I had an epiphany while listening to Johnny Cash that transformed the way I preached the Psalms.
Well, okay – maybe it wasn't exactly an epiphany, but it was an important insight. And while it may not have exactly transformed my preaching of the psalms, He at least nudged me in the right direction.
I was working on a doctoral thesis, The Narrative Preaching of the Psalms. My objective was to write a series of sermons based on psalms that told a story. So far, the project had not gone well. I was having trouble finding story-psalms; there were not as many as I thought. I was beginning to wonder if I should scrap the whole project completely and get a new one.
Then I went on vacation. Before I left, I grabbed my CD case, looking for "traveling music." My collection contains an eclectic mix – praise music, jazz, rock, country and world music. My wife and I listened to this mishmash of musical styles all through the trip.
It was in the middle of a Johnny Cash album that it finally hit me. It was not just ballads that told stories. Every song told a story — or at least a part of one. Every song, in whatever style, connected in some way to a story.
Ballads told stories, of course. Johnny Cash is famous for them: "A Boy Named Sue," "Folsom Prison Blues" and "Ring of Fire." But the rest of his music told stories as well — stories about love, sadness, sorrow, hope and joy. Every song had a story.
We listened to other discs. Every kind of music – love songs, praise music, jazz. The songs expressed every possible human emotion, and all that emotion arose from human experience. Sometimes that experience was in a beginning — a boy meeting a girl he wants to fall in love with. Others times, it was an experience from the past — blues songs about broken love affairs. Others picked up the stories in the middle, when the singer was enraptured with his girl, his God or even his Corvette. Some celebrated triumph. Others related tragedy. But each song had a unique story behind it.
That's what attracts us to music. Some part of the singers' experience resonates with us. We sing along, perhaps changing the meaning just a bit to fit our own experiences, lives and moods. Even though the singer does not know us, we adapt the music to our needs. We say to each other, "Listen, they're playing our song."
The Psalms are the same. They come from ancient people who experienced the same feelings, challenges and joys we feel now. As we read or sing them, their stories become ours.
Some psalms tell their stories directly. Other psalms are clearly written in the midst of a story. Psalm 51 is written in the midst of David's sorrow over his sin with Bathsheba. Psalm 56 is written when David was seized by the Philistines. Psalm 130 is written from the bottom of a pit — either spiritual or literal — and tells the anguish of a trapped man. Psalm 137 catches the psalmist by the rivers of Babylon, weeping in unresolved anger. At the end of the psalm, he still has not fully dealt with his trouble. It ends with him saying "Happy is he who repays them for what they have done for us—happy is he who takes their infants and dashes them against the rocks!" (Try reading that one to a sleepy Sunday morning congregation!)