Strasbourg’s Grande Ile is a UNESCO world heritage site. The historic buildings surround the stunning cathedral and spill across the central island. One of the offices near the cathedral square houses a mural dating to the time of the Reformation. We were lucky enough to see this piece of art, which Rev. Dr. Gerald Hobbs helped to authenticate. It depicts scenes inspired by Psalm 1.
Psalms were of central importance to John Calvin and his worshipping community in Geneva. Through their diversity, the Psalms captured every human emotion and feeling. And, Rev. Dr. Lynne McNaughton said, the Bible’s other books speak about God. Psalms speak to God.
Yet, despite their importance for John Calvin, the Psalms have fallen out of favour in Presbyterian churches.
“There was a time when we sang nothing but [psalms]; today we sing anything but [psalms],” said Rev. Dr. Roberta Clare. She called the Psalms the “greatest weapon of the Reformation.”
In Meaux, we heard a legend about the 14 martyrs burned for heresy. Apparently it was a common practice for “heretics” to have their tongues cut out before they were paraded through the streets to be killed. It kept them from preaching. Yet they could hum psalms and believers watching from the crowd could supply the words.
“In singing the psalms together, our words become God’s words. Something deeply spiritual happens,” Clare said. These ancient hymns are meant to be sung by the community.
Today, we “nice Presbyterians” are uncomfortable with some of the theologies and violent images contained in the Psalms. But “that’s alright,” Clare suggested. “We need to feel uncomfortable sometimes.” Isn’t there something therapeutic, she said, about saying you wish God would punish those who oppose you, even if you don’t really mean it?
We should have songs that are not only upright but holy, that will spur us to pray to God and praise Him, to meditate on His works so as to love Him, to fear Him, to honour Him, and glorify Him. For what St. Augustine said is true, that one can sing nothing worthy of God save what one has received from Him. Wherefore though we look far and wide we will find no better songs nor songs more suitable to that purpose than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit made and imparted to him. Thus, singing them we may be sure that our words come from God just as if He were to sing in us for His own exaltation. Wherefore, Chrysostom exhorts men, women, and children alike to get used to singing them, so as through this act of meditation to become as one with the choir of angels.
—John Calvin, from the preface to the 1543 Geneva psalter
