Another Gutted Reading – Psalm 89

I’m looking at the readings for Proper 25A, and again I notice a large chunk of the Psalm removed from the reading, Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17, so 7-12 is left out.

Now sometimes I see good reason for taking part of a Psalm, because one does need to keep the readings reasonable in length. As it is, many congregations only use a few lines from the Psalm.

But in this case, one could divide the Psalm into three sections, with the first being 1-6, expressing the greatness of God, the second 7-12 talking about living under God’s judgment or anger, and 13-17 being a prayer for God’s favor. Now if you leave out the center part of the Psalm, one misses the sense of the prayer.

In this case I suspect a desire of certain liturgists to avoid reading the really unpleasant verses, such as speaking of God putting our sins directly in front of him. Not comfortable reading, that!

In any case, I think this Psalm, as most Psalms, should be studied more as a whole, rather than chopped up. As worshipers, we should be more patient with hearing the reading of the Word.