A Primer on How to Pray the Psalms
The Old Testament book of Psalms is a collection of 150 hymns, poems, and prayers used in the worship of biblical Israel, and is central to the Christian tradition of morning and evening prayer. These prayers have been the common heritage of Christians and Jews alike for more than two thousand years. Indeed, Jesus himself would have known and prayed the Psalms, and in the gospel frequently quotes or alludes to passages from the Psalms that he and his listeners would have known well. The New Testament also often borrows imagery from the Psalms in describing Jesus and Christian life in him.
When the psalms are prayed in the Christian liturgy of morning and evening prayer, we are thus joining ourselves to the prayer of Christians of every time and place and indeed to the prayer of Jesus himself. Thus, when we pray Psalm 41:9 (“Even my best friend, whom I trusted, who broke bread with me, has violently turned against me.”), we can readily imagine this verse coming to the mind of Jesus when he is betrayed by Judas – a connection already made by the gospel writers (see John 13:18). More broadly, anyone who turns to prayer after having experienced betrayal can pray this Psalm together with Jesus and countless others throughout history who have had similar experiences.
The Psalms contain the full range of human emotions – some are hymns of praise, thanksgiving, and joy, while others express fear, anger, loneliness, bewilderment, and lament. Whatever you may be feeling today, there are psalms that will resonate with your experience, and there are psalms that won’t. Even when the liturgy invites us to pray a psalm that isn’t precisely where we’re at on any given day, we can be sure that some of our Christian siblings are exactly in the throes of that experience right now. And so we pray with them, and with Jesus for them, and experience that connection with them. And on the day that the psalm does express exactly what we are feeling, we can also know that Jesus and our fellow Christians are praying it along with us – so we never need be alone.
In particular, many people have difficulty with the harshness of some psalms that pray for God’s justice and even vengeance on enemies. Jews and Christians both wrestle deeply with these passages. As Christians, we know that the “enemy of God” is never a human being, but spiritual forces opposed to God and to human flourishing and justice (Ephesians 6:12). We believe that even the most evil human beings are themselves trapped by their sin, and so for God to defeat God’s “enemies” means that they, too, will be freed from what binds them to their injustice and their blindness to the humanity of their neighbors. Sometimes the psalmist is aware of this deeper understanding, and sometimes they’re so angry that they just don’t see it. But when Jesus prays the psalms, the “enemy” of the psalmist is also a sinner Jesus died for, and we are invited to pray all the psalms in that same Spirit.
So, for example, Psalm 137 is a deeply poignant lament sung by a people that has experienced war crimes, traumatized by unspeakable atrocities. The psalmist recalls those who stood by and mocked them during their trauma, and finally explodes with: “How blessed will be the one who breaks open the skulls of their babies!” (137:9). That’s a shocking thing to say, and we’re supposed to be shocked by it. It’s such an inappropriate thing to say that many people wish it had been edited out of the Bible, or at least out of our liturgical prayer. But many people have experienced trauma so severe that they can at least imagine coming out with such a prayer themselves. And even if we don’t know what to do with those feelings, God does. And God knows what to do with your inappropriate and unacceptable feelings too.
Praying all even these disturbing prayers, before God, if not in our own name then in the name of those whose pain and search for healing has led them to utter them, changes us. And that’s what prayer is supposed to do. Praying the Psalms on a regular basis allows our own prayer to be shaped and formed by the prayer of the Church and the prayer of Jesus. It’s been a significant Christian practice for centuries, and I hope you’ll join us for morning and evening prayer and allow this practice to form your faith as well.