Quiet Sounds and Noisy Praise in the Psalms
By Catherine Petrany
As the holidays approach, the constant chatter of our cultural angst grows louder. Everyone wants our attention. Leaders, politicians, and pundits pound on the many available doorways, whether television, social media platforms, or podcasts. Images of well-groomed, beautiful families enjoying the fruits of their shopping labor on Christmas morning inundate our eyes from smartphones, billboards, and computer screens. Most of all, we hear the heralds sing one word again and again: buy, buy, buy! Then, you’ll be happy. Then, you’ll be at peace.
Amid the din of these many voices, we may long for quiet, whether we know it or not. We may long for Advent, which invites us to a different kind of anticipation, one that stills the distraction and dissipation of our thoughts. One that accounts for the reality of human anguish rather than hiding it. Such anticipation calls us into the kind of joy that has very little to do with political, material, or even emotional satisfaction. And it is quiet.
The psalms give us images for this kind of anticipatory joy and they give us the steady words to articulate our unsteady hope. Though the psalms burst forth with every kind of word for every kind of human experience, significant moments of quiet and silence break into psalmists’ ongoing dialogue with God.
Psalm 1, the entrance into all that follows in the Psalter, offers us the image of a righteous person, constantly and quietly meditating on divine instruction both day and night (v. 2). In Psalm 19, we hear nonhuman creation silently proclaiming the “glory of God” (vv. 2–5). Psalm 37 exhorts sufferers to be still before God, to wait (v. 7). So too, in Psalms 62 and 131, we find silent souls resting in God (Ps 62:2, 6; 131:2). Psalm 65 suggests that even praise itself might be wordless (v. 2). These moments of quiet in the psalms stand alongside the honest and bold acknowledgment that human life is full of pain (e.g. Pss 13, 22, 51, 88, 130).
There are no easy answers in the psalms, and no effortless pathway to health, wealth, and selfie-worthy ease. But there is a quiet that ushers in the sounds that matter, the sounds that arise in the hearts of those who seek not their own faces, but the face of God (Pss 24:6; 27:8)
The Psalter ends with Psalm 150, the noisiest psalm of all. “Give praise!” calls the psalmist, again and again. Praise with “blasts upon the horn,” with “tambourines and dance,” with “strings and pipes” and “crashing cymbals” (vv. 3–5). But the exuberant sounds of Psalm 150 reject the superficial uproar of our contemporary technocracy. This song of praise emerges out of the illness, isolation, grief, and violence that touch all of us (e.g. Pss 38; 42; 77; 79).
The unbridled music of Psalm 150, as part of the larger and often sorrowful story of the Psalter, reminds us that Jesus Christ’s birth anticipates the violence of the crucifixion. His mother wrapping him in swaddling clothes and his final breath from the cross after praying a psalm are both quiet moments (Luke 2:7; 23:46; Ps 31:6). Both are moments of suffering, and yet both are the source of every human joy. Let us, then, “wait eagerly for the LORD” in the quiet of our hearts, that we might also, “with everything that has breath, give praise to the LORD! Hallelujah!” (Pss 37:34; 150:6).
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