Psalms of Lament series

Psalms of Lament series https://www.canbap.org/series/psalms-of-lament-series/ Fri, 24 Apr 2026 03:15:07 +0000 en-AU © 2018 Canberra Baptist Church Canberra Baptist Church Canberra Baptist Church office@canbap.org clean office@canbap.org No yes 1890af64-38eb-5879-b1cb-2a83682df80f https://wordpress.org/?v=5.5.5 Sunday 1 November 2020 https://www.canbap.org/podcast/sunday-1-november-2020/ Sat, 31 Oct 2020 23:00:47 +0000 https://www.canbap.org/?post_type=podcast&p=1290 Psalms of communal Lament – Psalm 137 On Friday morning, just as I was about to start this sermon on the communal psalms of lament, our third in this series, I had a call from BaptistCare who are writing a short piece on this church’s support for Tara’s Angels, the local programme that helps women who have escaped domestic violence to establish new lives and, at the end, the woman interviewing said, “Thank you! We think its amazing a church is willing to support a program like this.” I think she was being nice, but it seemed an odd comment, so I said, “Isn’t this what churches are meant to do – isn’t this our job – to support programs like this?” And she said, “Oh no, we find that churches are not as engaged in the world we actually live in. They prefer to give overseas, to ministries that are far away.” That comment – that churches are not as engaged in the world we actually live in – is also why, according to Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, we hugely neglect the communal psalms of lament. While we do not give lament psalms as a whole much attention, we slightly prefer the personal laments over the communal laments because, he says, “the personal, even psychological’ has become our mode of experiencing reality.” Our culture has become much more concerned with the individual, with individual identity, and so our faith has become a more privatistic faith. As a result, Brueggemann argues, “We have experienced …a loss of public awareness and imagination…. We have lost our capacity to practice prayer in relationship to public issues.” The communal laments call us, yes, to lament our personal situations, but not to be limited by privatistic concerns, but to pray bigger, to lament bigger, to lament with others, to lament for others, to lament for the world that we know our world has not yet become. Going back to Tara’s Angels, that is why we, as a church, support this kind of ministry. We do not want to be guilty of a loss of public awareness on this issue, of the appalling statistics on intimate partner violence – that one woman is killed every 9 days in Australia. And while domestic violence is complex, and affects men as well as women, we know it is gender inequality that affirms attitudes and behaviours that enable violence against women. We know gender inequality is a proper subject for our theological imagination – for lament. On Wednesday a group of us met at the church for a lament writing workshop (it will be repeated on Zoom this Wednesday) and while most of us wrote personal laments, Rebecca Hilton wrote this – which although also personal is an example of a communal psalm of lament about gender inequality.

God, why have you made some men feel that they have dominion and power over women.
I am angry that my daughters will navigate a world where they are considered less than a man. In so many situations.

I am sad that our mothers and grandmothers did not get the same opportunities as men. 3.Yet I know that you have been with us, and you treat women equally to a man. 4.I want every woman to know her worth. 5.God, our world cannot function until all people are equal. 6.I want men to understand the hurt they bring to women by actions or inactions. 7.Give me a voice to speak for the silenced. 8.I want to use my voice for others. 9.Thank you God for giving me opportunity. Our psalm for today, Psalm 137, is another example of a bigger prayer, a bigger lament. And yet, at first glance, we might be shocked, yes, by its violence and I’ll get to that in a moment, but also by its Jewishness. How can such a Jewish psalm, a psalm so concerned with a particular place, with Jerusalem, speak to the concerns of people throughout history, speak to our concerns? We need to keep in mind that for the Jewish people, Jerusalem and the temple, in Brueggemann’s words, “was the point of reference for all of life. Its destruction thus meant the loss of a centre, and a profound public disorientation.” Perhaps we can think back to those first weeks of April this year when everything about the way we conducted our lives changed, we were told to work from home, to stay home, to not congregate with groups of any size. It was profoundly disorienting – and yet we were still in familiar surroundings and living in relative safety. This was not how those in exile felt. Does this excuse the violence? Of course not. Every commentary I have looked at – Christian and Jewish – is shocked at the violence in this psalm. And yet they note that the psalm does not tell Jews to take this action against the ‘little ones’ of Babylon. Action, punishment, is left in the hands of God. And they also note the raw honesty of this cry to God, that the largeness of this lament, the intensity of this lament is such that, in Brueggemann’s words, it “must have energised fidelity for the long haul.” For we have the story of Nehemiah, who, a century later, is so distressed at the account of the state of Jerusalem that he too, “sits down and weeps” for days. And yet this grief about Jerusalem does not lead to a privatistic piety or a ‘heavenly religion’ but commitment to “restoration , reconstruction and reorganisation of the city.” Brueggemann writes, “Nehemiah wept a century later as his forebears did in our psalm. It is remarkable that the memory and hope are kept so poignantly and immediately alive for so long, but that is the nature of our faith. Out of that history of weeping came resolve for new life.” On Wednesday night as well, Rebecca read a lament written in the Mae La Refugee Camp on the Thai Burmese border when she and Gary Hilton and John Clark and Jeanette Mathews visited there in 2006. In an paper on lament that Jeanette wrote after that experience she speaks of how shy and emotionally reserved the Karen were, and yet reading their laments how she was “staggered the level of emotional outpouring that the poems evidenced”. Let me read you the lament that Rebecca read to us: I was born in a beauty land Full of dignity and happiness I wish to stay in our home forever And I want to depart never. The army entered my village On a silent day Our fields were destroyed and burnt the rice barn. I was hungry But no food to eat I left my homeland Settled in another land I miss you every minute Tears fall down on my feet But still have hope God will lead me home I miss my homeland Forever and never end I want to go back To beautify our land again *Naw Htee Lah Hay, Ku, Me La Camp, September 2006) We need to lament. And we need to lament big! We need to lament big because this is our most honest and intimate communication with a God who welcomes such communication, and because we need laments so emotionally staggering that they will sustain us, and sustain future generations, in our prayer, in our suffering, in our waiting and in our work for the long haul. Brueggemann writes, “It is important that generation after generation we remember with Jews [and we could add, with the poor, with refugees, with women, with all who experience violence, with the whole creation that is groaning] that the present arrangements are not right, not acceptable, and not finally to be accepted. Psalm 137 draws its power and authority out of another vision, marked by homecoming, which seems remote, but is not for one instant in doubt. There will be a homecoming to peace, justice and freedom.” O come, O come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel… As we say the words of this hymn – the lament - responsively and the choir sing the chorus, we remember the hope that we celebrate, the presence of Christ with us, and the laments that remind us of the fulfilment of that hope in our world.]]> Psalms of communal Lament – Psalm 137 On Friday morning, just as I was about to start this sermon on the communal psalms of lament, our third in this series, I had a call from BaptistCare who are writing a short piece on this church’s support for Tara’s Angels, the local programme that helps women who have escaped domestic violence to establish new lives and, at the end, the woman interviewing said, “Thank you! We think its amazing a church is willing to support a program like this.” I think she was being nice, but it seemed an odd comment, so I said, “Isn’t this what churches are meant to do – isn’t this our job – to support programs like this?” And she said, “Oh no, we find that churches are not as engaged in the world we actually live in. They prefer to give overseas, to ministries that are far away.” That comment – that churches are not as engaged in the world we actually live in – is also why, according to Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, we hugely neglect the communal psalms of lament. While we do not give lament psalms as a whole much attention, we slightly prefer the personal laments over the communal laments because, he says, “the personal, even psychological’ has become our mode of experiencing reality.” Our culture has become much more concerned with the individual, with individual identity, and so our faith has become a more privatistic faith. As a result, Brueggemann argues, “We have experienced …a loss of public awareness and imagination…. We have lost our capacity to practice prayer in relationship to public issues.” The communal laments call us, yes, to lament our personal situations, but not to be limited by privatistic concerns, but to pray bigger, to lament bigger, to lament with others, to lament for others, to lament for the world that we know our world has not yet become. Going back to Tara’s Angels, that is why we, as a church, support this kind of ministry. We do not want to be guilty of a loss of public awareness on this issue, of the appalling statistics on intimate partner violence – that one woman is killed every 9 days in Australia. And while domestic violence is complex, and affects men as well as women, we know it is gender inequality that affirms attitudes and behaviours that enable violence against women. We know gender inequality is a proper subject for our theological imagination – for lament. On Wednesday a group of us met at the church for a lament writing workshop (it will be repeated on Zoom this Wednesday) and while most of us wrote personal laments, Rebecca Hilton wrote this – which although also personal is an example of a communal psalm of lament about gender inequality.

God, why have you made some men feel that they have dominion and power over women.
I am angry that my daughters will navigate a world where they are considered less than a man. In so many situations.

I am sad that our mothers and grandmothers did not get the same opportunities as men. 3.Yet I know that you have been with us, and you treat women equally to a man. 4.I want every woman to know her worth. 5.God, our world cannot function until all people are equal. 6.I want men to understand the hurt they bring to women by actions or inactions. 7.Give me a voice to speak for the silenced. 8.I want to use my voice for others. 9.Thank you God for giving me opportunity. Our psalm for today, Psalm 137, is another example of a bigger prayer, a bigger lament. And yet, at first glance, we might be shocked, yes, by its violence and I’ll get to that in a moment, but also by its Jewishness. How can such a Jewish psalm, a psalm so concerned with a particular place, with Jerusalem, speak to the concerns of people throughout history, speak to our concerns? We need to keep in mind that for the Jewish people, Jerusalem and the temple, in Brueggemann’s words, “was the point of reference for all of life. Its destruction thus meant the loss of a centre, and a profound public disorientation.” Perhaps we can think back to those first weeks of April this year when everything about the way we conducted our lives changed, we were told to work from home, to stay home, to not congregate with groups of any size. It was profoundly disorienting – and yet we were still in familiar surroundings and living in relative safety. This was not how those in exile felt. Does this excuse the violence? Of course not. Every commentary I have looked at – Christian and Jewish – is shocked at the violence in this psalm. And yet they note that the psalm does not tell Jews to take this action against the ‘little ones’ of Babylon. Action, punishment, is left in the hands of God. And they also note the raw honesty of this cry to God, that the largeness of this lament, the intensity of this lament is such that, in Brueggemann’s words, it “must have energised fidelity for the long haul.” For we have the story of Nehemiah, who, a century later, is so distressed at the account of the state of Jerusalem that he too, “sits down and weeps” for days. And yet this grief about Jerusalem does not lead to a privatistic piety or a ‘heavenly religion’ but commitment to “restoration , reconstruction and reorganisation of the city.” Brueggemann writes, “Nehemiah wept a century later as his forebears did in our psalm. It is remarkable that the memory and hope are kept so poignantly and immediately alive for so long, but that is the nature of our faith. Out of that history of weeping came resolve for new life.” On Wednesday night as well, Rebecca read a lament written in the Mae La Refugee Camp on the Thai Burmese border when she and Gary Hilton and John Clark and Jeanette Mathews visited there in 2006. In an paper on lament that Jeanette wrote after that experience she speaks of how shy and emotionally reserved the Karen were, and yet reading their laments how she was “staggered the level of emotional outpouring that the poems evidenced”. Let me read you the lament that Rebecca read to us: I was born in a beauty land Full of dignity and happiness I wish to stay in our home forever And I want to depart never. The army entered my village On a silent day Our fields were destroyed and burnt the rice barn. I was hungry But no food to eat I left my homeland Settled in another land I miss you every minute Tears fall down on my feet But still have hope God will lead me home I miss my homeland Forever and never end I want to go back To beautify our land again *Naw Htee Lah Hay, Ku, Me La Camp, September 2006) We need to lament. And we need to lament big! We need to lament big because this is our most honest and intimate communication with a God who welcomes such communication, and because we need laments so emotionally staggering that they will sustain us, and sustain future generations, in our prayer, in our suffering, in our waiting and in our work for the long haul. Brueggemann writes, “It is important that generation after generation we remember with Jews [and we could add, with the poor, with refugees, with women, with all who experience violence, with the whole creation that is groaning] that the present arrangements are not right, not acceptable, and not finally to be accepted. Psalm 137 draws its power and authority out of another vision, marked by homecoming, which seems remote, but is not for one instant in doubt. There will be a homecoming to peace, justice and freedom.” O come, O come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel… As we say the words of this hymn – the lament - responsively and the choir sing the chorus, we remember the hope that we celebrate, the presence of Christ with us, and the laments that remind us of the fulfilment of that hope in our world.]]> clean no 59:26 No no Sunday 25 October 2020 – Lamenting disorientation https://www.canbap.org/podcast/sunday-25-october-2020/ Sun, 25 Oct 2020 05:11:57 +0000 https://www.canbap.org/?post_type=podcast&p=1281 Psalm 13:1-6 (NRSV) Introduction A well-known verse in Ecclesiastes tells us that there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (3:4) The trouble is, most churches today can celebrate well, but aren’t very good at lamenting, at least in their worship services. Life does have a sad, melancholic, painful dimension, but it is often ignored and even denied in church. The songs that are most frequently sung point to that. Keith Getty, in an online article entitled “Why songs of lament are important to cultivating spiritual depth”, says: “Unfortunately, our lyrics often soar so high that someone who is drowning on the ocean floor of their personal despair can’t reach them.” 1 Carl Trueman, in his book “The Wages of Spin”, has a chapter entitled “What can miserable Christians sing?” He writes there: “A diet of unremittingly jolly choruses and hymns inevitably creates an unrealistic horizon of expectation which sees the normative Christian life as one long triumphalist street party — a theologically incorrect and a pastorally disastrous scenario in a world of broken individuals… By excluding the cries of loneliness, dispossession, and desolation from its worship, the church has effectively silenced and excluded the voices of those who are themselves lonely, dispossessed, and desolate, both inside and outside the church.” 2 He goes on to say that by doing so, the church has “generated an insipid, trivial and unrealistically triumphalist Christianity” 2. If you think that is a little harsh or exaggerated, try and find a few songs of lament in published hymn books. I tried this week, and there are very few, and even fewer that are regularly sung. By contrast. The ancient Jewish hymn book, the book of Psalms in our Bibles, has many songs of lament. There are several other types of Psalms, such as wisdom psalms, pilgrimage psalms, history psalms, royal psalms about kingship, thanksgiving psalms focusing on God’s works, and praise psalms which focus on God’s nature. But the psalms of lament is the largest category – around a third of the 150 psalms. Some say up to 60 are lament psalms or contain substantial laments. Some of them are personal, like the one I’ve chosen for today, and some are community laments. Belinda will focus on them next Sunday. We don’t want to be the kind of church that Trueman describes. That’s why are current theme is on lament, and why we are turning to some of the psalms of lament. With all that has happened this year in our world, in our country, and in your lives, lament seems an appropriate topic and activity. We’ve all been deeply affected in one way or another, whether directly or indirectly. Lament may arise from what has happened to you personally, but injustice, inequality, poverty, environmental degradation, climate change, natural disasters and a host of other issues compellingly invite lament. Brueggemann – Orientation, Disorientation, Re-orientation The renowned OT scholar Walter Brueggemann has lectured and written extensively on the Psalms. Belinda and I are using some of his material for our sermons, and a couple of groups during the week are using related material. He classifies the Psalms into 3 main categories – psalms of orientation, disorientation, and re-orientation or new orientation. He suggests human life is made up of seasons or times of orientation, disorientation, and re-orientation. 3

The season of orientation is one of satisfaction and wellbeing that evokes gratitude for the constancy of blessing.

The psalms of orientation correspond to this, articulating the joy, delight, good, coherence and reliability of God, God’s creation, and God’s governing law.

The seasons of disorientation are characterised by anguish, hurt, alienation, suffering and even death. They evoke emotions of rage, resentment, self-pity, and hatred.

Psalms of disorientation correspond to this season, expressing painful disarray.

The season of re-orientation is when joy breaks through despair, light dispels darkness, and there is a sense of being overwhelmed with new gifts and blessings from God.

The psalms of re-orientation speak about newness and affirm a sovereign God who brings about the new situation. I wish all of you were currently in a season of orientation or re-orientation, but I know some of you are in that season of disorientation. That’s why we are considering this topic today and looking at a psalm of lament. I’ve chosen Psalm 13, because it’s short, yet has most of the characteristics of lament psalms. Westermann – Plea and Praise Claus Westermann, a German scholar and Pastor from the last century, did some ground-breaking work on the lament psalms around the middle of the century. While acknowledging that the laments vary in form, he identified a general pattern consisting of 2 parts – plea and praise. Under plea, there is usually an address to God, a complaint, a petition asking God to act, and the reasons for God to act. Then there is a surprising development to praise, which includes assurance of being heard, payment of vows, and doxology and praise. Let’s look at those elements in Psalm 13. It is a personal psalm of lament in which something is terribly wrong in the life of the speaker, and in the speaker’s life with God. Psalm 13 The psalm starts straight in with a barrage of rhetorical questions addressed to Yahweh. In v1, the complaint is God’s absence. “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” In v2 the complaint is pain, sorrow and the ascendency of enemies, all of which derives from God’s absence. “How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” There is no humble, reverential address in these opening verses. The situation is urgent and the speaker is laying the blame squarely on Yahweh. The petition comes in v3. It comes in the form of 3 imperatives – consider me; answer me; give light. The speaker makes it clear that the situation is beyond him Yahweh needs to act. The rationale or motivation is at the end of v3 & in v4. To paraphrase, This is what is at stake God. Act now or 3 things -- I will die; my enemies will prevail; my foes will rejoice. The plea part of the psalm is over. It has been raw, honest. Now what? Brueggemann in his commentary on this psalm, says: “Then the psalmist waits. It is a long wait after verse 4, a wait in the darkness of death, a wait in disorientation, a waiting ‘until hell freezes over.’ There must be such a wait, perhaps a long wait, because there is no other court of appeal. One must simply wait here until there is a response. Then – we do not know how long the wait was – things are changed. When the psalmist speaks again, he is on the way to a new orientation.” 4 Look now at v5 & v6. There are 3 statements of trust here – I have trusted; my heart shall rejoice; I will sing. They are matched by 3 references to Yahweh. The psalmist is clear about where his help comes from. I have trusted… in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice… in your salvation; I will sing… to the LORD. The psalm ends with the reason “Because he has dealt bountifully with me”. As Brueggemann says, “the speaker ends with a sense of disorientation overcome, released to a new, grateful, trustful communion”. 4 Let me make one other observation before we move on from this psalm. There are 3 occurrences of the name Yahweh (translated “LORD”) in this psalm. In v1, Yahweh is named, but attacked in the process. In v3, Yahweh is named in a more intimate way in the process of an appeal for help. In v6, Yahweh has now become the focus of praise. This development highlights the dramatic movement from disorientation to orientation. Illustration On Monday night, I watched a movie on SBS that I have been thinking about all week in connection with lament and this psalm. It was a courtroom drama based on the true story of Lyndal, a youg woman who had been sexually abused by a boarding house master at Toowoomba Prep School when she was 12. The movie deals with the civil court case 10 years later against the Anglican Diocese of Brisbane that knew of the perpetrator’s suspect behaviour but denied Lyndal’s abuse. The movie was titled “Don’t Tell”. That’s the warning the abuser had given his victim. It’s also what many others told her, arguing that her case wouldn’t stand. But she was so angry and distraught at what had happened to her and the ongoing harm to her life that she was determined to speak up and have her complaint heard. The court eventually found in her favour. The case was a major factor in the introduction of Working With Children Check legislation throughout Australia and contributed to the creation of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It also led to the resignation of Peter Hollingworth as Governor \General because he was the Archbishop of Brisbane at the time of the abuse. We lament all such abuse, decry cover-ups and support truth-telling. And we continue to cry out to God for justice and new orientation in all things. Conclusion I began by talking about the dirth of contemporary lament songs. But I did come across one during the week that I thought was a good example, written in 2108 by a guy called Ken Bible. We’re not going to listen to it or sing it, but I do want to read the lyrics to you as I close. How long, my Lord, how long? I need You, God unseen! I cry, I pray but feel ignored, Unheard, unloved, unclean. Deep sorrow floods my heart. The darkness closes in, With evil gathering all around And weakness all within. Like the lament psalms, the last verse moves to an expression of trust and praise. I trust Your love, my God, Whatever time may bring. I hold to what can never change And rest, rejoice, and sing! Amen Endnotes

https://factsandtrends.net/2018/10/17/when-the-downcast-cant-reach-our-hymns/
R. Truman, The Wages of Spin (Christian Focus, 2004) p.160
Walter Brueggemann, “Spirituality of the Psalms” (Augsburg Press, 2002), p.8-9.

This is an abridged version of his “The Message of the Psalms” (Augsburg Press, 1984).

Walter Brueggemann, “The Message of the Psalms – a Theological Commentary”, p.59-60.

]]> Psalm 13:1-6 (NRSV) Introduction A well-known verse in Ecclesiastes tells us that there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (3:4) The trouble is, most churches today can celebrate well, but aren’t very good at lamenting, at least in their worship services. Life does have a sad, melancholic, painful dimension, but it is often ignored and even denied in church. The songs that are most frequently sung point to that. Keith Getty, in an online article entitled “Why songs of lament are important to cultivating spiritual depth”, says: “Unfortunately, our lyrics often soar so high that someone who is drowning on the ocean floor of their personal despair can’t reach them.” 1 Carl Trueman, in his book “The Wages of Spin”, has a chapter entitled “What can miserable Christians sing?” He writes there: “A diet of unremittingly jolly choruses and hymns inevitably creates an unrealistic horizon of expectation which sees the normative Christian life as one long triumphalist street party — a theologically incorrect and a pastorally disastrous scenario in a world of broken individuals… By excluding the cries of loneliness, dispossession, and desolation from its worship, the church has effectively silenced and excluded the voices of those who are themselves lonely, dispossessed, and desolate, both inside and outside the church.” 2 He goes on to say that by doing so, the church has “generated an insipid, trivial and unrealistically triumphalist Christianity” 2. If you think that is a little harsh or exaggerated, try and find a few songs of lament in published hymn books. I tried this week, and there are very few, and even fewer that are regularly sung. By contrast. The ancient Jewish hymn book, the book of Psalms in our Bibles, has many songs of lament. There are several other types of Psalms, such as wisdom psalms, pilgrimage psalms, history psalms, royal psalms about kingship, thanksgiving psalms focusing on God’s works, and praise psalms which focus on God’s nature. But the psalms of lament is the largest category – around a third of the 150 psalms. Some say up to 60 are lament psalms or contain substantial laments. Some of them are personal, like the one I’ve chosen for today, and some are community laments. Belinda will focus on them next Sunday. We don’t want to be the kind of church that Trueman describes. That’s why are current theme is on lament, and why we are turning to some of the psalms of lament. With all that has happened this year in our world, in our country, and in your lives, lament seems an appropriate topic and activity. We’ve all been deeply affected in one way or another, whether directly or indirectly. Lament may arise from what has happened to you personally, but injustice, inequality, poverty, environmental degradation, climate change, natural disasters and a host of other issues compellingly invite lament. Brueggemann – Orientation, Disorientation, Re-orientation The renowned OT scholar Walter Brueggemann has lectured and written extensively on the Psalms. Belinda and I are using some of his material for our sermons, and a couple of groups during the week are using related material. He classifies the Psalms into 3 main categories – psalms of orientation, disorientation, and re-orientation or new orientation. He suggests human life is made up of seasons or times of orientation, disorientation, and re-orientation. 3

The season of orientation is one of satisfaction and wellbeing that evokes gratitude for the constancy of blessing.

The psalms of orientation correspond to this, articulating the joy, delight, good, coherence and reliability of God, God’s creation, and God’s governing law.

The seasons of disorientation are characterised by anguish, hurt, alienation, suffering and even death. They evoke emotions of rage, resentment, self-pity, and hatred.

Psalms of disorientation correspond to this season, expressing painful disarray.

The season of re-orientation is when joy breaks through despair, light dispels darkness, and there is a sense of being overwhelmed with new gifts and blessings from God.

https://factsandtrends.net/2018/10/17/when-the-downcast-cant-reach-our-hymns/
R. Truman, The Wages of Spin (Christian Focus, 2004) p.160
Walter Brueggemann, “Spirituality of the Psalms” (Augsburg Press, 2002), p.8-9.

This is an abridged version of his “The Message of the Psalms” (Augsburg Press, 1984).

Walter Brueggemann, “The Message of the Psalms – a Theological Commentary”, p.59-60.

]]> clean no 50:03 No no Sunday 18 October 2020 – Psalms of lament: Psalm 88 https://www.canbap.org/podcast/sunday-18-october-2020-psalms-of-lament-psalm-88/ Sat, 17 Oct 2020 23:00:27 +0000 https://www.canbap.org/?post_type=podcast&p=1260 Psalms of Lament – Psalm 88 As I was preparing for this sermon and this short series over the next three weeks on the psalms of lament, a song by the Christian musician, Ken Medema, kept coming back to me. If this is not a place where tears are understood, where can I go to cry? If this is not a place where my spirit can take wing, where can I go to fly? I don’t need another place for trying to impress you with just how good and virtuous I am. I don’t need another place for always being on top of things, ev’rybody knows that it’s a sham. I don’t need another place for always wearing smiles, even when it’s not the way I feel. I don’t need another place to mouth the same old platitudes ‘Cause you and I both know that it’s not real. If this is not a place where my questions can be asked where can I go to seek? If this is not a place where my heart cries can be heard where can I go to speak? This, for me, is why we need the psalms of lament; to offer us a place where we can lament; where we can cry, where we can question, where we can rage and where we can do all of this in relationship, in dialogue with God, even when things seem so dark and desperate, as in our psalm this morning, that we feel that God is not listening. Verse fourteen; “O Lord, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me?” And yet, within the church there is a reluctance to allow space for lament. The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann comments that although roughly one third of the psalms are psalms of lament, only appears in the common lectionary – Psalm 22, the words Jesus quotes on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – which is hard to avoid. Lament is treated with suspicion. It does not sit easily with the Christian story of victory over sin and evil and death. To acknowledge that pain and loss is disorientating, that it turns us around and upside down, that it makes us lose our faith bearings is regarded as a dangerous admission, an admission of doubt or of unfaith. And yet in doing so we rob the church, we rob ourselves, of a way of processing what it is to be human in the light of faith. My most stark experience of this was at university when my second cousin, Alison, who was also at uni with me, but who moved in different circles – she was more involved with EU (the Evangelical Union) than I was - was killed one morning in a car accident. At her funeral speaker after speaker reframed her death as a victory; that Alison was now with God, that this was part of God’s plan, a witness to all of us to know Jesus as our Saviour too. The minister even issued an alter call. “If you want to see Alison again, come and speak to me now at the left-hand exit. Otherwise, use the right.” The right was very crowded. Looking back, I can understand why people said what they said. They desperately wanted to offer her parents, her family, some consolation, some rationale for what had happened. But the one speaker who stood out was Alison’s best friend who simply listed all the things she and Alison had hoped to do together – talk about their boyfriends, get engaged, be bridesmaids at each other’s weddings, get jobs, have children – and said how terribly sad she was that none of this would every happen. She was the one, who for me, voiced a lament for Alison, who honestly acknowledged the enormity of what had been lost. It is confronting to be faced by lament; to hear the words of the Psalmist saying, not once, but three times in this psalm, “O Lord, I cry out to you…” and to hear no answer, no resolution of the psalmist’s anguish. It is confronting to be faced by the wild and ragged language that the psalmist uses, “I am like those who go down to the Pit… like those forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, [like those] cut off from your hand.” It is confronting to have a psalm that does not end with any comfort or any hope or any light, but in darkness. But sometimes our experience of life is like this and what is required of us, as people of faith, is to engage with life as it is. Brueggemann writes, “[Lament – rather than being an act of unfaith] is an act of bold faith….because it insists that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in some pretended way.” But, taking this path, insisting that the world must be experienced as it is, wrestling with that incoherence and waiting in the dark night of that experience, leads to a transformed faith; a faith in a God who, Brueggemann writes, “is present in, participating in and attentive to the darkness, weakness and displacement of life.” A God “of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” A God more defined by fidelity than immutability. Daniel Hans is an American Presbyterian minister who published a book of the sermons he preached during the year and in the months after his three-year-old daughter Laura died of cancer, after four surgeries and nine months of treatment. One of these sermons is titled: ‘Caution. Your God is Too Big’ and in it he relates how he once surveyed his congregation, asking them about their disappointments with God. He asked them to share things that they had hoped God would do, that God didn’t do and people described times they had prayed for the life of a newborn baby only to see it die, or for God to protect his people only to hear of an elderly woman in their city stabbed on her way to church, or for rain for famine stricken Africa only to see starvation continue. To these disappointments Hans now added his own – he had hoped God would heal his baby girl, but her condition only grew worse. What Hans suggests, and what the psalms of lament relate, is that disappointments like this are not the result of sin in our lives, but the stuff of life; that when we read Scripture we discover that alongside the stories of miracles and amazing feats of God there is story after story of disappointment with God, of times when God appears silent and inactive. What Hans told his congregation was that sometimes we remember only the miracle stories and we develop too big a view of God – not that we can have too big a view of God’s greatness and power or too big a view of God’s love and grace - but that we can have too big a view of God’s will. God’s action in our world is not always to perform the miraculous, but, more often, to walk through our suffering with us. Secondly the psalms of lament tell us that there is no subject, nothing, that we cannot say to God. The language of the psalms of lament, Brueggemann says, is not “polite and civil”. In praying the psalms of lament, we “think unthinkable thoughts and utter unutterable words.” Saying whatever we need to say to God is not an expression of a lack of faith, of unfaith, but another expression of a bold faith that demands an intimacy with God. Brueggemann writes, “What is said to Yahweh may be scandalous and without redeeming social value, but these speakers are completely committed, and whatever must be said about the human situation must be said directly to Yahweh, who is Lord of the human experience and partner with us in it.” Even this psalm, Psalm 88, where the psalmist rails against a God who is accused of not listening, of deliberately casting him away, or inflicting the suffering on him that he experiences, of abandoning him, is still addressed to God! The psalmist is still expressing a relationship with God, demanding a relationship with God and so this is still an expression of faith, a bold faith, that speaks to us and for us in the moments of our utter darkness as well. Daniel Hans tells another story in his book of French nationals who were hiding a family of Jews in their basement during the war. What happened to them is not known, but at the end of the war these words were found scribbled on the wall of that basement: “I believe in the sun even when it does not shine. I believe in love even when it is not given. I believe in God even when he is silent.” The psalms of lament give us a voice to express the reality of our experience, to find our way to a different faith, a different relationship with God and give us the confidence to keep demanding that relationship with God through all that we experience. The final verse of the song we sang at the beginning, ‘Be still and know that I am God’, is ‘In you, O Lord, will I put my trust.’ Can I invite you now, as an expression of your bold faith, to say with me three times those words this morning? In you, O Lord, will I put my trust. In you, O Lord, will I put my trust. In you, O Lord, will I put my trust. ]]> Psalms of Lament – Psalm 88 As I was preparing for this sermon and this short series over the next three weeks on the psalms of lament, a song by the Christian musician, Ken Medema, kept coming back to me. If this is not a place where tears are understood, where can I go to cry? If this is not a place where my spirit can take wing, where can I go to fly? I don’t need another place for trying to impress you with just how good and virtuous I am. I don’t need another place for always being on top of things, ev’rybody knows that it’s a sham. I don’t need another place for always wearing smiles, even when it’s not the way I feel. I don’t need another place to mouth the same old platitudes ‘Cause you and I both know that it’s not real. If this is not a place where my questions can be asked where can I go to seek? If this is not a place where my heart cries can be heard where can I go to speak? This, for me, is why we need the psalms of lament; to offer us a place where we can lament; where we can cry, where we can question, where we can rage and where we can do all of this in relationship, in dialogue with God, even when things seem so dark and desperate, as in our psalm this morning, that we feel that God is not listening. Verse fourteen; “O Lord, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me?” And yet, within the church there is a reluctance to allow space for lament. The Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann comments that although roughly one third of the psalms are psalms of lament, only appears in the common lectionary – Psalm 22, the words Jesus quotes on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – which is hard to avoid. Lament is treated with suspicion. It does not sit easily with the Christian story of victory over sin and evil and death. To acknowledge that pain and loss is disorientating, that it turns us around and upside down, that it makes us lose our faith bearings is regarded as a dangerous admission, an admission of doubt or of unfaith. And yet in doing so we rob the church, we rob ourselves, of a way of processing what it is to be human in the light of faith. My most stark experience of this was at university when my second cousin, Alison, who was also at uni with me, but who moved in different circles – she was more involved with EU (the Evangelical Union) than I was - was killed one morning in a car accident. At her funeral speaker after speaker reframed her death as a victory; that Alison was now with God, that this was part of God’s plan, a witness to all of us to know Jesus as our Saviour too. The minister even issued an alter call. “If you want to see Alison again, come and speak to me now at the left-hand exit. Otherwise, use the right.” The right was very crowded. Looking back, I can understand why people said what they said. They desperately wanted to offer her parents, her family, some consolation, some rationale for what had happened. But the one speaker who stood out was Alison’s best friend who simply listed all the things she and Alison had hoped to do together – talk about their boyfriends, get engaged, be bridesmaids at each other’s weddings, get jobs, have children – and said how terribly sad she was that none of this would every happen. She was the one, who for me, voiced a lament for Alison, who honestly acknowledged the enormity of what had been lost. It is confronting to be faced by lament; to hear the words of the Psalmist saying, not once, but three times in this psalm, “O Lord, I cry out to you…” and to hear no answer, no resolution of the psalmist’s anguish. It is confronting to be faced by the wild and ragged language that the psalmist uses, “I am like those who go down to the Pit… like those forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, [like those] cut off from your hand.” It is confronting to have a psalm that does not end with any comfort or any hope or any light, but in darkness. But sometimes our experience of life is like this and what is required of us, as people of faith, is to engage with life as it is. Brueggemann writes, “[Lament – rather than being an act of unfaith] is an act of bold faith….because it insists that the world must be experienced as it really is and not in some pretended way.” But, taking this path, insisting that the world must be experienced as it is, wrestling with that incoherence and waiting in the dark night of that experience, leads to a transformed faith; a faith in a God who, Brueggemann writes, “is present in, participating in and attentive to the darkness, weakness and displacement of life.” A God “of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” A God more defined by fidelity than immutability. Daniel Hans is an American Presbyterian minister who published a book of the sermons he preached during the year and in the months after his three-year-old daughter Laura died of cancer, after four surgeries and nine months of treatment. One of these sermons is titled: ‘Caution. Your God is Too Big’ and in it he relates how he once surveyed his congregation, asking them about their disappointments with God. He asked them to share things that they had hoped God would do, that God didn’t do and people described times they had prayed for the life of a newborn baby only to see it die, or for God to protect his people only to hear of an elderly woman in their city stabbed on her way to church, or for rain for famine stricken Africa only to see starvation continue. To these disappointments Hans now added his own – he had hoped God would heal his baby girl, but her condition only grew worse. What Hans suggests, and what the psalms of lament relate, is that disappointments like this are not the result of sin in our lives, but the stuff of life; that when we read Scripture we discover that alongside the stories of miracles and amazing feats of God there is story after story of disappointment with God, of times when God appears silent and inactive. What Hans told his congregation was that sometimes we remember only the miracle stories and we develop too big a view of God – not that we can have too big a view of God’s greatness and power or too big a view of God’s love and grace - but that we can have too big a view of God’s will. God’s action in our world is not always to perform the miraculous, but, more often, to walk through our suffering with us. Secondly the psalms of lament tell us that there is no subject, nothing, that we cannot say to God. The language of the psalms of lament, Brueggemann says, is not “polite and civil”. In praying the psalms of lament, we “think unthinkable thoughts and utter unutterable words.” Saying whatever we need to say to God is not an expression of a lack of faith, of unfaith, but another expression of a bold faith that demands an intimacy with God. Brueggemann writes, “What is said to Yahweh may be scandalous and without redeeming social value, but these speakers are completely committed, and whatever must be said about the human situation must be said directly to Yahweh, who is Lord of the human experience and partner with us in it.” Even this psalm, Psalm 88, where the psalmist rails against a God who is accused of not listening, of deliberately casting him away, or inflicting the suffering on him that he experiences, of abandoning him, is still addressed to God! The psalmist is still expressing a relationship with God, demanding a relationship with God and so this is still an expression of faith, a bold faith, that speaks to us and for us in the moments of our utter darkness as well. Daniel Hans tells another story in his book of French nationals who were hiding a family of Jews in their basement during the war. What happened to them is not known, but at the end of the war these words were found scribbled on the wall of that basement: “I believe in the sun even when it does not shine. I believe in love even when it is not given. I believe in God even when he is silent.” The psalms of lament give us a voice to express the reality of our experience, to find our way to a different faith, a different relationship with God and give us the confidence to keep demanding that relationship with God through all that we experience. The final verse of the song we sang at the beginning, ‘Be still and know that I am God’, is ‘In you, O Lord, will I put my trust.’ Can I invite you now, as an expression of your bold faith, to say with me three times those words this morning? In you, O Lord, will I put my trust. In you, O Lord, will I put my trust. In you, O Lord, will I put my trust. ]]> clean no 48:13 No no