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When thy word goeth forth : it giveth light and understanding unto the simple.  Shew the light of thy countenance upon thy servant : and teach me thy statutes.  AMEN.

(Ps. 119: 130, 135)

Those words are two verses from the Psalm we heard sung by the choir to plainsong before the Gospel Reading.

And I chose them because I thought we might spend a few moments this morning thinking about what I suspect is a rather overlooked part of our Sunday Morning Liturgy – the ‘Gradual Psalm’, that is the Psalm between the first Reading and the Gospel.  Incidentally, it is called the ‘Gradual Psalm’, after the Latin word, ‘gradus’, meaning ‘step’, as it was originally sung from one of the steps in the Chancel or Sanctuary.

Three simple questions:  Why do we have the Psalm between the first Reading and the Gospel?  The second is a bit ‘niche’, and is really only for those who know the Services of Mattins or Evensong – why don’t we sing or say the Gloria after the Gradual Psalm?  And, thirdly, some reflection on the Psalm which we heard this morning.

[Slide 1]  Winchester, of course, has a long association with the Psalms.  As soon as the first Minster was built, the congregation would have been using the Psalms in Worship, and once it became a Priory, the monks would have been following the Benedictine pattern of Psalmody throughout the day.

[Slide 2]  In the mid-11^th Century, both the Winchester Bible, kept here in the South Transept, and the Winchester Psalter, kept in the British Library, were produced, both with magnificent illustrations.  And the Psalms continue to be used in the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer.

So, why do we have the Gradual Psalm?  The Book of Psalms, containing 150 of them, is the great Hymn Book and Prayer Book of the Old Testament.  Every human emotion, pretty much every aspect of the human condition, every different way in which we might want to relate to God, all of these are contained in the Book of Psalms.

There are Psalms offering guidance, such as 119, to which we’ll return soon; Psalms of praise, including, most notably, Psalm 150, ‘O praise God in his holiness : praise him in the firmament of his power’, and the wonderful final verse of the book of Psalms, ‘Let every thing that hath breath : praise the Lord’ [Ps. 150:1, 6].

There are the Psalms of Ascent, 120-134, sung as the people went up to Jerusalem for the Passover and other Festivals – ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills : from whence cometh my help.  My help cometh even from the Lord : who hath made heaven and earth’ [Ps. 121:1-2], from Psalm 121, or ‘I was glad when they said unto me: We will go into the house of the Lord.  Our feet shall stand in thy gates O Jerusalem.  O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee’ [Ps. 122:1, 2, 6], from Psalm 122.

There are Psalms of Lament, such as 137, a Psalm sung whilst in exile in Babylon, ‘By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.  As for our lyres, we hung them up on the willows that grow in that land’ [Ps. 137, 1-2].

There are royal Psalms, Psalms to be sung collectively or prayed individually, Psalms of wisdom and remembrance, and much more.

And some of the Psalms are really difficult to say or to pray.  I’ve already quoted the Psalm in Exile, Psalm 137, but the final verses of that read, ‘O daughter of Babylon, wasted with misery : yea, happy shall he be that rewardeth thee, as thou hast served us.  Blessed shall he be that taketh thy children : and throweth them against the stones’ [Ps. 137:8-9].  Those are words of an oppressed people, suffering in Exile – we may not feel like dashing babies’ heads against the stones, but we might be able to pray for those who do feel like that.

Psalm 109 is spoken by someone who has been grievously slandered and abused, ‘Thus have they rewarded me evil for good : and hatred for my good will’ [Ps. 109:4].  His words to God about them may be strong, but they are honest – they are how he feels, whether that is right or wrong: ‘Let his days be few : and let another take his office.  Let his children be fatherless : and his wife a widow.  Let his children be vagabonds, and beg their bread : let them seek it also out of desolate places [Ps. 109:7-9].  There will be people who are suffering for the truth, and they might feel like raging at God at the unfairness of it all – and these Psalms vent those feelings.

We include the Psalm in our Eucharistic Liturgy because it gives us a Scriptural moment of prayer, for ourselves, possibly reflecting how we feel, or for others, who are experiencing great joy or great distress; it gives us a moment to reflect on our own feelings and to be honest before God about ourselves and others.  As with all of the Readings, when we hear the Psalm, we are given the opportunity to ponder what this means for us, for our lives, for our prayers, for our concerns for others.  I hope I’ve said enough to justify our use of the Psalms on Sunday mornings, and perhaps given you a little nudge to reflect on them in a different way as they are sung.

Secondly, I sometimes get asked why we don’t sing the Gloria, at the end of the Gradual Psalm, as we do at Morning and Evening Prayer – ‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost: As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.  AMEN’ [BCP].  The simplest answer would be, ‘Because we don’t’!  But that’s not very helpful.

It seems to be because of the particular way that the Psalm, as part of what are called the ‘Propers’, those bits set for particular days, rather than the ‘Ordinary’, the bits that stay the same all year round – the particular way in which Psalm, along with the Introit, the Gospel Alleluia, and so on, are quotes from the Old or New Testaments, and they stand alone as Scriptural sentences, and so the Psalms don’t need to have the Gloria when said or sung at Communion.

And, thirdly, Psalm 119, of which we heard a few of the 176 verses, is a most remarkable composition.

Structurally, it comprises twenty-two stanzas, each of eight verses – one stanza for each letter of the Hebrew Alphabet.  So, verses 1-8 each begin with the Hebrew letter, ‘Aleph’, ‘A’, the next eight with ‘Beth’, ‘B’, and so on.  Most of the verses we heard are from the 17^th section, ‘Pe’.

And almost every verse has a synonym for the Law, the ‘Torah’ – there are about 8 or 9 of these words used throughout the Psalm: ‘law’, ‘promise’, ‘word’, ‘statutes’, ‘commandments’, ‘ordinances’, ‘decrees’, ‘testimonies’ and ‘precepts’.  I find it really helpful when reciting or hearing this Psalm to keep those words in mind, and to notice them in each verse.

People have tried to find themes for each of the different sections, or to organize it in various ways, but none of them has been very successful, to my mind.  It seems simply to be a collection of 176 pithy reflections on the ‘Torah’, the Law of Moses, which was and is so important for Jewish life and faith.

As we use the Psalm in a Christian context, we’re offered an opportunity to think about the way in which ‘Law’ has been superseded ‘Grace’, and how it is the ‘Law of Love’ to which we aspire in our Christian lives.  And also, to reflect on how we listen to and obey God’s Word, as we hear it in the Readings in Church, and in our daily Bible Reading and other study of Scripture.

[Slide 3]  As I prayed at the beginning, ‘When thy word goeth forth : it giveth light and understanding unto the simple.  Shew the light of thy countenance upon thy servant : and teach me thy statutes’ [Ps. 119: 130, 135].  AMEN.