Using the Psalms

The Psalms in Christian History

The psalms have been part of Christian worship from New Testament times. In early Christian worship a psalm was sung following the Old Testament reading. In the great cathedrals in the Middle Ages, psalms were sung at various points in the service. This provided the congregation with a resource for private meditation at quieter points in the service. This singing was often antiphonal, that is, one choir responding to another with alternate psalm portions. The psalms were also important in the development of the Liturgy of the Hours, the daily prayer cycle of the Christian churches and monasteries. Catholic churches and religious orders have continued to maintain this Liturgy of the Hours, which covers all of the psalms over a four-week period, since the time of the Reformation. During and after the Reformation, Protestant churches made various changes to the way psalms were used in worship. Martin Luther replaced the traditional singing of psalms with the singing of hymns, while John Calvin permitted psalms to be sung only in the metrical version.

Examples of Prayer

The psalms offer us excellent examples of prayer. They are both prayers to God and part of God’s word to us. We can use them as part of our prayers to God as well as listen to what they might teach us about prayer and the God to whom we pray. The language of the psalms is such that it allows many people to make them their own prayers.

As prayers, the psalms take us through the whole range of life experiences. There are psalms of praise to God as creator and Lord of human history, psalms of thanksgiving for past blessings, psalms of trust, psalms that express both individual and community distress to God, and psalms that lead us in confession. There are psalms for all experiences in life and we are at liberty to use individual psalms as they offer us help in prayer.

 Many people have found it useful to pray the psalms in the order in which they come to us, namely from 1 to 150. There is no special pattern in the order of the psalms, although there is a predominance of lament psalms early in the collection and a predominance of praise psalms later. To pray the psalms in order can mean that we pray a psalm of praise one day, and a psalm of distress the next. We might even find ourselves praying a psalm of distress when we personally feel like praising. This need not disturb us.  While we often want to pray a psalm that “fits” our mood, it can be important and responsible to pray psalms that do not do so. We must remember that the Book of Psalms has been the “prayer book” of countless faithful people over the millennia. The psalms are not just there for our private use.  When we pray the psalms we join our personal or community prayers to the prayers of all the people of God, past, present, and future. When we pray a psalm of praise we join in the praise of others. When we pray a psalm of distress we join our prayers to those of people who suffer some distress. So to pray those psalms that do not fit our mood can be a way of praying for those who are in the kind of situation presumed in the psalm. The psalms can become a way of making intercession to God on behalf of others.

Difficulties in Using the Psalms

One difficulty in using the psalms concerns those psalm portions that seem “unchristian” to us in their raw expressions of dislike and hatred (e.g. Psalm 69:19-29). Whether we like it or not, such feelings are part of human experience. The point about these psalms is that the feelings of dislike and hatred are always expressed before God who is just and righteous and who ultimately judges all human action. While we may not often wish to use psalms for our own prayers, we should remember that in a world in which injustice is evident on our TV screens every night, there are many people who continually cry out for justice and help in the most horrid circumstances. Reading these psalms may be a way for us to appreciate more fully their anguish and pray more intelligently for them. Walter Brueggemann writes in his book Praying the Psalms (1982), “The work of prayer is to bring these two realities together—the boldness of the Psalms and the extremity of our experience—to let them interact, play with each other, and illuminate each other” (p. 27).

Praying the Psalms:

• You can pray with a psalm, that is, use the psalm as your prayer. You could imagine that you are the psalmist and adopt the words of the psalm as your own prayer.
• Alternatively, you could pray from a psalm, that is, use the psalm as a source of ideas for prayer. You could imagine the sort of situation and people that fit the psalm.  Pray for these people using some of the words of the psalm.  You could memorize (or write down) a phrase, line, or verse from the psalm and use it throughout your daily activities as a source for meditation or as a trigger for short extemporary prayers. You might like to write a brief personal reflection or response to the psalm as your prayer to God.  

Revd Dr Howard Wallace