God is in Creation (Psalm 19/Lent 3B)

I have always loved Psalm 19, and I also regard it as a unified Psalm even though it is divided into two parts.  Those two parts, however, convey a unified central message.  God is the creator and this is why he is also the lawgiver.

In the ten commandments, also part of this week’s reading, God addresses Israel and starts by saying who he is and what his claim is on them in particular.  This is one reason that it is important to remember that the ten commandments were not initially addressed universally, but rather specifically to the Israelites who were fleeing Egypt.  God addresses them and announces that he is the God who has freed them.  That is the basis for that particular piece of legislation.  But while “the” Torah, or the first five books of the Bible, is addressed to Jews, “Torah” (instruction in general) is addressed to everyone.  I would read “Torah” in Psalm 19 as this wider instruction.

So why is God the one who can give Torah to the entire world, indeed, the entire universe?  Because he is the creator, and creation tells us of him.  If we were to address a “ten commandments” to the world, it might begin “I am your God, who created everything, and specifically created you.”

But as Christians we hear the “brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” in a very special way.  Jesus has brought each and every one of us out of our own spiritual house of bondage, and led us to this place, wherever “this place” may be.  So he can address us much as he does the Israelites in combining these two passages:  “I’m both your creator and your redeemer.”

In the study Bibles I read on this passage this morning, often a fairly random selection, I was met with a contrast.  The Orthodox Study Bible reads Psalm 19 as an incarnational Psalm.

Psalm 18 [OSB follows LXX numbering] reveals God the Word (the End, v. 1) becoming Man in the womb of the most holy Mother of God.  For on His Nativity, all creation bore witness to the glory of God revealed in His Incarnation (vv. 1-5). … (p. 693 on Psalm 18, emphasis in the original)

Now my first reaction is that this Psalm is not about incarnation at all.  It’s about how all creation reveals God at any time and place, not in a particular instance.  But my second thought is that the incarnation isn’t “a particular instance.”  It is the ultimate representation of who God is and how he works.  The limited reflection I see of God in sun, moon, stars, trees, flowers, and animals, to mention just a few things, is made fully clear in the incarnation.

So it is not inappropriate to treat Psalm 19 as an incarnational Psalm, though I think the Psalmist was thinking about those ordinary reflections of God in creation.  I think it is also possible for us to undervalue what we can learn of God in the natural world.  If God is the creator, as I believe he is, then what is created and how it is created tell us something about God.  I find this an uncomfortable thought from time to time, but my comfort does not seem to be shared by the Biblical writers.

In modern Christian theology we tend to emphasize how God’s reflection in nature and his image in humankind have been diminished through sin.  Is it not possible that we spend so much time talking about how diminished it is that we fail to see how strongly God’s light still shines?