Psalm 34
“Rejoice with me!”
The Fourth Sunday of Lent
Church of the Good Shepherd
Texts: Psalm 34:1-8 The Rev. Ross M. Wright
Luke 15:11-32
Psalm 34 is an invitation to praise the Lord, no matter what. The psalm is an acrostic. Each verse begins with a latter of the Hebrew alphabet, from aleph to zayin. The psalm invites us to praise God in every situation, from A to Z:
I will bless the Lord at all times;
his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul makes its boast in the Lord
the humble will hear and rejoice.1
Proclaim with me the greatness of the Lord;
let us exalt his Name together. (vv. 1-3)
This psalm is like bell which we ring on Sunday morning, alerting everyone in the neighborhood that we are here to worship and inviting them to join us in the praise of God. Better yet, think of church which rings bells every 15 minutes. The message is: Wherever you are, no matter how your day is going, “Magnify the Lord with me, let us exalt his name forever.”
Who is the speaker in this psalm? Who is making this invitation, “Magnify the Lord with me”? Psalm 34 is attributed to King David, and in particular, to a specific event in David’s life. He was on the run from Saul, who wanted to kill him, and ended up in the city of the hostile King of Achish – from the fire into the fireplace.2 But he managed to escape by acting like he was an insane, dressing in rags and foaming at the mouth. When the king saw him, he told his courtiers to send him away – the ruse worked. So one way to understand this psalm is to imagine David, thanking God for deliverance from his enemy.
But psalm 34 can also be understood Christologically, that is, as referring to Jesus Christ. David, “the anointed king” of Israel, is a prototype of Christ, the Messiah, God’s anointed one. Everything that happens to David points to Christ, who is “great David’s greater son.” Even though Christ comes after David, historically, there is a sense in which Christ is already in David when David prays. 3 Who is speaking in this psalm and inviting us to praise God with him? David praises God. More importantly, Christ praises God, and he invites us to praise God with him. Christ himself addresses us this morning and says to us: “Magnify God with me.”
“Magnify the Lord with me.” What exactly does it mean to give thanks with another person? What does it mean for us to join with Jesus Christ in the praise of God? The answer is found in the parable of the lost son in the fifteenth chapter of Luke. In Luke 15, Jesus tells three parables in which, in each case, something dear is lost and then found again. In the parable of the lost sheep, a man leaves ninety nine sheep that are safe in order to search for the one sheep that is lost. When he finds it, he brings it home and throws a big party, saying to his friends: “‘. . . rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost.’”4 In the parable of the lost coin, a woman who had 10 coins and lost one, stopped everything she was doing and ransacked the house until she finds it. “[A]nd when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost.’”5
In the third parable, a man has two sons, and looses one. Notice the progression in the three parables. We move from 100 sheep to ten coins to two sons. And in the last story, the stakes are considerably higher. Here, what is lost and found is not financial security or money but a person, the father loses his own child. The center of this parable is the father’s joy when his son returns. This point is often forgotten, because of our interest in the son’s departure, or the father’s extravagant love, or the older brother’s resentment. But the real center of the parable is the party which the father throws for the wayward son when he returns. When he sees him coming, he runs out to meet him, and before the son can get out his confession, makes arrangements for a huge celebration:
“‘Quick, bring the fatted calf and kill it a, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and his found.’ And they began to make merry.”6
“Rejoice with me.” This invitation is at the center of each of the parables. Here, as in Psalm 34, God invites us to rejoice and be glad with him. And Jesus reveals what really makes God’s heart glad: when we find our way back to the Father’s house.
“Rejoice with me. . . . Let us magnify God together.” Can we rejoice with God today? It is not hard to be glad when something good happens to you. But it is not at all natural to rejoice at someone else’s good fortune or to rejoice when someone else is happy. “Every time my friend succeeds, I die a little.” Is this an exaggeration? Think about the situations in which a friend invites you to rejoice with him or her. Can you rejoice when you receive your friend’s annual Christmas letter, describing in detail how all the children have made honor role and been accepted to the college of their choice? Can rejoice at your best friend’s wedding when you are still single? Or with your friend’s new baby, if you are struggling to conceive? Rejoicing at someone else’s good fortune is particularly hard when money is involved. Imagine that your next door neighbor or colleague at work wins the lottery – big time – the same lottery you’ve been playing for the last 10 years – and she has a big party and says: Come celebrate with me. Would you?
Let’s return to the parable for a minute. It is important to remember that the story is constantly moving toward the dramatic final scene, the conversation between the father and the older brother. After working in the fields all day, he is on his way home and comes within earshot of the party. He hears all the singing and dancing and asks one of the servants: What’s gong on? When he hears, he is angry and refuses to go into the party. He wants nothing to do with it. And once again, we hear the voice of the Lord, in the words of the father, inviting us to rejoice with him. We had to celebrate, he explains: “It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.’”
Apparently, God experiences greater joy at the return of wayward sons and daughters than he does at the hard work of believers who never stray. Does this offend us? If it does, then we have not yet understood the nature of God’s radical grace to the ungodly. Joy with God and in God is joy at his grace extended to the ungodly, the sick, and the lost, to others, and to us. The evangelical biblical scholar, F. F. Bruce, was asked shortly before he died to sum up the essence of evangelical faith. His answer: a deep conviction in God’s grace to the ungodly.7
God’s grace to the undeserving is the source of our in God. This is the good news which liberates and makes us truly happy. Listen to how William Tyndale, who made the first complete translation of the New Testament into English in 1534, defines the Greek word, euangelion, or “good news.” “Good news,” or “gospel” means “good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad, and maketh him sing, dance, and leap for joy. . . . [we can] hear no more joyous a thing, than such glad and comfortable tidings of Christ. So that he cannot but be glad and laugh from the low bottom of his heart, if he believe that the tidings are true.”8 It is the knowledge that Jesus Christ, “great David’s greater son,” has wrestled with sin and death and won, in order to reconcile us to God. This message always brings release, always brings freedom when we hear it.
How do we experience this joy in the gospel, this joy with God? It happens when realize how far we have strayed from the Father’s house, and make our way back home again. It happens when we see the person who left this congregation during a rough patch, come back, and we can truly rejoice. It’s when we see God’s grace extended to ungodly.
Jesus Christ rejoices over us this morning. He has prepared the banquet. He has filled the table with good things. This service of Holy Communion offers a foretaste of that heavenly banquet, when we will join at table with all those throughout time who have died in the hope of the resurrection. “[Many] will come from east and west, and from north and south, and sit at table in the kingdom of God.”9
1 The first part of this verse can also be translated, “Magnify the Lord with me.”
2 The superscript of psalm 34, not included in the BCP, reads: “of David, when he feigned madness in the presence of Abimelech, who turned him out, and he left” (JPS). The reference is to 1 Sam. 21:14ff., when Saul still king and people are beginning to favor David, saying, “Saul has slain his thousands, but David his 10 thousands.” Because of Saul’s jealousy, David is on the run and ends up in the territory of the King of Achish of Gath, whom he fears. In order to save his skin, he appears to be insane.
3 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible, trans., James H. Burtness (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1974), 18.
4 Lk. 15:6.
5 Lk. 15:9.
6 Lk. 15:23-24.
7 TSF Bulletin.
8 Quoted in David Lyle Jeffery, “Such good and Comfortable Tidings –” in The Reformed Journal 39 (1989), 11.9 Lk. 13:29