My introduction to Psalm 113 was when I sang it along with others in corporate worship. It was 21 years ago, and I was sporting a butch haircut and extra piercings in my right ear—because back in the day, left was right (straight) and right was wrong (gay). I stood in a pew in the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church awkwardly seeking a God that I secretly hoped would accept me as I was. Floy Smith, the pastor’s wife, stood at my side. Floy, a woman who could bridge worlds for me, brushed me with her shoulder before we started to sing. “God is making you His beautiful trophy, my dear,” she whispered in my ear, the one with the extra piercings. Pastor Ken Smith told us to open our Psalters to Psalm 113A in The Book of Psalms for Singing.
I jumped in with mouth open wide.
But before I realized what was coming out of my mouth, I sang the last lines of the psalm and implicated myself into what I believed then was hateful patriarchy and institutionalized misogyny.
Like many things that have caught me in mid-leap, this psalm started out on what I perceived to be safe ground. A
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