One author titles this psalm, A Psalm of Thanksgiving and Further Plea for Help. That's because it's actually two psalms that have somehow gotten attached to each other. That shift happens around verse 12. For our purposes here we're only hearing and considering verses 1-12. After verse 12 the psalmist switches into his complaint mode.
Side note: if the only contact we have with the psalms is at Mass between the readings, we'll never hear a complete psalm, as the whiney and vengeful bits have been eliminated. Perhaps just as well as they can be full of a negative energy and each day dishes up enough of that. The first twelve verses of Psalm 39 are extraordinarily tender standing beautifully on their own.
Verses 1-2: The psalmist repeats the word waited twice — "I waited, I waited for the Lord." I like that. Instead of saying, "I waited for the Lord a really long time," repeating the word waited seems to have emotional content. We can feel his urgency.
This translation then says the Lord has stooped down to me. Another translation says, "the Lord inclined to me." Hmm. "Stooped down" — I have the image of the great God of creation getting down, bending low over us like a good parent or teacher. Isn't it a tender scene to see someone get down low on eye level instead of talking above him/her.
This sense of God stooping down to each of us also suggests that God has noticed us in the first place. I ask young people who have created their own vision of God, "Does your God know and care that you exist?"
And in this getting down low, God hears our cry. God listens. God is with us on an emotional level. I'd suggest that God's listens to more than just our words, but God listens to the cry of the heart which is often unspoken.
Verse 3: Here the psalmist give us an indication of his plight. He feels as if his life is stuck in a deadly pit. Miry clay is essentially mud. A car can get stuck in the mud, but a human like can get stuck too, yes? Stuck in resentments, prejudice, addiction, fear, despair, regret. A mind can get stuck in ignorance, even stupidity. But then notice that the psalmist seems to catch himself, as if he's got lost in his complaint and then returns to the great personal truth, that God has pulled him out of it, put him on his feet, back on a sure path. God restores. Can I name that for myself: that even after a long waiting, God puts me back together.
Verse 4: God has put a new song into the psalmist's mouth. A new song. It's a song of praise. And it's his own song — a poetic way of saying "Through all of my troubles, my love of God; my praising of God is refreshed within me." The psalmist hopes this refreshed praising of God will be contagious. God is essential for him. Do I trust God? "I trust this brand, I trust the news that comes to me through this channel, I trust my doctor, I trust my finance guy." Maybe I've gone over to the rebels (as the psalmist suggests). A Russian friend told me after the Soviet collapse, people started flocking back to the Russian Orthodox Church, "Oh, they've just switched their political party," she said. Now in the United States we hear the new term, "Christian Nationalism." Not good: political party and nation as god.
Verse 6: What a wonderful verse! The psalmist has put away all his woes and is overflowing with his observation of God's wonders. "God has given us two books; the first is the book of nature, the second is the biblical word," Father Alexander Men taught. There are 150 psalms. I'd suggest we can all compose our own praise-psalm. We could call it Psalm 151.
Verses 7-8: The psalmist speaks directly to God, "You don't want sacrifices and offerings." But many of us were taught, "Offer it up." Hmm. Maybe. But might that cliché have also been a way to silence any complaint. God asks only for the inner spiritual way of an open ear. What about the ear of my heart? What might that entail?
Verse 8: It must be important, he finds another way of saying it to bring home the point. God wants to hear only one thing only from: "Here I am." It is an offering of self. Christ is the perfect pattern of this self-gift.
Verses 9-12: "I delight in your law." Does God elicit real delight in me? Do I feel it (from the depth of my heart)? Many people these days, especially among the young, say, "I'm more spiritual than religious." Let's not dismiss them. What are they getting at? We can recite the Creed and participate in a church function and never look within. The word religion comes from the Latin, relegio-ere which means to reflect, reread or to consider.
Carl Jung's theory is that we are born with a religious impulse or instinct. When I was a young boy one rainy Sunday after the last Mass in the school auditorium, I was part of a little procession as the Blessed Sacrament had to be returned to the church. The priest carried the ciborium hidden under a humeral veil as I walked ahead in my altar boy's cassock and surplice while ringing a set of handbells indicating that the Sacrament was passing. All along the way, men genuflected and took off their hats, women in dresses knelt on the curb with little children. Only a felt-need, an inner impulse or instinct would bring people to their knees in the rain, not a rule.
"I delight in your law." Does that mean just reciting, believing and obeying church rules? I don't think so. There is another law — one that is written in my heart. It is the law over my own being: that God imagined my existence. That God took a moment to create me, to breath God's life into me. That God has a great hope for me. That I belong to God who wants me to persevere in knowing God in the heart-to-heart relationship God dreams of. That's much bigger than anything found in a parish bulletin or dutifully following the rules. Maybe this is what the young person means when he/she says, "I'm more spiritual than religious." May I encounter something of this myself today. Has the religious impulse been knocked out of me? God's merciful love.
