Ps. 81.5c-7 (hearing and response)

I hear speech / I have not understood
I relieved his shoulder / of the burden;
his hands were freed / from the baskets.
In distress you called / and I answered you
I tested you / at the waters of Meribah. 

Call and response. It has been central to both our reflections thus far: the dynamic of call (from God) and response (by man). In this psalm, that dynamic takes place within the liturgy of festival. By entering into the festival (of booths), the Israelites are entering into their response to God’s call (his mandates). It is in these verses that this dynamic is actually reversed. 

The speaker. Standing mid-way between the people and God is the speaker of the psalm. He “hears speech he has not understood”. In this ‘liminal’ realm he becomes both the recipient and the provider of God’s voice. He is, in other words (and, in some form), a prophet. On the one hand, his assertion of initial confusion at hearing the speech is a type of validation of his prophetic role. On the other hand, however, it does raise, thematically, the ‘call-and-response’ dynamic. This issue will only increase as the psalm progresses. I would propose, then, that this confusion is not something solely related to the prophet, but rather points to the fact that God’s ‘speech’ can’t be simply heard but must be attentively received. The prophet may stand as a type of ‘translator’ but the mystery of the words themselves should not be lost sight of. 

The speaker 2. Which leads to the central speaker of the psalm—these are God’s words. He is the one who know stands in front of the assembly. The sermon that is presented is not the psalmist’s (or, the prophet’s). It is God’s. From this point forward, the Divine I is now addressing the people, in the midst of the festival. In this we see one aspect of liturgy that is important to grasp—not only is liturgy performed in the presence of God, but it is also something that God performs toward man; meaning, he directly address Israel and speaks to them, manifesting his will to them. Through his mandating of the festival, God creates a liturgical space (and time) during which he will move to address them. 

The addressed. We have already noted the way in which, during liturgy, time becomes made sacred such that the past becomes present, not only in an act of memory but sacramentally—that which is remembered is re-membered (re-joined). In this verse we see this even more clearly. When God first addresses the congregants he begins in an act of memory, something he performed “for him” (relieving shoulder and hands). However, when God recounts how his acts were instigated by a ‘calling out’ to him, God says it was “you” that called out. No longer is there this third party, “him”. Rather, within the liturgical remembrance, the congregants themselves are joined to the Israelites under Egyptian rule. The past has become present. Something very similar happens in Deuteronomy—there is a constant back and forth between the past and present, but what is clear is that when God ‘spoke from the flame’ on Sinai, he was not merely speaking to those at the foot of the mountain; rather, the Temple became the vehicle whereby God’s presence became perpetuated in Israel’s camp such that the past remained a perpetual present. It seems we might think of it this way: when we speak in metaphor there is usually an object that is then compared to a secondary object (here: the people are made ‘like’ the people in Egypt); however, it seems that the reverse is occurring here whereby the people in Egypt are the primary, and those that follow them the secondary. The point to this is that the people in the ‘present’ actually take their reality from the past, not the other way around. Memory, in this sense, is not a remembering of what is no longer present, but an entering into what provides the present with reality. (this is really just another way of describing the sacramental nature of liturgy). Liturgy, we might say, is the portal through which the past can enter into and shape the present; it is a type of present-ing the past. 

Response; reversal. Here we come to perhaps the central thematic note struck in the psalm. We have noted how the festival itself is a response to God’s call (his ‘mandate’). We have also noted how this liturgical response is, itself, a type of faithfulness to the law of God. Here, by contrast, we have Israel ‘calling out’ to God. And God faithfully answers them. Note how the roles have been reversed. Before, it was God who ‘mandated’ and Israel responded. Here, Israel calls out and God responds. “In distress you called and I answered you.” It is crucial to see that this is the first thing that God speaks—he reminds them that when he hears, he faithfully responds. It is important because, as we will see, the remainder of God’s sermon is 1) a reminder to Israel that they do not/have not respond(ed) to him as faithfully when he calls and 2) a call to them to faithfulness, so that he can respond to them in the same exodus-power that he did in the past. It is a call to Israel re-enter the cycle of ‘call-and-response’ between Him and themselves; it is a call to re-enter the covenantal dialogue of love and abundant blessing.