Cultivating Common Prayer: Lament

Last week I sent out a (fairly lengthy!) letter and song to elaborate upon our Sunday discussion of Common Prayer as Praise, and this week I continue that trend with a Psalm of Lament. My goal in this (and future posts in this series) is to offer some continued reflection on the Sunday coffee hour mini-lesson, and then to add a song or Psalm which facilitates entering into that dimension of prayer. This week I send a setting of Psalm 42. 

On Sunday, I mentioned that Biblical scholars consider praise and lament to be the two main categories of Psalm. These make sense, for they are themselves the two poles of human existence lived in relationship before our Maker: we praise God incessantly for the joy of existence and of salvation, yet at the same time we must lift all things which threaten our existence before Him in urgent prayer. These poles of praise and lament exist on the individual level, but they also exist on the level of the whole Church, the body of Christ, on pilgrimage to the Kingdom of God. Praying these psalms on the level of the whole Church brings in a third level as well, for the Church does this as a “holy priesthood,” interceding for the world and calling it to praise its Maker.  

Psalm 42 is pertinent on those first two levels, as individual and corporate lament, for it is a Psalm of longing to enter into God’s presence. This Psalm clearly has its origin in an individual’s radical experience of alienation from God, from others, and even from his former self. But this Psalm was also taken by Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) to refer to the Church as the whole body of Christ, existing in pilgrimage between some former taste of the presence of God (in conversion) and in longing anticipation of our eternal dwelling in the City of God. This Psalm then gives us, on an individual and a corporate level, an articulation of longing which will be relevant in myriad ways for our entire lives.  

I have set and recorded Psalm 42, but keep in mind that Psalms 42 and 43 entail one composition, and the reassurance doesn’t fully arrive until Psalm 43! Perhaps after listening, take a read through the ending (and I will work on setting that to music as well).

Happy Eastertide, 

Chris