Commentary on Psalm 18 by Dr Noel Donnelly  for Sunday 15C

 

 

 

Alternative Psalm 18.8-15

Commentary 15th Sunday Year C

Have you ever consulted a Thesaurus when you’re looking for a different word for something? The writer of this psalm of course didn’t have a Thesaurus as we do but he seems highly chuffed in finding a variety of words to describe God’s teaching or Law. He expresses these in giving his first six lines the same pattern and rhythm. They are like rays bursting out from the Law, all giving advice for our good and happiness. For the psalmist God’s guidance does not consist in heavy impositions:   “they revive the soul” and  “give wisdom to the simple” in verse 8. “They gladden the heart and give light to the eyes” in verse 9;  and “they are sweeter than honey fresh from the comb” in verse 11. All very positive ways for living out our relationship with God which we call the Covenant.

Our psalm’s praises for God’s law are a response to the reading from Deuteronomy, where Moses urges the people to respond to The Book of the Law “with all your heart and soul!” He says, “The Word is very near you: it is in your mouth and in your heart!” And the psalm reaches forward to the topic of Law again in the Gospel, where a lawyer was trying to catch out Jesus about the written law: Jesus replies in the parable of the Good Samaritan, saying, “Go and do the same!”

And so, this psalm is not just about outward behaviour in law observance: verse 15 says it is an inner melody that is expressed as “the music of the heart”. So we sing it not just as a performance of course but from the heart… head, heart and eventually hands are all summoned.

That’s a huge responsibility for all of us! Can we too be like the Good  Samaritan in today’s Gospel, when the music in our heart calls us towards the poor and the migrants and the isolated who surround us? That psalm is a wake-up call for me anyway!

Ps 18: Lord, you have the message of eternal life.  Words (c) The Grail, England;  music (c) Francis Duffy.  Recorded by Helen Healy.

Ps 18: You have the message of eternal life.  Words and music Noel Donnelly (c) Kevin Mayhew ;    Recorded by Grace Buckley.