Praying the Psalms

A close examination of the words of each of the psalms often indicates significant differences between the writer and the listener. In some, we talk to God—praying in the narrowest, truest sense. In others, God talks to us [through the words of David or someone else]—prophecy in the narrowest, truest sense. In the rest, we are talking to each other, man to man [no sexism intended]. In more than a few psalms, two or even three of these modalities are interleaved. It fairly makes my head swirl to decode who’s talking to whom now already? [Scholars tell us that the specific origins of many of them are hidden in the millenia-old mists of Aramaic time, obscured by translations and interpretations through several languages, cultures, and contexts.]
It gives me pause, therefore, each time the lector requests that we PRAY the psalm. In previous churches where I’ve been a lector, I made it a habit to remind the hearers who was talking to whom, in an attempt to clarify what the words were meant to convey. Personally, I love "praying a psalm,” but wonder about the appropriateness of the instruction so to do with all psalms. Then again, one might be hard put to explain such nuances succinctly with a single preamble, and I’d far rather tell folks to “pray” a psalm [it’s much more God-directed] than to instruct them to “read” it. Oh well, food for thought...