Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today’s lessons incorporate Psalm 81, Exultabo Deo, ‘Sing joyfully unto God our strength’.

Read it here.

Perhaps it is obvious why the first four or five verses would be a popular text for church composers to set, but there is much more in the psalm to digest.

The psalmist recounts God’s deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt by bringing them through the waters of the Red Sea. Yet, even though God brought about this great emancipation, the people rebelled by complaining, by making a golden calf to worship, and even refusing to enter into the promised land across the Jordan River.

This series of episodes has resonances for us today, members of Christ’s holy Church and of the New Covenant extended to us. We too are delivered from slavery to sin and death and brought into the Church through the waters of Baptism.

We too are being led to a heavenly country, to a place of abundance and rest — a ‘land of milk and honey’. But the path to that country is hard, tortuous, and deserted. There are many opportunities of us to forget God, to grumble, and be stubborn, and to worship gods of our own invention. Sometimes it seems like God has forgotten about us — though in retrospect, I am the one who has forgotten God’s deliverance from bondage.

So, this psalm, which at first seems to burst with joyful praise, ends on a serious note about following God, much like the message in Psalm 95: ‘Today if you hear His voice/ Harden not your hearts’ (verses 7-8).

How do we continue on this path? By worshipping God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — in the present moment. This is the worship that both Psalm 81 and Psalm 95 invite us to enter. That worship is always the straight and difficult path, the way away from my idolatry, my grumbling, my forgetfulness, and the only way to peace.

‘Sing joyfully unto God our strength.’

Justin