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PSALM 103 (LXX); Hebrews 12:18-24; Exodus 24; Genesis 1; 1 Corinthians 15
Every week, beginning with sundown on Saturday, we recite Psalms with the Church, and so are illumined by God. Great Vespers begins with the astonishing psalm of creation (Psalm 103 LXX/104 Hebrew text), by which we stand, as it were, alongside God during His rest on the sixth day, and survey with pleasure everything that He has made.
We begin by encouraging ourselves to “bless the LORD”—a great privilege that God has given to His children, that by our praises, we may actually bring blessing to Him! And then we immediately address Him, speaking of His greatness, honor, majesty, and glory, before remembering the creation of light and the very heavens, as well as God’s use of His creation as He is present in it:
Bless the LORD, O my soul. O LORD my God, Thou art very great. Thou art clothed with honor and majesty, Who coverest Thyself with light as with a garment, Who hast stretched out the heavens like a tent, Who hast laid the beams of Thy chambers on the waters, Who makest the clouds Thy chariot, Who ridest on the wings of the wind, Who makest the winds Thy messengers, fire and flame Thy ministers.
Just as the first divine word of creation brought about light, so in this psalm, which begins Great Vespers, we remember the LORD of light. Light will be an important theme throughout the Great Vespers service, which comes, it seems, to its climax in the singing of the ancient hymn Phos Hilarion, O Joyous Light! We that come to the setting of the sun remember the joyous light of Christ, and praise Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, One God. As St. Paul reminded the Corinthians, “The same God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ has shone in our hearts to give the illumination of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus” (2 Cor 4:6). We look back to the first moment of creation, the calling of the light, and forward to the resurrection day, the eighth day, when Christ our Light bursts out from Hades, bringing the dead with Him into the light of the new creation. Now, in this present world, every awe-inspiring element of creation serves Him; later, when the resurrection morning dawns, every one shall see the Light for who He is.
Psalm 103 goes on to detail the order that God has brought to what would otherwise be a chaotic world:
Thou didst set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be shaken. Thou didst cover it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At Thy rebuke they fled; at the sound of Thy thunder they took to flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place which Thou didst appoint for them. Thou didst set a bound which they should not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.
The poet said “something there is that does not love a wall,” and we understand his words instinctively, for we all long, from time to time, for what is on the other side. But boundaries are also our friends, taming the wildness, and ordering the stronger elements so that they do not swallow up the lower-lying land. Boundaries and limits bring order and stability, so that the earth will not be shaken in a deadly way. Boundaries bring protection for those things that are weak. They also provide a differentiation that is essential to complex life. Our bodies require cell boundaries, and organ boundaries—cancer, of course, is the wrongful encroachment of a cell in a territory where it does not belong. The creation, too, evidently had such “fences” set up by God from the beginning, when He distinguished water from land, sky from land, mountains from valleys, and humans from God. Adam and Eve were given the command not to eat of a certain tree, not an irksome command, but as a restriction by which humanity was meant to mature. It is only with the Fall and the expulsion from Eden that boundaries become a source of lament.
The Psalm then fills in the details of what God placed in the hills, valleys, and air, while emphasizing the life-giving properties of water, when safely bounded for our use. Though our vantage point as singers puts us alongside God, enjoying this panorama, we also spot ourselves within it, watered by God, cultivating God’s plants, enjoying food, oil, and wine. Even while we presume to bless the LORD with our song, we recognize our creaturely status among the rest of what God has so wondrously made. With the other animals, God has provided for us!
Thou makest springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills, they give drink to every beast of the field; the wild asses quench their thirst. By them the birds of the air have their habitation; they sing among the branches. From Thy lofty abode Thou waterest the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of Thy work. Thou dost cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread to strengthen man’s heart. The trees of the LORD are watered abundantly, the cedars of Lebanon which He planted. In them the birds build their nests; the stork has her home in the fir trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the badgers.
Just as there are boundaries of space, there are also divisions of time, all made for our good and the rest of creation. The next few verses remind us of the interplay between sun and moon, nocturnal and day-working creatures, and the blessing of peaceful sleep! Since we sing this psalm at sundown, these verses are particularly poignant: we find ourselves in the midst of the action, watching the sun that knows its time, and resting, like God, from our labor at the end of the sixth day:
Thou hast made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting. Thou makest darkness, and it is night, when all the beasts of the forest creep forth. The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God. When the sun rises, they get them away and lie down in their dens. Man goes forth to his work and to his labor until the evening.
Then we back up and take a look at the whole picture, allowing the fullness of the creation to help us recognize the great wisdom of God, the One who designed this world to be teeming with creatures of the earth and of the sea. In the midst of the sea are man-made ships, but also that mysterious Leviathan who answers only to God, and serves as a reminder of our limited strength. Both the monster Leviathan and humankind, along with the whole creation, are dependent upon God:
O LORD, how manifold are Thy works. In wisdom hast Thou made them all; the earth is full of Thy creatures. Yonder is the sea, great and wide, which teems with things innumerable, living things both small and great. There go the ships, and Leviathan which Thou didst form to sport in it. These all look to Thee, to give them their food in due season. When Thou givest to them, they gather it up; when Thou openest Thy hand, they are filled with good things. When Thou hidest Thy face, they are dismayed; when Thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created; and Thou renewest the face of the ground.
This plenitude or fullness is not simply something that God has accomplished in the world’s past, but something that He superintends and cares for at every second and millisecond of the day. Without God’s providence, nothing could survive, but would slip back into nothingness. Without God as the source of life, we would return to dust, along with every created thing. It is by the LORD, the Spirit of Life, that all things continue to have their being. It is by the LORD that all new springs, and all renewals, including the great final resurrection, come to those whom He has made. Typically, the Scriptures distinguish between the psychē, the soul, by which God animates His creation, including mankind, and the very Pneuma, the third Person of the Trinity, by Whom He strengthens His Church. St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, reminds us that currently we have a body animated by psychē or “soul,” but that, because of Jesus’ resurrection, we look forward to a body that will be en-Spirited, and that will never die. Pictorially, we see the contrast when we put the creation of Adam and Eve (who receive psychē or animating soul from God) alongside the empowering of the apostles (who receive the Pneuma, the very Spirit, from the mouth of Jesus). Our psalm does not make this fine differentiation, for its purpose is not to contrast the old and new creations, but to remind us that the Spirit is the Holy One who gives life, and the same God who takes this life away at the proper time. Despite the cycle of life and death, however, we look forward to a final “renewal of the earth”—as Christians, we know that this will happen when Jesus comes again, and the New Jerusalem descends from God. Indeed, during Great Vespers, we stand at the cusp of these two worlds, looking back with wonder at what God has animated with psychē, but also looking forward to Sunday, the day of resurrection, when the first Perfect Human Being emerged in the power of the Holy Spirit. In Him we receive a sign of what will be for all God’s regenerated children.
In looking backward and forward, we come again to marvel at the glory of the LORD, recognizing God’s joy in His creation, and praying that we do nothing to hinder that joy. The great God, who makes the earth to tremble and the mountains to smoke, has invited us to celebrate along with Him this blessed cosmos that He has made, and which He originally entrusted to our care. The early Hebrews in the desert could not approach the great mountain of Sinai, where God gave Moses the Law, but had to stay at a distance from the smoking mountain (cf. Exodus 24); in contrast, we are invited to come near to God, for He has brought us close to Him in the person of the God-Man Jesus, and calls us to approach the Holy Mountain in wonder but in praise. Hebrews calls us to rejoice in this:
For you have not come to… a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them…. But you have come to … the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant. (Hebrews 12:18-24)
Each of us then, with the Psalmist, may sing to the LORD forever and in all ways, desiring to please Him from the midst of the creation that He has made, and knowing that in His good time we will join this holy assembly of angels and saints forever. May we not be numbered among the sinners who will not inherit the earth, but among those who always and in all ways bless the LORD:
May the glory of the LORD endure forever, may the LORD rejoice in His works, Who looks on the earth and it trembles, Who touches the mountains and they smoke. I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being. May my meditation be pleasing to Him, for I rejoice in the LORD. Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless the LORD, O my soul.
And so God’s joy in creation is matched by our human joy in both the creation, and the Creator. We end as we began: “Bless the LORD, O my soul!”