Abstract
Our corporate worship is incomplete without the participation of every member of God’s Great Family. If even one voice is excluded then the church lacks a precious gift. I wonder how we can invite every age into a participatory Act of Praise at the beginning of our corporate worship? How can we actively invite praise from the lips of children and adults, readers and non-readers alike?
One possibility is to sing simple refrains that are sung by a leader and repeated by the congregation. Any simple refrain can be used in this repeat-after-me style. In the following psalm settings, I have provided one such refrain. Other refrains can be used to a similar effect.
Another way to involve children and adults, readers and non-readers into a participatory Act of Praise is to repeat the lines of the psalm one line at a time. In the following settings I have paraphrased the psalms to be said rhythmically, first by the leader and repeated by the congregation. Each line has a suggested musical backdrop that will lead the verses back to the refrain. The intention of the following is to be both rhythmic and melodic.
Each psalm begins with a short reflection to give context to the corporate singing. The rhythm of the first psalm setting is provided and can be used as an example for the other settings.
June 2nd: Psalm 96
Psalm 96 is a corporate song of praise to God who is our judge. It is a wonderful thing that God is our judge, for God is merciful and loving and is the one who supports and helps us. We can have hope when God is our judge. And hope inspires a joyful response. I wonder what gives us happiness.
Refrain:
Verse 1: (leader, then all)
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
Verse 2: (leader, then all)
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
June 9th: Psalm 146
Psalm 146 is a song of praise to God who is our helper. With God’s help we can have joy because we know that God is always near to us and to those who are in need. There is a great future for God’s Great Family. The same God who made the heaven and the earth will give us new life from generation to generation. I wonder how we can help others in the same way God helps us.
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
Verse 1: Halleluiah! Praise the Lord! See, our trust is in the Lord Maker of the earth and heaven. God has come to give us help!
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
Verse 2: God sets all the prisoners free! God gives sight to the blind! God lifts up the broken hearted! God brings justice to the earth!
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
June 16th: Psalm 5
Psalm 5 is a beautiful psalm of prayer to God. We know that God listens to our prayers because God loves us. God’s love for us gives us confidence that we are not alone. When we wake up in the morning, we can remember that God is with us and that God will guide us through the day and bring us home in peace. I wonder how God will help us today.
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
Verse 1: Listen to our prayer, O God. Listen to our sighing. Listen to our cries, O God, In our Morning Prayer.
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
Verse 2: Through the greatness of your love We will come before you. We will bow in awe of you, Lead us in your justice.
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
June 23rd: Psalms 42, 43
Psalms 42 and 43 are songs of inspiration to remind us that God is near to us no matter how we are feeling. Even when we are feeling sad, upset or angry, God is near to us. God wants us to express how we are feeling, not to disguise it. When we are truly honest with who we are and how we feel, God draws near to us to give us new life and hope. I wonder how we are feeling today.
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
Verse 1: As the deer longs for the stream So we long for you, O God. We thirst for the living God. Let us see your glory!
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
Verse 2: When our soul is sad, O God, We remember you. We will hope in you again, You will give us help.
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
Verse 3: Send us light and send us truth. Let them be our guide. Let them bring us to the place Where your joy resides.
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
June 23rd: Psalm 77
Psalm 77 is an important psalm as it reminds us of all the things God has done for us. We remember these things so that we can believe that God will help us again. A long time ago God helped people out of slavery into freedom. God still helps those who are oppressed or sad or in trouble. I wonder how God has helped you. I wonder how God will help you.
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
Verse 1: We will cry aloud to you Listen to our prayer. In our trouble you will help, You will keep us near.
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
Verse 2: We remember your great love, How you saved your people You will lead us into life Through the mighty waters.
Refrain: Together, we will sing our psalm to God.
Vintage VanderKam
James C. VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans. 2012. $25.00. pp. 202. ISBN: 978-0-8028-6679-0).
Six of the seven chapters offered here by James C. VanderKam are revisions of material first presented as the 2009 Speaker’s Lectures at Oxford. As a whole The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible is principally a retrospective analysis, illustrating where the conversation has reached and what a consensus looks like, rather than offering a challenging or innovative reconsideration of how the Jewish scriptures were formed, reformed and transmitted in the Second Temple period. Not surprisingly, and as the footnotes reveal, several of the topics described and examples discussed here by VanderKam have already featured in his earlier publications on the scrolls; they are now brought together in a fresh and accessible synthesis. In discussing the implications of the ‘biblical’ scrolls (quote marks his) 1 Sam. 10:27 and Deut. 13:7 are the principal examples; variants for those verses have long been known and discussed, but VanderKam discourses elegantly about their textual pluralism. Though there are neat observations on the use of scripture in the Enochic writings and Jubilees, consideration of commentary in the sectarian scrolls is largely confined in a traditional manner to the continuous and thematic pesharim. The chapter on scriptural authority offers sensible comments on what the scrolls suggest about how the Law and the Prophets functioned. Some key works not to be found in later Hebrew Bibles have a chapter of their own: Jubilees, Aramaic Levi, the Book of Giants, Ben Sira, Tobit, Enoch, the Epistle of Jeremiah, and Psalms 151, 154 and 155. After a slightly anomalous chapter on Jewish groups, only a small part of which says anything about the ‘Bible’, there are two chapters on some of the ways in which the scrolls can enrich the reading of the New Testament, both the Gospels and their concerns with the Messiah, scriptural interpretation, legal matters, and community regulation, and also Acts, especially Acts 1–4, and the letters of Paul, especially 2 Cor. 6:14–7:1 and uses of the phrase ‘works of the Law’. Vintage VanderKam; safe and sound.