Early Church, July 15, 2012 Proper 10 Year B

For Early Church I couldn't figure out a kid-friendly head on a platter interpretation. But I took the opportunity to talk about the psalms. We began with singing the psalm of the day, 85: 8-13.

Last week during church I talked about a part of the bible that has letters in it written to communities. Today I wanted to talk about another type of writing that we have in the Bible. I want to tell you a little bit about something called the psalms. First of all--it is a really confusing world. It is spelled p-s-a-l-m. When I was I kid I could never understand how it could be spelled that way and pronounced psalm. There are 150 psalms in the Bible. But what are they! They are songs or poems that are written to God to tell God about how people felt. Some of them tell God about how we think of God, others ask God for things, some of them are angry and God and ask how God could forget to take care of all of God's people. People used to use the psalms to worship God. They would sing the psalms. We still do this in our churches today. The song we sang at the beginning of church today was a psalm. There are 149 other of them.

People used to think that one of the kings of Israel, King David, wrote the psalms. You might know King David from the bible stories about David when he was a young shepherd, the youngest kid in the whole family, and there was a big battle of the people of Israel against another people called Philistines. The Philistines had a big and powerful fighter on their side named Goliath. David was just a little boy, not really much older than  you guys, and his Dad asked him to bring some food and water to his seven older brothers who were fighting in the war against Goliath and the Philistines. David was just supposed to be bringing some food and water, but he saw that all of the fighters from Israel were scared of Goliath. But David was not scared. He threw a stone at Goliath's head and knocked him down. He was the youngest child, and the smallest fighter but he was able to do something people much bigger, older and stronger were scared to do. He was brave when no one else could be brave. David's strength did not end there; he went on to become the King of all of Israel.

           

Because David always knew that God had showed him that with a little help from God even the smallest person can do amazing things, they would write some songs and poems about God, imagining that they were David.

(Then I asked the 5 kids to each read a line from the psalms that I had printed out. After they read it, I asked them if they could imagine what kind of mood the writer was in when they wrote it)

·      his lightning lights up the world, and the earth trembled. God is more majestic than the thunders of the water, more majestic than the waves of the sea.

·      Make a joyful noise to the lord, sing joyous songs, play the lyre and the sound of the melody, with trumpets and the sound of a horn

·      Sing a happy song to God (for the 3 year old)

·      O LORD you god of anger, you god of anger come out!"

·      You have put me in the depths of a pit, in places that are dark and deep, you caused my friends to be mad at me. Every day I call out to you? Don't you hear me?

·      If you make the lord God your house, nothing bad will happen to you, no disease will come near your house

The psalms have all sorts of moods and there is one for each of our own moods. They are nice to read and to sing because they remind us that we can feel lots of different ways about God, and that is okay. We know that God loves us, and God knows that we love God. But it is okay when we feel not so sure or even angry at god.