The Church In The Psalms

Just a bit of reflection: the more familiar I become with the Psalms through reading and dwelling on them, the more oriented I become to the realities of being the church in the world. This, as opposed to a merely individualistic reading of the Psalms.

What I mean is, that the Psalms, while absolutely meant to supply words for the cries to God of his individual members, are also meant for the prayers and praises and supplications of the church who is in Christ, the Christ of the Psalms.

He went through these travails of the flesh for us (for each individual member, absolutely; but he came to redeem a people, a royal priesthood, a nation, a bride). Those travails are given expression uniquely in the Psalms.

This morning, I read Psalm 120, the first of the Songs of Ascent:

In my trouble I cried to the LORD, and he answered me. Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips, from a deceitful tongue. What more shall be given to you, and what more shall be done to you, you deceitful tongue? Sharp arrows of the warrior, with the burning coals of the broom tree. Woe is me, for I sojourn in Meshech, for I dwell among the tents of Kedar! Too long has my soul had its dwelling with those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.

This brought me right up against the truth that these are the words of the sojourning, suffering church in the world. As an individual member of Christ's body, I am in union with the church universal through our union with Christ; there is a for real solidarity with the sufferings she experiences, and I am, right now, groaning in those sufferings, even if I feel relatively at ease for the moment: "all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution" (2 Timothy 3:12). What this Psalm and others like it teach through their expressions of joy and sorrow and difficulty (and of imprecation, verse 4) is that the ultimate realities are those expressed in all the Psalms.

I'm realizing that it is happiest to have my thinking transformed through God's word to think as he does about his church and about our experience in the world as a "lively stone" of it.  The Psalms are uniquely given for this purpose, giving us words that transform our thinking to see his church as God sees it in this world.