Steven Croft

Today if you will listen to his voice

Today if you will listen to his voice

At the end of verse 7, Psalm 95 changes gear[1].  The final section of the psalm makes it unique in the psalter.  95.1-7a is a beautiful hymn of praise but like many others in the Psalms (see Psalm 100).  The final four verses take us deeper into what it means to worship not only with our lips but with our lives.  They are the reason that the Psalm has been used to introduce Christian worship since the time of Benedict.

Commentators remind us of the sense of development and contrast between the first part of the psalm and the second.  We begin with praise and processession, with loud cries of joy and shouts of thanksgiving.  We move on to prostration: to peace and stillness before God.  We have remembered that God is creator and redeemer.  We are now in a place where we are able to listen: to hear the still small voice of God speaking to us.  We are reminded of Isaiah in the temple in Isaiah 6 where loud praise gives way to a call of God.  We are reminded of Elijah on the mountaintop in I Kings 20 where God is not in the earthquake, wind or fire but the still small voice of calm.

The first part of the Psalm summons us to joy and to speak aloud our praise.  But the second part summons us to listen.  The first part looks back to the past as we remember God our Rock and our salvation and the stories of the Exodus and the history of God’s people. The second part looks to the present and the future:  how will we live when we leave this time and place of worship.

The Psalms and prophets of the Old Testament wrestle with the tension between the worship of God’s people and the daily life of God’s people.  Israel is called to worship the one true God, the king above all gods.  But that worship is not simply about singing the right songs and attending the temple on the right days.  The LORD is a holy God.  Worship is meant to transform our lives and the life of our community. Therefore an essential part of coming with joy to the LORD is to listen and to understand and to obey God’s word to us today.

Today if you will listen to his voice

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

[1] Most English translations move the final part of verse 7 into verse 8 to emphasise the change of mood

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Steven Croft

Guiding and providing

“the sheep of his hand”

The image which lies beneath the verse 8 is the same image as Psalm 23: The LORDis my Shepherd.  It is an image associated with the story of the Exodus.  God leads his people out of slavery to freedom in the flight from Egypt and the crossing of the Red Sea.  The LORD gives the gracious gift of the law at Mount Sinai.

There then follows the years of wanderings in the wilderness.  The LORD as Shepherd is very present to guide and to provide.  Guidance comes not only through the law which establishes the lifestyle of the community.  Guidance comes through the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, in the midst of the people when they are at rest and going ahead of the people when it is time to move on.

The LORD as Shepherd provides in the wilderness, where food is not regularly available, through water flowing from the rock, through birds landing in the camp and most of all through the gift of manna, the food from heaven, daily bread.

As we reflect on Psalm 95 today, we thank God that he is our shepherd: that he guides and provides in different ways in our own lives, in our families and in the different church commuinities we are part of. We thank God for his guidance and provision for this Diocese of Sheffield over the last one hundred years, that the LORD has been and remains our shepherd.  Like the people of Israel, the calling of the church is to find her way in the wilderness of this world, to remain together, to live in God’s way in challenging times.

Remember that guiding and providing today.  Look back and give thanks and rejoice.  But remember the story and the image of the Exodus, present in the first verse of psalm (the Rock) and this verse.  Psalm 95 has yet more to teach us, rooted in the Exodus story as we journey on.

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Steven Croft

Remembering the church we are part of

“…and we are the people of his pasture”

Remembering that we are the people of God is part of our summons to joy.  It is not only about looking back to the past.  We are also calling to mind the present day.  We bring into our minds the people of God of which we are part: the church throughout the world.

Throughout the whole cycle of day and night, God is praised all over the earth by those who are his people, by our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Through his death and resurrection, Christ has created a new people drawn from every race and people.  Christ has created one people in whether there are no divisions of race or gender. Christ has drawn to himself one people, the destiny of creation.

I may come to worship today cast down, or confused, praying on my own and facing immense pressures.  But I come to worship today, as well, as part of the people of God stretching all around the earth: Roman Catholic and Orthodox, Protestant and Pentecostals and everything in between.  I have Anglican sisters and brothers in every part of the world.  For many of my sisters and brothers, life will be very difficult today.  Some will be persecuted for their faith.  Others are living in great poverty and need.  We are one family.

Even the people of God in this Diocese of Sheffield is greater than I can hold in my mind at one time.  There are Christians living our their discipleship today in Doncaster, in Rotherham, in Goole, in Barnsley, in every part of the city of Sheffield.: teachers, medics, administrators, shop workers, students. There may only be one or two in a workplace or a council chamber.

There may only be a small number gathered in some places on Sunday morning.  But together we are salt scattered through the life of this region.  Together we are light, seeking to reflect the way of Christ to those around us.  Together we are part of the people of God, holding to the faith of Jesus Christ, all across the earth.

Our greatness and confidence does not rest on our numbers or our goodness.  As we will see in the next verses, we are not perfect people.  Our confidence rests in the truth that God has called us, the LORD is our shepherd, the LORD walks with us and before us and behind us, today and every day:

“ we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand”

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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Steven Croft

God’s own people

“For he is our God”

What does it mean to declare in the midst of worship that “he is our God and we are his people”?

Those who prayed the psalms in the Temple and in their private prayers in ancient Israel and those who pray the psalms as members of the Jewish faith today are declaring that they are part of the covenant people of God.

They (and we) are recalling in these words the story which begins with the call of Abram in Genesis 12 and the promise of a people who will be a blessing to the earth.  They (and we) are recalling especially the accounts of the Exodus and Passover, the crossing of the Red Sea and the giving of the law at Sinai. These were the events which created the people of God, Israel, the nation of the earth in a special relationship with God, redeemed from slavery, entrusted with the law and with a particular calling to witness to God’s way’s on the earth.

For the Christian, the words have a still wider and deeper meaning.  As I say these words as a Christian, I am recalling the life and ministry and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It is because of Jesus’s  sacrifice that I am able through faith and baptism to become part of the people of God. It is because of God’s grace in Christ that I and other Christians can be joined to God’s covenant community.

Paul writes profound words about the wonder of belonging to God’s people in Ephesians:

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundations of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone” (2.19-20).

In similar ways, 1 Peter invites us to remember who we are and the privilege of belonging to the people of God:

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (2.9).

Ponder today the story of the people of God from the story of Abram, through the Exodus and the long history of Israel, God’s amazing grace in Jesus, and the story of the church down the long ages, to the local church you are part of, to your baptism, to your faith.  Give thanks and rediscover joy.  We belong.  We are part of something bigger than ourselves.

This is what it means to say: “For he is our God and we are his people”.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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Steven Croft

The special relationship

“For he is our God, we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand” (Psalm 95.7)

Psalm 95 has been building to this point and we could and should linger here.  Through the Psalm we call ourselves and one another and the whole world to rejoice in the LORD, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  We are called to worship God first as the creator of heaven and earth, the beauty around us.  We are called to worship in the heights and depths, in chaos and in order.

Then once again we are summoned to praise, magnifying the LORD and bowing down before him.

And now comes this deeper, most profound reason for praise and joy.  The words need to be spoken with wonder and awe even though they are very familiar: “For he is our God, we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand”.

The Psalm is claiming a special relationship between the congregation who gather to worship and the God we adore.  We are not reaching out in praise to a God who is at a distance.  We are kneeling in adoration of the LORD who has called us, who has come near to us, who has made himself known, who has made us a people who were no people, who nurtures and sustains us.  This is the LORD who has called us into a relationship of faithful, covenant love.

Again there is an echo of the Psalm in the first line of Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father in heaven”.  The words claim immediately a relationship with God which is not of our making but his.  They place us immediately in a relationship with a community for we say our Father, not my Father.  They carry a sense of both closeness and intimacy yet of the majesty and greatness of God.

Worship in wonder and in joy: “For he is our God”

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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Steven Croft

To worship is to be changed

“….let us bow down….let us kneel….”  Psalm 95.6

John’s gospel tells the story of a conversation between John the Baptist and his disciples.  The crowds are discovering Jesus.  Everyone is going to him.  They think that John will be deeply concerned about this.

John’s answer is a model for any Christian who has ever been jealous of time and attention given to others.  It also has something profound to say about our worship and prayer.  John can speak only of his joy in Jesus:

“The friend of the bridegroom….rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled” (John 20.29-30).  He must increase but I must decrease”.

Praise and worship are dynamic acts. When we practice them regularly, they form and shape us in certain ways.  You can see that very clearly with the opposite of praise, the criticism of others. When a person allows a habit of criticism to grow within them, it shapes and shrinks them within.  Praise and worship have the opposite effect.

One of the ways in which praise changes us is that it helps us to remove ourselves, daily, from the centre of our own lives and recognize that God is much greater than we are.  The only and proper response to God’s greatness is to bow down, to kneel in humility.  We recognize our own place in the universe is not at the centre but at the edge, held firmly in the love of God.  Finding humility (or decreasing) is not to negate ourselves or our character or become invisible to others or ourselves.  It is to find our proper place and destiny and be freed from the continual stress of trying to be what we are not.

Christians are people who say to God and to themselves every day: “I am not the most important being in the universe.  God is. I will kneel and bow down in worship”.

He must increase and I must decrease.

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Steven Croft

Caring for creation – safeguarding the earth

“the dry land which his hand have formed”

We’re about to move on from the beautiful section on the Psalm about taking joy in God because of the glories of creation. We’re called to sing for joy to the Lord because of the depths of the earth, the heights of the mountains, the vastness of the sea and the dry land which his hands have formed.

As we’ve seen, all of these elements in creation can be images and pictures in our spiritual journey and in the landscape of our life with God.

But we are also reflecting on the wonders of the actual creation: the oceans teeming with life, the beauty of the mountain tops, the sculpting of the hills, the deep wooded valleys and the life which fills them.

This seeing and reflection take time.  More than any other generation, many of us can live our lives separated from the creation.  The call to delight in God and praise him in creation is a call to spend time in the fresh air, walking the hills, standing on the beach, gazing and the stars and simply pondering the greatness of our creator who shaped all of this.  Celebrating the centenary of this diocese means celebrating the beauty of the rivers and the hills, the natural landscape in which we are set.

And as we ponder so we must also reflect, in our generation more than any other, on the call of the fifth mark of mission: to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

This is an important year for Churches and environmental groups to seek to place environmental concerns back on the agenda of the politicians and those who make decisions about the care of the earth.  General Synod is to have a major debate on the environment in a few weeks time.

In this area as in every other, worship and praise draw us into God’s mission and into action.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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Steven Croft

Deeper into God

O come let us worship….. Psalm 95.6

We like to think our lives are stable and steady (and sometimes there are).  But there are also ups and downs, twists and turns, good days and bad.  We live in a changing and often difficult world.  The peace we need will come from within, from our relationship with God, not from outside us.  That is why we need to grow a strong core of prayer at the very centre of our being, founded on the appreciation and understanding of who God is. This is what it means to worship. Strength flows from that true centre. We learn to navigate from that true north.

The psalms recognize over and over again the movement in our lives.  They give us words for when life is stable and good.  They also give us prayers of lament, when we are disorientated, when we need to put into words our fears, our pain, our disappointment and anger. Finally they give us words for those moments when we are re-orientated again, when we find our still centre, when there is a time of calm again.

Psalm 95 has these movements in the background with its language of the depths and the mountain tops, the sea and the dry land. We were summoned to joy at the beginning of the psalm with four calls to praise.  The psalm has then given us a reason to be joyful across three verses which open our eyes wide to the glory of God in creation.

Now that structure is repeated in a shorter form: there is a threefold call to worship (let us worship….let us bow down…..let us kneel) then a final reason for our joy: for the LORD is our God and we are his people.

The movement in this psalm is not away from God and back towards him but moving deeper into God, from the threshold of the temple, through the doors and approaching the inner sanctuary.  There is a movement too as God draws near to us from the glories of creation to the call to know God, to be one with him, to be his.

Seek God’s grace today to draw into his presence and to be more deeply aware of his presence in your life.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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Steven Croft

Order and Chaos

“The sea is his and he made it, and the dry land which his hands have formed”

There are some times and moments in life when everything feels to be falling apart. Our carefully ordered and constructed world seems to be giving way.  Chaos is breaking in.  It happens when someone we love betrays us; or our lives are disturbed by illness; or we lose income; or floods or some other crisis strikes us.

In those moments we need to remember: the sea is his.  The sea in the bible is not the benign, happy symbol it is to many people in Britain.  The sea is the great symbol of chaos, darkness and disorder breaking in.  The recent floods and tidal surges have brought this kind of chaos to many in our country.

At the beginning of the Book of Genesis in the first story of creation, the earth is without form and void, chaos reigns, and the waters are everywhere.  God creates the world by holding back the waters so that the dry land can appear and be formed.  God’s work of creation is, essentially, bringing order out of chaos. The sea remains throughout the Old Testament a symbol of chaos breaking in to the settled order of our lives.

Other religions in the Ancient Near East saw the universe as a battle ground between equally balanced forces of good and order on the one hand and chaos  and evil on the other.  But Israel’s faith in God went much further.

Israel’s faith came to the place where even chaos was held in God’s hand, even the sea was his creation, even the great sea monsters were his delight and his playthings.

In moments of crisis when chaos rules, the last thing we feel like doing is praising God. Yet praise restores our perspective. As we remember who God is, we move back to the place where we can say in faith, the sea is his and he made it.  In that place we find the calm we need to make good decisions, the solid ground for action and the confidence to begin to move forward again.

“O you of little faith” Jesus once said to the disciples in the boat.  “Who is this?” they said in reply.  The sea is his

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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Steven Croft

Highs and Lows

“In his hands are the depths of the earth and the heights of the mountains are his also”

Sometimes we praise God by appreciating who he is. We might sing “Immortal, invisible, God only wise”.  Sometimes we praise God by singing out what the LORD has done for us or for all the world. Sometimes we bring God’s greatness to mind by recalling the wonder and scope of creation.

At first reading, this is where we are in verses 4 and 5.  We have praised God’s greatness and now we go on to see that greatness laid out in creation. If the depths of the earth are in his hands, how great must God be?

Take a moment to appreciate God’s greatness in creation.  Imagine the deepest valleys and the highest mountain ranges and remember that nothing and nowhere is outside of God’s creation.  But don’t stop there.

For this verse of the psalm and the next are not just about creation.  The picture of depths and mountain tops are also symbols of the highs and lows in our lives.  There is more than just geography here.

The psalms frequently use this kind of symbolism. Zion (or Jerusalem) is called a mountain.  Jerusalem is indeed built on a series of hills but not very big ones.  The point is that it is spiritually a high and important place where God dwells.  Psalm 23 talks about spiritual experiences in relation to the landscape – the valley of the shadow of death is a hard and difficult place but the psalmist finds God’s love and strength even there.

The New Testament picks up these pictures.  Jesus leads the disciples to a mountain top experience at the transfiguration and then back down into the valley to deal with the daily reality of life.  Paul writes in Romans that “height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus” (8.39).  In Ephesians Paul prays that we might be able to comprehend “the breadth, length, height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (3.18).

Our Christian faith and the joy God brings is not just for sunny days and mountaintop experiences.  In his hands are the depths of the earth.  His love is with us in the depths of human desolation. The LORD has been there and is there with us.

This post is one of a series of daily reflections on Psalm 95 in January, at the start of the Diocese of Sheffield Centenary Year

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