Psalm 16; Song of Solomon 2:8-15; Colossians 4:2-5
Thursday 16 April by Rev. Jerry Eve
King David and King Solomon
Led very merry lives,
With very many lady friends,
And very many wives;
But when old age crept up on them
With very many qualms!
King Solomon wrote Proverbs
And King David wrote the Psalms.
James Ball Naylor, 1860-1945)
Our psalm and song today are attributed respectively to father and son, King David and King Solomon. Let’s begin with the psalm. It’s a psalm that is quoted from in two famous sermons in the New Testament book, Acts of the Apostles, where it’s interesting to compare and contrast the two. They are almost equal in length.
One is by St Peter. It was preached at Pentecost in Jerusalem, and can be found at Acts 2. He quotes, almost verbatim, from the last four verses of the psalm (Acts 2:25-28), a crucial part of which he then repeats.
The other is by St Paul. It was preached in the synagogue at Antioch in Pisidia. (I make its length an ominous 666 words, but that is in the GNT, and unlikely to be true of the original Hebrew). This can be found at Acts 13, and his quotation is of verse 10b (see Acts 13:35). This again is that crucial part repeated by Peter i.e. that:
“[God] will not abandon me in the world of the dead.”
While these two sermons seem on the surface to have two different outcomes (Peter’s leads to the conversion of 3,000 souls that day, and Paul’s to the eventual expulsion of him from the city by its leading men and Gentile women of high social standing.), the response will have been more mixed than that. In both cases they’d have made both enemies and friends.
The content of each sermon is different, and yet it’s interesting that they both employ the psalm to emphasise Christianity as a faith that grants us hope of an eternal life. That’s something that certainly appeals to me; otherwise, our lives would seem quite meaningless, and this is a point I do try to make at each funeral service I’m privileged to conduct.
And now the Song: Solomon is said in 1 Kings 4:32 to have composed over 1,000 songs, and this is from just one of them. The other thing that is said of him (in the following verse, 1 Kings 4:33) is that he was a botanist and zoologist. “He spoke of trees and plants . . . animals, birds, reptiles and fish”. It’s no wonder then that in a love poem such as this he would have doves and foxes, figs and flowers, vines, a gazelle and stags!
Let us pray:
Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures,
especially through my lord Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and you give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendour!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
in heaven you formed them clear and precious and beautiful.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene,
and every kind of weather through which
You give sustenance to Your creatures.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,
which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom you light the night and he is beautiful
and playful and robust and strong.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth,
who sustains us and governs us and who produces
varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.
Amen. (from Canticle of the Sun by St Francis)