Dr. Christopher Graham

Pentecost +4 – Lament
Dr. Christopher Graham
Psalm 69

Offer unto God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows unto the Most High // And call upon me in the time of trouble; so will I hear you, and you shall praise me.” Yes, these are the words that I opened our homily with two weeks ago. And no I did not grab the wrong notes. You may remember that in Psalm the antidote to a wrong perspective and lack of integrity when it comes to our actions before God is praise and thanksgiving. Last week Fr. Doug led us through Psalm 100, an example of pure praise and thanksgiving. And if you were here last week, get ready for a little whiplash. After Fr. Doug’s homily last week, I couldn’t get Kool and the Gang out of my head

“There’s a party goin’ on right here. A celebration to last throughout the years. So bring your good times and your laughter too. We gonna celebrate your party with you. Come on now. Let’s all celebrate and have a good time”

And now we are in the key of “I am a man of constant Sorrow, I’ve seen trouble all my day” or Ralph Stanely “O Death. Whoa, Death. Won’t you spare me over ’til another year?”

The order of our homilies aligns with what we read two weeks ago. Offer unto God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows unto the Most High; And call upon me in the time of trouble; so will I hear you, and you shall praise me.”

Last week’s Psalm 100 is sung from the proper perspective—”He’s the Great Shepherd, the Rock of All Ages, Almighty God is He.” From that perspective, according to Psalm 50, we now “Call upon me in the time of trouble.” And so that is where we are this morning in Psalm 69. A time of trouble. But not like I couldn’t find my car keys and was running late this morning. But in a tight spot, so tight, in fact that we are at the end of our rope. We can’t get oriented. We feel like everything is spinning. “Hello, hello. In a place called vertigo.” How does the psalmist describe it here?

v. 1 For the waters have come up to my neck
I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.

Not only is it a tight spot, but apparently God is not answering! What are we supposed to do in this situation? You may not like the answer this morning, but if done rightly, it may be the only proper response . . . lament. Lament is both hard for us and therefore underused, and yet it is essential for us in these tight spots.

Lament makes us uncomfortable because it refuses to speak in euphemism. And because of this, challenges our tendency to candy-coat the situation. “This too shall pass,” “No pain, No gain.” “Embrace the Suck.” Sometimes we even retreat to the prose of Scripture as a way to mentally avoid the fact that life right now sucks in a way that threatens to undo us! “All things work together for good. . .” We do this even with the lament psalms themselves.

I grew up singing a song with lyrics drawn from a lament: “I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore. Very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more. . .” Singing about sin in a major chord. Hear the psalmist: “I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched.” Verse

3. Lament happens when we realize “Life sucks!” and, in fact, is sucking the life out of me—my breath, my bones, my very being. Lament happens when we come face-to-face with and find ourselves under the burden of the brokenness of the world. In some psalms, it is our own brokenness. In other songs of lament, it is nature itself. This is the lament of the people in Joel, for example. In this psalm and in the lament of Jeremiah, the brokenness is unjust treatment by others.

v. 4: More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause;
mighty are those who would destroy me, those who attack me with lies.
v. 12 I am the talk of those who sit in the gate, and the drunkards make songs about me.
v. 21They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink

Again, this challenges our tendency to euphemize. “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me.” Or “I’m not called to please men.” Or when we use retreat to other verses in the Bible to avoid the reality of the tight spot that we are in because of the real injustice being carried out against us.

Matt 10:28-31: And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not 2 sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

And this a second reason why lament is so hard. Not only does it refuse to euphemize our situation, it refuses to compromise our proper perspective on God. Lament happens when we refuse to accept the fact that the God we confess in prose— the God who values us more than the sparrows, the God who works all things together for good—that this God is, in fact, not acting on our behalf. Notice again that the plea for God is based on what the psalmist knows is true, which makes it so much harder to accept what is happening.

13 “Answer me answer me in your saving faithfulness.
14 Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.
16 Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.

One of the psalms that we tend to euphemize is Psalm 42. I can’t tell you how many times I sang the chorus drawin from the first verse: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.” Listen, I am no hunter, biologist, zoologist, or master naturalist. But if I saw a deer panting, I would know “something isn’t right here!” And the psalm itself doesn’t allow us to romanticize the situation or the fact that God is not acting: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”

Lament is hard because it feels like a lack of faith. We sound like the scoffers in this psalm, we may sound like Job’s friends. But there is a key difference—lament is God-directed. Lament happens when we to God in the middle of this life-sucking situation. Calling things for what they are is an essential element of lament, but to stay there is merely whining. Maybe singing the blues. Crying in our beer. We whine about God, or maybe we theorize to defend God. “Well, it only appears he is not working to save us.” What makes it lament is that in this state, we turn to God. Lament is Godward because of its purpose. BTW, that purpose is not to make you feel better. Not to be cathartic. The purpose of lament? Again, the psalm from two weeks ago: “And call upon me in the time of trouble; so will I hear you, and you shall praise me.”

And indeed today, the Psalmist starts:

“Save me, O God!” (v.1)
V. 13 “Answer me answer me in your saving faithfulness.
14 Deliver me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies
and from the deep waters.
16 Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.
17 Hide not your face from your servant,
for I am in distress; make haste to answer me.
18 Draw near to my soul, redeem me;
ransom me because of my enemies!

And this leads to the last element of lament that makes it so hard. Lament remains unresolved until God acts. It puts the ball in God’s court. In doing so, lament resists our desire for closure. There is no harmonic “Amen.” We lament in order to hear from God and to see how God is answering us. It is not uncommon for OT prophets to use lament to stir God to the injustice that his people are bearing. We heard it in Jeremiah this morning:

O Lord of hosts, who tests the righteous, who sees the heart and the mind,
let me see your vengeance upon them,
for to you have I committed my cause. Jeremiah 20

At times, God responds and saves. This is why many lament psalms actually end with a thanksgiving psalm. At times, God pulls back the veil to reveal his purposes and the response is not what they want to hear.

Habakkuk cries out O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,// and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!”// and you will not save?
3 Why do you make me see iniquity,// and why do you idly look at wrong? 1:1-3.

and God responds:

Look among the nations, and see; //wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days //that you would not believe if told. // For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth,//to seize dwellings not their own. 1:5-6

And sometimes, friends, God does not respond. In his final moments on the cross, Jesus cites the opening of Psalm 22: “My God, My God Why have you forsaken me?” In response a soldier gives him the drink of our lament this morning:

“I looked for pity, but there was none, //and for comforters, but I found none.
They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.”

And then Jesus died. He lamented and he died. So where is the good news this morning? Not found in this psalm. Laments are unresolved.

Some good news is that you find yourself this morning in a community where people care for you when you find yourself in tight spots. You are among people who have been in spots tighter than you yourself have imagined. I can testify to this myself. Probably in the first 2 weeks of being here, having just been let go from my position and still without a job, Derrick and Alan were voices who said, “Been there, brother.” And I could tell by the way they approached me each week that they were very concerned for me even when I wasn’t concerned about myself. And after Ishared my experiences two weeks ago, Marc came up to me and said in a way that was so caring “Has God ever shown you why that happened.” So it is good news that you are in a caring community this morning. But that, friends, is not THE good news. Because I can take you to innumerable caring communities in our area. Places where people will truly commiserate with you, empathize with you, sympathize with you, listen to your story, share wisdom. Group counseling groups, recovery groups, bars, coffee shops, lodges. These are all caring communities, and I am not disparaging their value.

But what sets this congregation apart, what makes us the Church, is that we are who we are because of the presence of the God who inclines his ear to us, the Spirit of Life, and the one who Himself can sympathize with us in our weakness. The Good News is that this God has ordained a people who can be with you in these tight spots. Who, on a Sunday morning when you cannot bring yourself to sing the words “How Great Thou Art,” will sing them for you, and with you, and around you. You are in a place that, even if we are all going through a tight spot, we have committed ourselves to l hear the Word of God spoken. That when you find yourself in a state of paralysis by analysis, these people will find a way to open the roof and lower you into the presence of Jesus.

The Jesus who cried out to his Father that the cup should pass from him. The Jesus who lamented: My God, My God why have you forsaken me?
And in those same hours prayed “Forgive them.”

Hear me, though. We do not merely have Christ’s example. We have the Jesus who is today seated at the right hand of God. And that He responds at all is a testimony to the fact that God does work on behalf of his people.

The Jesus who is the Son of God who is able to empathize with our weaknesses, having been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Who offers receive mercy and grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:14–16)

And call upon me in the time of trouble; so will I hear you, and you shall praise me.”