Psalm 150:1-6  Praise the LORD! Praise God in his sanctuary; praise him in his mighty firmament!  ² Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his surpassing greatness!  ³ Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp!  ⁴ Praise him with tambourine and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!  ⁵ Praise him with clanging cymbals; praise him with loud clashing cymbals!  ⁶ Let everything that breathes praise the LORD! Praise the LORD!

            Our text today is the appointed Psalm for the Second Sunday of Easter in the ‘C’ cycle of the lectionary.  It is the final psalm in our Bibles (unless you have a Bible with the apocrypha which includes psalm 151), and fittingly ends on a very high note.  Praise God!  Praise the Lord!  Katheryn Schifferdecker, Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary (St. Paul, MN), writes about this psalm:

“This last of the psalms is a doxology of doxologies.  This closing doxology has begun already in Psalm 146, with its opening summons to "Praise the LORD!" Likewise, each of the last five psalms in the Psalter begins and ends with this phrase, "Praise the LORD" (in Hebrew, hallelujah!) But in the last of the psalms, the word hallelujah is used repeatedly; it becomes an insistent drumbeat that rises steadily to a crescendo of praise. The word hallel ("to praise") is used over and over again in Psalm 150, thirteen times in just six verses!  To be precise, hallelu is the plural imperative of the verb hallel ("to praise"). And jah (or yah) is shorthand for the personal name of God: Yahweh. So, to put it in a Southern idiom, hallelujah means "Y'all praise Yahweh!"”

 

            Don’t you just love how she puts it?  Y’all praise Yahweh!  I love it.  See, the Hebrews were southerners after all. :D  While I was doing some research about this psalm, I also found an interesting tidbit that Eugene Peterson had written about.  Peterson is a well know theologian who has written many books about various topics of the Bible.  Regarding Psalm 150, he writes:

“This is not a 'word of praise' slapped onto whatever mess we are in at the moment. This crafted  conclusion of the Psalms tells us that our prayers are going to end in praise, but that it is going to take awhile. Don't rush it. It may years, decades even, before certain prayers arrive at the hallelujahs....Not every prayer is capped off with praise. In fact most prayers, if the Psalter is a true guide, are not. But prayer, a praying life, finally becomes praise. Prayer is always reaching towards praise and will finally arrive there. If we persist in prayer, laugh and cry, doubt and believe, struggle and dance and then struggle again, we will surely end up at Psalm 150, on our feet, applauding, "Encore! Encore!"”

 Yesterday we celebrated the 3^rd Sunday of Easter, and like good Easter people, we will continue to celebrate Easter for a long time.  Hallelujah! Can be our song, as we celebrate with all the saints that have gone before us, chanting “Praise God!” and “Praise the Lord!” as we go along our way.

In our prayers this week:  Ann, Jane and Norm, Marianne, The Varner Family, and the Roof Family