswered. A Psalm which starts so positively ends in despair.

Psalm 89 consists of three kinds of material. In vv 1-2 and 5-18, the anonymous poet outdoes himself in offering hymnic praise. God is awesome and incomparable. The Lord is God of the heavenly armies (which is the way I translate the traditional "Lord of hosts," v. 8), with both heaven and earth completely in his control. God gives strength to the people. The Psalmist exclaims: The God Yahweh is our ruler; the holy one of Israel is our king! (v. 18) Someone "holy" in the biblical culture is separate or transcendent, but Israel’s God is paradoxically the separate or transcendent one of Israel. The expression "holy one of Israel" blends two incompatible ideas--God is separate and aloof, and God has chosen Israel--in that freedom and in that connectedness lies the real depth of Israel’s theology. The holy God has chosen Israel and turned Israel into a people who walk in God’s light. The seal of Valparaiso University has it right: In your light we see light!

The second kind of material in Psalm 89 appears in vv 3-4 and 19-37. It is precisely this dazzling and incomparable God, so lavishly praised in vv 1-2, 5-18, who chose David and his dynasty and entered into a covenant relationship with him (vv. 3-4). God’s strength becomes the king’s strength (v. 21) and God strikes down, for and through, the king all his foes. God gives the king worldwide dominion, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Tigris and Euphrates, the vast majority of the then known world (v 25). The king or royal child knows and acknowledges the divine parent: my father, my God, the rock or mountain who saves me (v. 26). Promises made to David are valid and extend also to all his descendants forever (v 29) with one significant proviso. If the royal children should ever go astray, God would punish their rebellious iniquities with rods and clubs, but without breaking the link of faithfulness and love (v. 33). All of these good things about David are given in a first person oracle of God. "I swore to David my servant"...."I have exalted one chosen from the people."

The word "Love" seems just right in Canticle 16--the story of your love-- and the word love, or at least the somewhat more closely defined equivalent "steadfast love," is also used conventionally in English translations of Psalm 89. But love is a dangerous noun or verb to use with God and is not used in the oldest writings of the Old Testament. Hosea, in the 8th century BC, is the first biblical writer to dare to speak of God’s (unrequited) love for humankind, but he never speaks of humanity’s love for God. Only the Deuteronomist, writing a century after Hosea, in the last generation before the end of the southern kingdom, dares to say that we humans ought to love God. This reticence in the Old Testament to use love in connection with God or our relationship to God is never explained, but scholars have speculated that Israel found love-talk dangerous because God’s love might be taken for granted, or God’s love might be manipulated, or because God’s love might be confused with the magical powers unleashed in the neighbors’ fertility cults. Therefore we should not be not surprised that the common noun for love (****) is not used in Psalm 89. Instead the Psalmist really talks about the steadfast love (***) of the Lord or, perhaps better, of God’s loyalty to his human followers (v. 1). If only it would fit the meter, we should sing in Canticle 16 "I will sing the story of your loyalty, O Lord, and proclaim your faithfulness forever." Hence it is God’s loyalty and faithfulness that are built into the structure of the mighty cosmos (v. 2). And it is this loyalty and faithfulness that God promises never to remove (v. 33). As a result of this loyalty and faithfulness the king’s throne will last as long as the sun (36) or be as dependable as the moon (v. 37).

So far in vv. 1-37 the Psalmist seems to have taken the generic message about the story of God’s loyalty and faithfulness and applied it to a specific, central, and crucial institution of his nation, the royal line of David. The king--David and all his descendants--are recipients and beneficiaries of God’s loyalty and faithfulness. The Psalmist so far is still within the contours of the theology of Canticle 16 as he engages in hymnic praise and in a recitation of a divine oracle to David that demonstrates God’s loyalty and faithfulness.

But it is with the third type of material that the poet breaks through to express his own sad experience when people, temple, land, and king have long since ceased to be important and perhaps have even ceased to exist at all. The Psalm is written in the wake of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C. and in bitter reaction to the arrest and blinding of the final king, Zedekiah. Verses 38-45 are conventionally called a "complaint" by biblical scholars, but they might more honestly called an accusation against God. The Psalmist’s words slash out at God: You God have spurned and rejected us; You God have become furious; You God have abhorred your covenant; You God have breached our walls and destroyed all our fortifications. In particular, God seems to be picking on the king himself, the recipient of God’s promise mediated through Nathan the prophet. The king now has lost battles because God fights for the enemies. Instead of ruling as long as the sun, the king misses out on the glory days of youth (45). Shame has become his daily apparel (v. 45).

Where, oh where have God’s loyalty and fidelity gone? Whatever happened to the "story of your love"? The bitter sense of loss and disillusionment in v. 46 is unmistakable:

The Psalmist calls upon God to remember how short life is and how meaningless it is since no one--however strong--ever gets out of this world alive (v. 48). The Psalmist also calls upon God to remember the taunts enemies fling at the people. For the first time since the first line of the poem the psalmist speaks for herself with the pronoun I and gives personal witness to the harm done by this pain-filled turn of events: "I bear in my body all the attacks of the peoples." (50) But these same enemies in their taunting of Israel really taunt God himself, whose virtues and accomplishments were so clear in vv. 1-2 and 5-18, and they taunt the anointed king, the recipient of God’s rich and apparently powerful promises in vv. 3-4, 19-37.

How does one reconcile the opening line of Psalm 89, "I will sing forever of the loyal acts of the Lord," with the closing line, "How your foes, O Lord, taunt, how they taunt the heels of your anointed one"? Let me propose a number of ways to effect such a reconciliation, some more helpful than others.

1. The worshiper can sing the Psalm again and again, each time beginning with the opening line that hails the everlasting loyal acts of the Lord and tracing the story of God’s incomparable loyalty and fidelity throughout the cosmos and in his promise to the royal family in vv. 1-37,--only to be shattered each time by the complaints and accusations of the Psalmist that are generated by the devastation of foreign invasion in vv. 38--52. The bad news of the Psalm is trumped by the good news at the beginning over and over again.

2. The worshiper can follow the lead of one of the great sermons in the book of Deuteronomy 29 that seeks the cause of the land’s devastation and the divine anger in human guilt and culpability. Why has the Lord done thus to this land Moses asks? What caused this great display of anger? Answer: "It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt." (v. 25) In the light of our sinfulness, God’s breaking off of his goodness to the king does not seem that inappropriate.

3. Or one can take the opposite tack and blame the guilt and the cause of the present misery on someone else, like one’s parents. Both Jeremiah and Ezekiel cite some of their contemporaries who thought they were being punished only because of what their parents had done: It was because our parents ate sour grapes that our teeth are now set on edge (Jer 31:29; Ezek 18:2). Don’t blame me for the Holocaust, we cry. Don’t blame me for bad racial relationships. Don’t blame me when the shoe companies exploit people in sweatshops in Asia. Don’t blame me for global warming. Don’t blame me for the unequal distribution of wealth within our country and for the great disparity between the living standards of the United States and almost every other country in the world. But of course our actions and attitudes are part of the problem, and/or we profit from the misdeeds of others. Jeremiah countered this cop out of his contemporaries by declaring that the children’s evil is more abundant than that of their parents (16:12). Blaming our troubles on the sinfulness of others seems like a desperate and hopeless alternative.

4. The painful contradiction between the first and final lines of Psalm 89 can be resolved by finding new recipients for the promises made to David in the middle section of the Psalm. The Book of Isaiah said that the promises once made to David would be redirected to all God’s people (Isa 55:3). I will make with each one of you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. There is an appropriate time for the royal priesthood of all believers to share in the promises once made to the king alone. But this approach hardly works with Psalm 89 where the Psalmist has experienced in her own body the attacks of the peoples; there is no way that she and her fellow servants feel themselves graced by the promises to David. The other possible alternate recipient for the promise to David is more helpful for it is our Christian conviction that what was once promised to David and all his descendants has become true in strange new ways in the life, death, and resurrection of the messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. He bore all our taunts and underwent all the attacks directed at us without complaint or accusation. So firm was Christ’s faith in God during his final moments times that when the centurion saw how he died--with living trust in God--he confessed, "Truly this person was God’s Son (Mark 15:39).

5. A fifth way to "solve the problem of Psalm 89" is to look to its immediate context in Pss 88 and 90. There was a time, earlier in my career, when the order of Psalms in the Psalter was considered a matter of complete indifference, if not irrelevance. The Psalter had about as much plot as the phone book! But then scholars began to notice that the Psalter begins with a poem that calls happy those on meditate on God’s law or instruction day and night, and it suddenly dawned on them that these ideal meditators were those who meditated on the following 149 Psalms of instruction day and night. Hence it was important that Psalm 1 was Psalm 1. Or that Psalm 22 with its piercing cry "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me" is followed immediately by that most idyllic of all Psalms that confesses "The Lord is my shepherd and therefore I will never be in want." Things are often not as bad as Psalm 22 nor as good as 23, but in reading these two psalms together one comes closer to the truth. In the case of Psalm 89, the preceding Psalm depicts an individual and not the community in the Pit or in the pits. The Psalm concludes with these words: "You [God] have caused friend and neighbor to shun me; my companions are in darkness." Hence the Psalmist in Psalm 88 challenges God’s treatment of the individual speaker just as Psalm 89 challenges God’s treatment of the nation and its king. There is no closure in either Psalm. Psalm 90, however, is a whole other story for it goes way back before the time of nation and king to the time of Moses, who confesses: Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations...from everlasting to everlasting you are God. This is the Scripture text lying behind the hymn, O God our help in Ages Past. Do we discover the truth about God somehow by reading Psalms 88 and 89 in the context of Psalm 90 and vice versa?

6. But perhaps the whole point of reading this shattering psalm and meditating on the contrast with the positive message of Canticle 16 is to retain the contrast. In the long run this tension may be a greater source of strength and comfort. Elie Wiesel tells the story of a young man who praises one of his teacher’s dazzling explanations. "That was beautiful," he exclaims. The teacher rebukes him: "When will you understand that a beautiful answer is nothing?" People define themselves by what disturbs them and not by what reassures them. In times of trouble our theology and hymnody are deeper than in times of success. In facing honestly the tough questions of life we may learn to understand the beauty of life’s complexity. Psalms 88 and 89 do not give beautiful answers to life’s questions, but only lament, more questions, accusations against God, and cries. But they also do presuppose a God who listens attentively to such Psalmists and who remembers not only how short and problematic life is and how severe the taunts are against his people, but they also presuppose a God who also ties a rainbow around his finger so that he will never forget his people or his commitment to them. The worshipping community needs Canticle 16, which by its memorable refrain and easy-to-sing tune creates a universe of meaning in which divine love and faithfulness are constant realities. But we also need the other 51 verses of Psalm 89 which enable us to do what suffering children of God must always be able to do, that is, to tell God what is exactly on their minds. If we can trust God enough to listen to our problems, we have rediscovered what faith is, namely, the ability to trust the Promiser when he promises. Which is the greater evidence for faith? "The Lord is my shepherd I will not want." Or "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" In the latter case, the Psalmist trusted God enough to tell God what he really thought of him.

The next two biblical citations in Canticle 16 come from Jeremiah 33. In these two cases the canticle and the Scripture text are not so much in tension or contradiction, but by looking more closely at the Scripture text can enrich our appreciation of the canticle. The leader in Canticle 16 sings: "In this place...shall be heard again the sounds of joy and gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the bride" (Jer 33:10-11). The canticle presupposes hard times without describing them. The ambiguity or vagueness about hard times allows almost everyone to participate in the canticle, everyone who has ever felt "I’ll never be happy again." It might be someone who has experienced the death of a spouse, parent, child, or close friend. It might be someone who has failed in a romantic relationship or at work or in school. It might be someone who has just been diagnosed as terminally ill. Many of us in the 60s felt we would never be young again after Kennedy and King were shot. "In this place" might refer to my nation, my town, my congregation, my family, my own life. It refers implicitly to the here and now, to a reversal that will take place within my lifetime, in this world, within my space. Other hymns and canticles can sing the joys of heaven; Canticle 16 promises a very earthy, tangible salvation that affirms creation, that accepts the human body, that has the capacity to appreciate music and art, good food and drink, and the incarnation. The sounds of joy and gladness will echo in this place.

Jeremiah 32-33 describes the prophet expressing confident hope precisely when the times were at their very worst. In these chapters Jeremiah was in prison for prophesying that Jerusalem would fall to Babylon and that king Zedekiah would become a prisoner of war. The Babylonian armies were already besieging Jerusalem when Jeremiah’s cousin Hanamel visited him in prison and asked him to purchase his family’s farm. Jeremiah not only accepted the invitation, but made elaborate efforts to record the transaction and make it both public and permanent. Though the Babylonians were knocking at the gates and would soon storm through them, he knew that in God’s own time and through God’s own promise normal times of commerce would someday return when houses, fields, and vineyards would again be bought and sold in Jerusalem. The conventional doctrine of retribution held that just as all the good promises of God had been fulfilled in the past, as in the giving of the land through Joshua, so God would in the future bring all his curses upon Israel in response to their disobedience (Josh 23:15). The book of Jeremiah reverses the direction of the doctrine of retribution. Now the fidelity of the judging word of God, which had become so evident in the destruction of the whole land, is the basis for believing the promises of good fortune that Jeremiah is making (32:42) and knowing they are reliable.

In this place is given a very specific meaning in Jeremiah. It is the land of Israel which is a waste without human beings or animals, it is the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are desolate, without inhabitants human or animal. It is in this very place that happy sounds would reappear including those of newly-married couples. There may be a deeper meaning here than the proverbial joy of the ever-smiling, happy bride that is a cliche in our society. (Grooms are characterized among us as either timid or scared!). Weddings are not only occasions of joy, but they are signs that the life of the community is always being renewed and that new generations are replacing the old. Weddings are acts of faith in the community’s future and a promise that new families and new generations will carry on life. In the ancient kingdom of Judah, a place devoid of human and animal life, Jeremiah promises that the basic institution of reproduction and continuity will once more be operational and in place. "Mirth and gladness" may not be tired, generic references to happiness, but specific allusions to the institution of marriage as well. Since Jeremiah had earlier prophesied that the sounds of marriage would come to an end (7:34; 16:9, 25:10), his promise of their restoration is another example that the promises of the future are as sure as the devastation evident to even the casual observer.

The lead singer in our Canticle next intones, also with indebtedness to Jeremiah 33, "Here they offer praise and thanksgiving in the house of the Lord, and we hear their voices shouting, ‘Praise the Lord of hosts for he is good, for his love endures forever" (Jer 33:11). "Here" is somewhat ambiguous in the canticle, presumably referring back to "in this place," but it is important to notice that the location of the praise-giving is in the temple, the place for the assembling of the whole community. Jeremiah envisions the restoration of normal worship when those bringing thank offerings offer a common table/altar prayer--"Praise the Lord of hosts for he is good, for his love endures forever." This simple prayer occurs about eleven times in the Old Testament--and two zillion times in Lutheran table prayers--and it is perhaps worth pausing to consider the statement affirming that the Lord is good.

To speak of God as good is to affirm that the Lord of Israel is the source of all that makes life possible and worthwhile. "Goodness" is an all encompassing attribute that catches up everything positive that human beings receive in life. It is often experienced specifically in God’s deliverance of persons from distress. The Lord is good because he does good things--gives life, delivers from evil, empowers.

The goodness of the Lord appears in creation. Note that seven times in Genesis 1 we are told that one created thing or another is good, or indeed very good. The goodness of the Lord is also demonstrated in the formation and care of God’s people. Since God is good and upright, he instructs sinners in his ways and guides the humble in what is right (Ps 25:8-10). Consequently, God also expects goodness from all God’s people and indeed from every human being. Micah writes: "He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to practice a loyal life style rather than to multiply sacrifices, and to walk humbly with your God." Justice and fidelity to God are inseparable and they constitute that which is good.

God’s loyalty lasts forever and connotes the action of the powerful God on behalf of his weaker people. This loyalty results in God sending out his word and healing people who were sick, unable to eat, and at death’s door. (Ps 107:17-21). This loyalty also results in God saving people caught in a stormy sea and bringing them safely to harbor. (Ps 107:23-31). God’s creation of the world (Ps 136:5-9), his deliverance from Egypt (Ps 136:10-15), his preservation of people in the wilderness (Ps. 136:16), and his gift of the land (Ps 136:17-22) result from God’s goodness and loyalty.

The lead singer introduces the final exchange in Canticle 16 with a quotation from Ps 100:4-5: "Give thanks to him and bless his name; the Lord is good, his love is everlasting, and his faithfulness endures to all generations." Psalm 100 is the only place in the Psalter that brings together God’s goodness, God’s loyalty, and God’s faithfulness. This comprehensive description of God makes it a fitting final affirmation by the lead singer in the canticle. Psalm 100 itself is a ringing invitation for the whole earth to praise God.

I know enough about music to know that I should not speak about music to musicians. In warning you not to sing this Canticle off key I am not concerned whether you are flat or sharp or whether you come in a half beat too late. Rather, I am concerned that we all recognize Canticle 16 for the good music and good theology it is and that we also recognize that a one-sided appropriation of its world view would be harmful theologically and ecclesiologically.

We sing Canticle 16 off key if God’s deeds proclaimed in this Canticle do not lead us to offer praise ourselves. While "thanks" can be done only out of legal compulsion and in one or two words, "praise" is something the believer offers spontaneously and often in a sentence and almost always before others. In his explanation to the First Article to the creed, Luther rehearses all the things God creates and preserves--body, soul, limbs, senses, reason, food, clothing, house, family, property and on and on. For all of this, Luther notes, I am bound to thank, praise, serve, and obey him. God’s deeds are always announced with the hope that they will effect change.

We sing Canticle 16 off key if we only sing solo and not in community. The story of God’s love creates a new people and not just new persons. The praise takes place in the temple and the command to praise is surely addressed to fellow believers.

We sing Canticle 16 off key if the story of God’s love and our song in response to it does not result in personal and corporate transformation. A current theological slogan holds that God loves us unconditionally. Lutherans appreciate that divine love is "without any merit or worthiness on our part," but we must always add at the same time that God loves us with the hope and expectation that the faith kindled in us will lead to an ever more sanctified life. In our mission statement at LSTC we announce that we prepare students who are able to work for the revitalization of the church as it seeks to transform the world. The church is always called to be reformed, and the church exists primarily for those who are not yet part of it. We Lutherans have been dreadfully slow in understanding and implementing the social implications of the gospel.

We sing Canticle 16 off key if we do not acknowledge the depth and unexplained character of human pain or the often jarring tensions between the harsh realities of life and the truths we say about God. Job’s friends thought they could calculate everything perfectly--great sin leads to great personal trouble--but Job is a person of unquestioned integrity, as even God admits. Job suffered for reasons that are "explained" only by a bet between God and Satan. Somewhere in the interface between Job’s pain, Job’s piety, and God’s infinite control and care for the universe lies a creative balance that may be all we get in this life. Canticle 16 is true, but as the entirety of Ps 89 makes clear it is not the only truth nor even the whole truth.

We sing Canticle 16 off key if we do not hold God to his promises. If the greatest story ever told is about God’s loyal love, God’s faithfulness, God’s promises, and God’s goodness, then when trouble develops, as it surely will, we need to remind God of his own loyalty and faithfulness. Where are your former acts of loyalty? is a legitimate and even a necessary question. If we can’t talk frankly with God, what’s the point in claiming a special relationship with him? Through baptism we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever. We ask as dear children ask their dear parent. We hold God to God’s promises.

And, finally, we sing Canticle 16 off key if we don’t see ourselves as agents called to implement the divine promises. To passively wait as mere spectators for God to act is to deny our calling and to reduce God to a wonder worker. The only way most people will ever experience the effects of God’s love and faithfulness is our acting for them in God’s name and in God’s stead. We have been created in God’s image for the singular purpose of extending God’s dominion over the whole of the created order.

It would be a terrible tragedy if we were so concerned about singing off key that we never sang at all. As each of us sings "I will sing the story of your love," we do it in the company of our fellow believers. Each of us sings "I" to express our own belief, but ever since God created the world God knew that it is not good for men and women to be alone. So sing boldly and sing together and even more boldly grab hold of the goodness, loyalty, and faithfulness that is God’s name, God’s character, and God’s special and unique identity. Where do we find out what God is really up to? Christians answer on the cross and in the empty tomb. If you had asked an ancient Israelite, where do you find God’s real identity, where do you learn God’s name? They would answer: Moses learned God’s name in the course of the Exodus from Egypt (Exod 3:13-15). There we learned about the name Yahweh, but more importantly, in that deliverance from slavery in Egypt, we learned about God’s central agenda. That is God’s agenda. That is God’s priority. That is God’s name! Bless that special name! Praise that special name--on or off key.