Preaching the Psalms as Stories...Continued from page 3

I once preached this psalm for a hospice memorial service to families struggling to recover from the death of their terminally ill relatives. These grieving relatives found the psalm was strangely comforting ? even the angry parts, because many of them were struggling with the same feelings. The psalms told them that God was willing to listen to them with all their doubts and anger. They could release their anger to Him, and grow beyond it. The story of the psalmist echoed their own story.  

When preaching a psalm like this one, it is important that we do not end where the psalm ends. We need to complete the arc of the story by bringing resolution. The sermon should end in hope. In the end, God is faithful to His people.

We may celebrate God’s faithfulness in the past.  

Many psalms reflect on past struggles and victories. These psalms remind us of the reason we tell stories at all ? as testimonies to God’s goodness. In Psalm 136, the psalmist reflects on the major events of the Exodus, and invites us over and over to remember that “His love endures forever.” When we get to the end of the story in the psalm, there is no need to end. We can continue the story in our own day, using the story of our congregation or our own lives as examples, without violating the meaning of the text. When we combine the ancient story with our own modern one, the lesson of the text becomes as relevant as a newspaper headline.

While most of the Bible is narrative, there is a crucial difference in the narratives of the Psalms. The Psalms do not just tell stories ? they sing them. They are lyrical, not merely factual. That is the way God intended them to be presented. For those of us who can’t carry a tune in a bucket, this means conveying the feeling as well as the facts of the psalm.

Preaching the story of a psalm is not the time to give lectures on biblical history or the parallel structure of Hebrew poetry. It means making us feel what it is like to have our souls in peril with only our faith for comfort. The psalmists went to great lengths to make us feel as they felt, so we might experience a glimpse of God’s mercy on the other side of trouble.

We don’t have to have the skills of King David (or even Johnny Cash) to tell these stories – we just have to tell them honestly. But if we can see the story behind the psalms, and can bring that story to the listener, then the story will live in them as well. The story of the Psalms will become our story, too. 

Bill Fleming is an Associate Reformed Presbyterian Pastor and teaches at New Life Theological Seminary in Charlotte, N.C.

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Psalm” The Prayer Book of the Bible, Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1966.