Thomas J Parlette
“Taste and See”
Psalm 34: 1-8, 19-22
10/27/24, Reformation Sunday
There was once a pastor who was greeting people after the service at the back doors of the sanctuary. This one parishioner waited his turn and then said, “Pastor, I want to show you what the Lord saved me from this week,” and he held up his phone with a picture on it.
This particular parishioner was a landscaper who regularly worked with heavy equipment. He had recently been hauling a Bobcat on a trailer behind his truck. As he was travelling about 40 miles an hour, the fork attachments on the front of the Bobcat began to vibrate, and one of them came loose. The fork fell off the Bobcat, off the trailer, and the tip of the fork hit the pavement. The force of the impact transformed the fork into a boomerang, and the fork propelled itself back toward the truck.
As this landscaper was driving along, the 75-pound fork pierced through the back window of his truck, and ended up over the passenger seats in the cab. A few feet either way or with passengers in the vehicle, someone could have died. A close call indeed. (1)
What do you say in a moment like that? How do you react when you feel the Lord stepped in and saved you from tragedy? Well, you pray a little different afterwards, don’t you? You sing with a little more enthusiasm. Food tastes better and the sun seems to shine brighter when the Lord intervenes to save you.
Psalm 34 was written as a result of just the same sort of close call situation. This Psalm is attributed to David and is a reference to a story that we find in 1st Samuel, chapter 21.
David has gone to see Abimelech, the Priest – seeking his help. His first request – food.
Abimelech only has holy bread, which he offers if David can assure him that his men have been abstaining from sex, which is something David and his men always do when they are on a mission like this.
But one of Saul’s officials was there at the Temple and David panics, because Saul is trying to kill him. So David asks Abimelech for a spear or a sword – anything.
Abimelech responds, “The only thing I have is the sword of Goliath, the Philistine you killed. It’s hidden over there. If you want it, take it.”
Then David took off running for his life. He went to Achish, king of Gath, but he is recognized as the legendary David, the warrior. But quick-thinking David starts pretending to be crazy – pounding his head on the city gate and foaming at the mouth, with spit dripping from his beard.
King Achish is disgusted and says to his servants – “Can’t you see he’s crazy? Why did you let him in here? I’ve got enough crazies to deal with. Get him out of here!”
So David got away and escaped to the Cave of Adullam.
This Psalm could have been written in that cave, but we don’t know for sure. It could be that David wrote this psalm as he looked back over his life, as well. Or it may have been written by someone who was familiar with the story of David’s escape and felt like this is what David would have said.
Throughout the book of Psalms, we are instructed to praise God for unsurpassable glory, to trust God for unquenchable love and to rely on God for unfailing nurture and grace (2)
It would not surprise me at all to find Job, sitting on his front porch in his old age, sipping an ice tea and reading this psalm, nodding his head in agreement – because that is the way the story of Job ends, with restoration and grace before Job died, old and full of days.
The spiritual writer Sundar Singh was walking in the mountains. “I came upon an outcropping of rocks, and as I sat on the highest rock to rest and look out over the valley, I saw a nest in the branches of a tree. The young birds in the nest were crying noisily. Then I saw the mother bird return with food for her young ones. When they heard the sound of her wings and felt her presence nearby, they cried all the more loudly and opened their beaks wide. But after the mother bird fed them and flew again, they were quiet. Climbing down to look more closely, I saw that the newly hatched birds had not yet opened their eyes. Without being able to see their mother, they opened their beaks and begged for nourishment whenever she approached.
These tiny birds did not say: “We will not open our beaks until we see our mother clearly and also see what kind of food she offers. Perhaps it is not our mother at all, but instead, some dangerous enemy. And who know if it is proper nourishment or some kind of poison that is being fed to us.” If they had reasoned thus, they would never have discovered the truth. Before they were even strong enough to open their eyes, they would have starved to death. But they held no such doubts about the presence and love of their mother, and so after a few days, they opened their eyes and rejoiced to see her with them. Day by day they grew stronger and developed into the form and likeness of the mother, and soon they were able to soar up into the freedom of the skies.
We humans often think of ourselves as the greatest living beings, but do we not have something to learn from these common birds? We often question the reality and the loving nature of God. But Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” Whenever we open our hearts to God, we receive spiritual nourishment and grow more and more into the likeness of God, until we reach spiritual maturity. And once we open our spiritual eyes and see God’s presence, we find indescribable and unending bliss.” (3)
This seems to be the point the Psalmist is making when he says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are all who find refuge in him,” words most familiar to us as an invitation to the Lord’s Supper, where we receive the spiritual nourishment we need.
The biblical scholar James Mays suggests that the word “taste” is used here in the sense of “finding out by experience.” (4) So you could render this verse as “Find out from experience that God is good; happy are all who find refuge in God.” That would certainly be true in David’s experience, and for Job as well. They both learned from experience that God is indeed good. The psalmist draws this conclusion from a tangible experience of salvation… “I sought the Lord, and the Lord answered… and delivered me.” The psalmist teaches us that amid the challenges over the course of our lives, God will answer our prayers, God will dwell with us in our fears and loneliness, and give to the faithful every good thing.
In his book Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud, Philip Yancey writes that “Human beings grow by striving, working, stretching; and in a sense, human nature needs problems more than solutions. Why aren’t all prayers answered magically and instantly? Why must every new Christian travel the tedious path of spiritual discipline? Because persistent prayer, and fasting, and study, and meditation are designed primarily for our sakes, not for God’s. Kierkegaard said that Christians reminded him of school boys who want to look up the answers to the math problems in the back of the book rather than work them through. I confess to such school boy sentiments, and I doubt that I am alone. We yearn for shortcuts. But shortcuts usually lead away from growth not toward it. Apply that principle to anyone who has had their faith shaken, whether that be David or Job. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel observed, “Faith like Job’s (or David’s, in this case) cannot be shaken because it is the result of having been shaken. (5)
Psalm 34 is a survival story. It seeks to encourage those who are debilitated with fear. This psalm asserts that God has been faithful in the past and will continue to act in character during times of danger. The psalm culminates in the verse, “Taste and see that God is good”- a claim that approximates the character of God and echoes a fundamental reason for praise in the Psalter as well.
Much of the Psalter revolves around the ideas that God is both great and good. Psalm 34 focuses on the goodness of God. When the people follow the advice “taste and see that God is good,” they discover first hand that God is a sure refuge in time of crisis. And survival will in turn lead to the road of gratitude. (6)
Somewhere between 1527 and 1529, the great reformer Martin Luther wrote perhaps the flagship hymn of the Reformation – “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” Luther drew upon Psalm 46 as the inspiration for the lyrics of the hymn, but Psalm 34 can be heard in places:
“A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing;
Our helper He and the flood of mortal ills prevailing.”
Luther returned to those themes in his hymn “Dear Christian, One and All, Rejoice,” when he writes;
“Proclaim the wonders God has done,
Proclaim the victory God has won…
O God, you saw my deep distress
Before the world’s foundation
And with your mercy measureless,
you planned for my salvation.
You said to your Beloved Son
Tis time to have compassion,
Bring to all salvation;
from sin and sorrow set them free.”
Very similar in tone to Psalm 34, here is how Eugene Peterson puts it in the Message:
“God met me more than halfway,
he freed me from anxious fears…
When I was desperate, I called out,
and God got me out of a tough spot.
God’s angel sets up a circle
of protection around us while we pray.”
Different words, and less concentration on the “devils of this world”- but the central theme of God’s protection, of God as bulwark and helper, that’s the same in both Psalm 46 and Psalm 34.
So, on this Reformation Sunday, let us celebrate that God is both great, and good. Let’s take the psalmist up on his invitation to “Taste and See that the Lord is good.”
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Mark Vroegop, “A Song for Every Season (Part 4 of 10) Taste and See: The Lord is Good.” Sermons.com.
2. Michael Morgan, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 4, Westminster John Knox Press, 2009, p 200.
3. Sundar Singh, Wisdom of the Sudhu, (Plough, 2014), p 3-4
4. James May, Psalms, John Knox Press, 1994, p 153.
5. Philip Yancey, Disappointment with God: Three Questions No One Asks Aloud, (Zondervan, 1997) p 247-248.
6. Louis Stulman, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 4, Westminster John Knox Press, 2009, p 205.
