Ps. 95.7c (the present and Today)

Oh that today / you would hear his message. 

We noticed in the previous reflection how, when the psalmist turns to Yhwh’s people, the imagery of ‘creation’ becomes incorporated into the sphere of covenant, that realm of faithfulness. In this realm, Yhwh is man’s, and man responds to Yhwh. It is a space of communion, of exchange. It is a realm, more in keeping with the psalm, of ‘shepherding’, of feeding and protection. Importantly, the psalmist sets up this ‘shepherding’ imagery before he moves into Yhwh’s speech and his desire that his people listen to him. It is important because the “message” Yhwh is about to deliver is an expression of ‘shepherding-care’ for his people. In other words, Yhwh’s ‘message’ is life-giving, in the same way that a shepherd’s concern and care for his flock is life-giving. It does not come upon his people as some externally imposed edict, but, rather, is an expression of ‘his heart’, as it were. We need to further deepen this reflection with the fact that this line appears directly in the middle of the psalm; it is, as such, the ‘hinge’ that makes the first and second part work together. What we see, then, is that the first half revealed the ‘heart’ of the people, as they desired an ever-more intimate association with Yhwh the closer they journeyed to his Presence in the Temple. Their ‘heart’ now swings on this hinge to the second half of the psalm where Yhwh’s desire and heart will be revealed. 

We will contemplate more in the following verses the fact that the people’s ‘fall’ is narrated in this section, rather than in the first, but what we can highlight here is that man’s “liturgy to Yhwh” (the first half) is sealed off from him, if he is rebellious. It is ‘sworn-closed’ (vs. 11), like some ‘flaming, cherubic sword’. In other words, it is not that you simply get an ‘empty liturgy’. Rather, you literally get exiled from its concrete possibility; you become ‘anathema’, unable to partake of the Real Presence. The Today. Within the realm of covenant, time becomes faithfulness or rebellion, blessing or curse, sacred or profane, Presence or exile. It is, as such, more qualitative than quantitative and, accordingly, is not simply a measure of ‘how much’. The ‘time of faithfulness’, the ‘sacred time’, is not a past and a future; it is a perpetual present, a perpetual “today”. The ‘time of rebellion’, by contrast, is an elongated, lost time of futility and frustration; it is a time of ‘forty years’, and is a ‘that day’.  This is important—the ‘time of rebellion’ is not ‘today’, even though it may be the present. In other words, without access to the Presence in the Temple, the present is not ‘Today’. With the Presence, the present enters into (is elevated into) sacred time, a time that experiences no ‘past’, in the sense of loss, but, rather, an ‘always-already’ of every sacred moment. (Sinai enters Zion, and the Voice speaks from the flame…).