Sermon on Psalm 8

My translation:

O YHWH, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You whose glory is praised in the heavens by the mouths of babes and infants

You have founded a barricade on account of Your foes,

that you may silence the enemy and avenger.

When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and stars that You set in place,

What is man [enosh] that you are mindful of him?

And the son of man [ben adam] that you visit him?

But you have made him a little lower than the divine [elohim],

And you have crowned him with glory and honour.

You made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;

You have put all [things] under his feet,

Sheep and oxen, all of them, and even the beasts of the field;

The birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, what travels the path of the seas.

O YHWH, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Who or what is God? Who or what is man? I am not the first person to note that this psalm we’re
looking at today (Psalm 8) holds these two questions together. After all, this has been recognised as
a part of the genre of creation psalms (among which are Psalm 19 and 139, which Robyn preached
on). And ‘creation’ is one of those words and ideas which is unavoidably linked to a Creator. It seems
strange to speak of a creation without a creator. If you believe in a creation, that it’s appropriate to
say that our world is ‘created’ in some sense, then it’s difficult to avoid believing – even if not
explicitly and consciously – that we are all ultimately dependent upon One whom we can rightly call
‘Creator of all things, in heaven and on earth’. This is the main big theme that I want you to
understand today, which is said best by the scholar James May: “we can say ‘human being’ only after
we have learned to say ‘God.’” So let’s begin first, as the psalm itself does, with what it means to
speak of God.

Before we begin properly, I would like to point out that this psalm has a certain structure, called a
chiasm, which is important to see and it can also help in memorising it (because it’s only 9 verses).
[First read my translation above, then show chart.] First, it begins with a praise to God in the first
and last line (A, A’ section); at the middle of the psalm is God’s affirmation of the place of humans on
earth (C section); and on each side of this the God of the heavens interacts with humans on earth (B,
B’).
With that overview of the sections, I’ll now focus on three phrases which can give us three themes:

1. Gazing at the wonders of the cosmos, then humans within it: “When I look at Your
heavens, the work of Your fingers…what is ben-adam?”

If we look at the world from one perspective, its vast immensity, we can be overwhelmed by our
relative insignificance. At the time of Apollo 11’s first moon landing on 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong
made this famous quote: ‘That’s a small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind’. It’s not often
known that this was made in the context of Psalm 8: his co-astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, cited these two
verses of the psalm to the media (vv. 3-4), and then according his later testimony, the psalm was
then put into a capsule and placed in the lunar dust. And it is very appropriate line for Buzz to think
about when standing on the moon as an astronomer, looking down on a small earth. In the
psalmist’s day they didn’t have knowledge of the vast solar system or – more importantly – that our
planet is not at the centre of the universe (the sun is) but only one planet among many orbiting
around the massively hot star that is the Sun. Yet even without that knowledge he noticed the
staggering contrast between a tiny two-legged creature and the great bodies in the heavens – the
moon and stars (the sun is curiously omitted, maybe because it was written in the night or perhaps,
as some medieval Jewish commentators noted, to avoid sun-worship). And as human beings we do
notice these things, because, unlike other animals who only live within their own habitat, we have
the astonishing, truly miraculous ability to be open to the world around us. (We also have the ability
to make our own worlds, which I’ll return to in the next point.) To know and be known belongs to
our nature: to know God, other humans, and the world, and to be known by God, other humans, and
other creatures to the extent they can ‘know’ – respond to – us. When we see, we come to know
how finite and transient we, along with the rest of the world, are. More scarily, we come to realise
that the universe doesn’t seem to care and notice about us a lot of the time; we may care and notice
it, but it may not reciprocate.

Yet what is the psalmist’s response to his gazing at this tremendous and fascinating phenomenon? Is
it to end with anxiety, a feeling that one is displaced and lost, not made for this world? No. In the
same breath, the same sentence, he converts his questioning wonder before the chaos into a
celebration of creation. We are frail and limited in the vastness of space and time, yes, but we have a
home here and we are not finally lost, even if we may feel like we are.

2. The significance of our insignificance: “You made him to have dominion over the works of
Your hands; you have put all under his authority.”

In sharp contrast to the feeling of finitude before, the next section elevates humans to an
extraordinary status. We are not only kings – having dominion like a king does – but also, more
shockingly, gods: a little lower than Elohim (which is the Hebrew word for God or a god). There is,
interestingly, a tradition that Elohim should be translated as angels (in the LXX, for instance), but
many scholars now recognize that it was the result of discomfort of depicting humans as too God-
like – a discomfort not shared by the Psalmist. He would have believed that humans are created in
the image and likeness of God, as Genesis 1:26 says – which is surely in the background here – and
this is probably also the source of the glory and majesty with which we crowned. But although we
are endowed with divine qualities, we are not God. And whenever we foolishly think we are, we
corrupt our image, and so require a continual renewing of our minds of our original purpose by the
one is THE image of God – Jesus (cf. Colossians 1:15ff). It’s apt, then, that, throughout time, this
verse was understood by the writer of Hebrews as a reference to Christ (Heb 2:5-9) who was
understood as fulfilling these verses through his death on behalf of humanity. In turn, we are to
follow him by dying to our fleshly selves, so that we can likewise experience restoration to this state
of glory, honor, and authority (Heb 2:7). Christ is the original human being, the last Adam to whom
all things be subordinated (put under his feet) in a greater way than for us temporarily – after which
Christ will be subordinated to the Father and God will be all in all (1 Cor 15:27-28). For Christ, this is
not a subjection, a violent throwing under, as the Greek verb hypotaxis is often unhelpfully
translated; it is a subordination, literally a proper ordering under.

The Psalmist, as well, does not, as all too many Christian interpreters have done over the years
(particularly since the 16th century), turned our capacity to subordinate other creatures into a license
to control and abuse them for purely selfish ends. No, he converts a realisation that we are given this
ability into a recognition of our sacred vocation or calling. Just as marvellous as our ability to be open
to the world (the first point), we can not only create our own worlds but transform the actual world
– for good or will. This is our role as human beings instituted by God; it belongs to our essential
identity to be crowned with glory and honor by the God who deserves all glory and honor. This
where the royal imagery has more significance than we might first realise. We are likely to think of
an ancient near eastern king as a symbol of tyrannical and random power. But, in fact, from all we
know from the literature of the period, the ideal king was one who was expected to rule for the sake
of his subjects. Power was given to him to provide protection, administer justice, and plan for the
prosperity of his people, as we see most strikingly in Psalm 72.

3. God, unlike the world and unlike corrupt humanity (kings included) at times, always cares
for us: “What are humans that you remember and visit them?”

It’s easy to assume, because the Psalm begin and ends with the tetragrammaton YHWH, that the
psalm only speaks of Israel’s experience with the Lord. But the language of the psalm, as we have
seen, clearly and repeatedly points beyond the religion of Israel: “What are mortals, human beings,
that you turn to them and pay attention to them?” The assumption in this language seems to be that
our identity is somehow related to being remembered and visited by God. There are two verbs in
Hebrew that are important to notice because they build on each other: zākar=to remember or be
mindful of; and pāqad=to attend to or visit. I have to admit to feeling uncomfortable at this all-too-
personal language, which can – if we’re not careful – idolise God as like a person like us who first
thinks (remembers) and then acts (visits). Any coherent theology, I think (following orthodox
Christian theology), must recognize that all moments to God are present in an eternal “now”; God
does not, in fact, learn new things, even though this is how the ancient Hebrews portrayed him. In
any case, there is still immense value and truth in this image of a God who remembers and attends
to us; it reminds us, for one, that God will never leave nor forsake any of us his beloved creation.

It also reminds us that the history of the world is more than just the natural history of other animals
(of which we are a part). It is the history of salvation and judgment; of a God who always stretches
out his hands, so to speak, to rescue his people, whenever they fall away from his loving purposes
for them. In other words, it is a history oriented towards the future as much as the present. In this
sense, it is notable that the two verbs I mentioned earlier (zakar and paqad) most commonly
function, in the rest of the Psalms and Torah, in the context of the fulfilment of God’s redemptive
purposes. For instance, the Psalmist in Psalm 106:4 says: “Remember [zakar] me, o Lord, with the
goodwill you have toward your people; Oh visit [paqad] me with your salvation.” And if we fast
forward a bit to Luke 1:68-72, we see Zechariah singing in what’s called the Benedictus (because of
the first word in Latin, Benedictus, means blessed): “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, for he
has visited and accomplished redemption for his people…to fulfil mercy toward our fathers and to
remember his holy covenant.” To stay in Luke’s gospel for a bit: what Zechariah said by way of
prophecy is shown to be fulfilled in Luke 7:16 after he raises to life the widow’s son at Nain: “Fear
seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!” and “God
has looked favourably upon [episkeptomai] his people!’” And then, finally, after his triumphal entry
in Jerusalem, as he came near and saw the city, Jesus wept over it, saying that the temple will be
destroyed because “you did not recognise the time [kairos] of your being visited [episkopes]” (Luke
19:44) by God. Here, the arrival of Jesus the prophet should be the occasion of God's visitation for
peace; but because he is not recognized as such, his rejection becomes a “visitation” of judgment.
This may seem like a harsh punishment inflicted on the Israelites, but it’s not the end of the story, as
Paul agonises over in chs 9-11 of the letter to the Romans: Paul makes it absolutely clear that God
will not forget his people by abandoning them; v. 26 says explicitly that “all of Israel shall be saved”;
and, finally, 11:32 says that all are bound in disobedience, so that all will receive mercy. This means, I
take it, that there is in the end no final distinction between what Paul called earlier in ch 9 “vessels
of wrath” and “vessels of mercy.” Our God is not like a schizophrenic – with a divided mind – whose
justice pushes him in one direction and whose love pushes him in another. No, God is Love, and all
that God does for us is an expression of this Love. And, as Isaac the Nineveh, the great East Syrian
ascetical writer, said: “The power of love works in two ways: it torments those who have
played the fool, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend; but it becomes a
source of joy for those who have observed its duties. But, really, God has not changed in his
inner life as essentially Love; we are the ones who have changed by perceiving his loving actions
towards us as anger. We are the ones who confusedly hate God precisely because he always
remembers and visits us; we hate God, in other words, because we cannot escape his presence. If I
make my bed in Hades/hell, the Psalmist says, behold, you are there. What, truly, could be more
wonderful yet scary than this: that even when we separate ourselves from God, God has not –
indeed cannot – separate himself from us.