Psalms: Songs of Disorientation (Part 1)
Introduction
Psalm 13; Psalm 73
Up to this point in our study of the Psalter, we have been looking at the psalms of orientation. We have seen that the psalms of orientation describe life as functioning as it should. Creation is seen as well-ordered, the system of retributive justice is intact, delighting in and meditating on God's instruction brings positive results. The psalms of orientation left to themselves present something like the modern "prosperity doctrine." But those are not the only types of psalms found in the Psalter, because we all know by experience that life does not always work like that.
This brings up an important point about studying the Bible that we can learn from our study of the psalms. The Bible has multiple voices. It is not monotone. There is a reason that there are four Gospels. There is a reason that the wisdom tradition of Israel contains more than the book of Proverbs. It also contains Job and Ecclesiastes. There is a reason why both the records of Kings and Chronicles appear in the canon of Scripture. The canon of Scripture is a symphony and in each book of the Bible, each genre has a place. Human life is complicated and the Bible is written to address it all.
One of the realities that we have to acknowledge is that life is not always defined by orientation even for those who do everything right. This is one of the things that the wisdom tradition, the prophets, and the psalms of disorientation wrestle with.
It is interesting that the church continues to sing the songs of orientation in spite of the continued move of the world around us to the place of disorientation. This may be our declaration of faith in God despite what things look like. It may also be our declaration that nothing can separate us from the love of God! We may worry that expressions like those found in the psalms of disorientation will "talk us out of our miracle" or that we are not "speaking faith." There is something to be said for not grumbling like the children of Israel did in the n wilderness when they refused to believe the LORD and Moses.
But, something else to remember is what Paul said to Timothy, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work" (3:16-17).
This includes those parts of the Bible that we must wrestle with in order to understand. This includes the psalms of disorientation.
What do we mean by psalms of disorientation? They are the psalms that question the goodness of creation. They are psalms that wrestle with the idea that God is good and just as the psalmist looks around at a world that contradicts the promises of God. They are psalms that contain complaints to the LORD and protests about life to the LORD. They are also psalms of penitence in which the sinner confesses and repents of her sins. We are used to the psalms of repentance, like Psalm 51. We will talk about them eventually, but less familiar are those songs of lament, complaint, and protest. There are also psalms of God's complaint where the speaker is no longer the human covenant partner, but the LORD.
The songs of human lament are contrary to our view of faith and contrary to our culture of winning in life.
We may have an aversion to them because we do not want to participate in the culture of complaint and victimhood. We may also have an aversion to them because we wonder if they are compatible with the victory that we see in the resurrection. We may also think that the psalms of lament are relegated to the past, to the spirituality of Israel.
However, the Lord Jesus practices lament in the Gospels. He weeps over Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44). He wrestles with God in the garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:31). He cries out the words of Psalm 22:1 on the cross. The apostles quote one of the psalms of lament to speak about Judas's demise in Acts 1:20 (cf. Psalms 109:8). In the Revelation, we hear the souls under the altar in John's vision lamenting their own martyrdom and crying out that God would avenge them (Revelation 6:10). There is a place for lament in Christian worship and practice.
The apostle Paul when describing life in the Spirit says that even those who have the first-fruits of the Spirit and await the resurrection, groan with the rest of creation. The psalms of lament are a form of groaning before God. They are a form of saying to God and with God that things are not right and there is a place for that in our practice of Christian spirituality and in our worship.
If we are to have a healthy spirituality, we will have both praise and lament. It is not either/or, it is both/and.
We live the Christian life in the in-between place. We have already been translated into the kingdom of God. We were baptized in His Name and filled with His Spirit, translated into the kingdom. We are sitting with Him in heavenly places. In our most profound and sublime spiritual moments, we feel the rapture of the world to come. But, that is not where we live most of life. Most of life is lived in the mundane. And much of life is filled with some measure of suffering. Sometimes when we are among the dominant group in society, we can forget the psalms of lament, because life is less antagonistic to us. Yet, even in the affluence that pervades American culture, there is a place for the practice of lament and the singing and interaction with all of the songs of disorientation.
Let's look at the form that many of these psalms take:
Plea. A complaint that God should correct a broken situation. This includes an address to God, complaint, petition, motivations, and imprecation.
Praise. This includes assurance of being heard, payment of vows, doxology, and praise.
There is a movement in the vast majority of the lament from a season of plea to a new season of praise. This teaches us that lament does not keep people stuck in victimization or the culture of complaint. The practice of Biblical lament is actually a door to renewed hope.
The reason is that lament gives the individual and the community an opportunity to address God. There are two partners in the covenant, God and us. Part of being in covenant with God is that we can be honest with God. He wants to hear all that we have to say.
These types of prayers/psalms offer us two things: catharsis and the ability to move God. We need a healthy flow of emotions. We need to be able to express what we are experiencing and to name our difficulties and struggles. First, God does not want us to have to go outside of our relationship with Him in order to process our difficult experiences. This is why the psalms of lament are addressed to God. Israel can only be Israel in relationship to the LORD and the church can only be the church in relationship to Him. Even in our most difficult places, God invites us to come boldly to the throne of grace. This is the story of the Incarnation. We have a High Priest Who can be touched with the feelings of our weaknesses. In Christ God knows what it means to experience the disoriented places of life. And so prayer includes lament. Second, our prayers move God to act. Prayer is not just about us feeling better, but God actually hears and answers. It was Israel's groaning that caused the LORD to come down and send Moses to deliver them.
The prayers of lament are addressed to God because God cares, God wants to share our hurts and frustrations, and God wants to fix them.
The first type of psalm of disorientation that we will talk about is the personal lament. These make up a large portion of the psalms of disorientation. This evening we will look at Psalm 13 because it is very easy to see the form that the laments take:
1. Verses 1-2
Psalm 13
For the director of music. A psalm of David.
1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?
The psalmist asks four questions. Notice that the psalm is addressed to the LORD. These questions describe a situation and intend to draw the LORD into it. The psalmist is confident that the things that he is concerned about concern the LORD. The situation seems to indicate that the LORD has forgotten.
The psalmist equates the trouble with the absence of God. When God is absent there is disorientation.
In verse 2, the trouble that comes with the absence of God is "pain, sorrow, and worst of all, the awareness that enemies prevail" (Brueggemann, p. 59). The psalmist sees his crisis as related to his covenant with the LORD. His problem is not guilt or failure. He is wrestling with whether God is being faithful to the covenant.
The speech begins abruptly! It is just out there!
2. Verses 3-4
3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,” and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
These verses offer a petition and motivation. There is a triad of imperatives: "consider, answer, lighten." It is beyond the psalmist's ability to cope with. If the LORD does not act there is no way out of the trouble.
The LORD is named a second time. This time with an intimate naming of God as "my God."
The initial rage has been released and the psalmist is refocussing on his past relationship with God. The psalmist is confident that God will hear because God is "my God."
The petition is "Give light to my eyes."
After the petition, there is the motivation which is given three times. If God does not help the psalmist will "sleep in death," the enemy will boast, and the foes will rejoice. The psalmist is taking the problem to the right place. He is telling the LORD that the problem is His.
If the LORD does not act on his behalf it will reflect badly on God.
The psalmist is waiting on God to act because there is no one else to go to. This is one of the things that makes the psalms so powerful. The psalmist waits after verse 4. We do not know how long, but ultimately there is a resolution.
The psalms of lament are not about hopelessness. They are the doorway to hope!
3. Verses 5-6
5 But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.6 I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.
While the psalmist waits, he chooses to trust in God's unfailing love. Waiting in a dark place is not an act of unbelief.
Just because you are in a difficult season does not mean that God has forsaken you. The psalmist moves from a place of disorientation to a dramatic new orientation.
He moves from brokenness and questions to a place of praise!
The reason is that his focus has remained on the only One Who can make it right.
The old song says, "Trouble, it don't last always."
There will be moments in our lives when we have questions that we do not have answers for. There will be moments when our trials last what seems like an eternity. There will be seasons when the dark night of the soul lasts "until hell freezes over."
Learning to pray the psalms of lament can keep us. The reason is that they refocus us on God. They are tools to help us to cast our cares upon him because he cares for us. Another of the psalms of lament, Psalm 73 is the first psalm in the third book of the Psalter. Psalm 72 begins by saying that it is a song for, by, or about Solomon, the son of David. It ends by saying that the prayers of David, the son of Jesse are ended. Psalm 72 ends on a high note. It is a psalm of orientation. It declares that God is going to keep His promise to the Davidic dynasty. Everything is going to work as it should. But, Psalm 73 is a psalm of lament. It is strategically placed right next to the Royal Psalm with the purpose of questioning. The Davidic dynasty did come to an end and the book of Psalms is wondering how the truth of Psalm 1 about the blessed man and Psalm 2 about the LORD setting up an everlasting King would ever be fulfilled.
God is not afraid of your questions. Psalm 73 shares a whole lot of the same words as Psalm 1. It questions the truth of Psalm 1 but ultimately affirms it. It asks if Psalm 72 can ever be a reality. The reality that the psalmist saw was worse than he could imagine. Just read the book of 2 Kings and you will see what he saw. The kings of Israel and Judah got worse and worse as time went on.
The writer of Psalm 73 has a moment where he just wants to give up and go along with the rest of the world around him. Why shouldn't he, it seemed like delighting in the LORD's instruction and meditating in it day and night was not transplanting him into a safe place by living streams. He did not feel fruitful and the seasons were long.
Then we read verse 17. It may be the verse upon which the entire Psalter hinges:
until I entered the sanctuary. Then I understood their destiny.
It was as the psalmist brought his complaints and questions into the Presence of God that He gained a new understanding. God does not mind your questions or complaints. He has even given us a formula for how to bring them to Him.
When we do He has a way of transforming them. God does not despise your doubt. He just wants you to bring it to the right place. Well-placed doubt can be a building block for unshakable immovable faith. Meditating in these psalms that move from questions, complaints, and petitions to confessions of trust and praise can help us remain planted in the house of God when everything else is shifting and shaking!
For the Road:
This week read Psalms 32, 51, 143, 130, 6, 38, 102, 49, 90, 73. Spend time thinking about them and write down your thoughts. How did the authors of the NT use these Psalms? How might Jesus have prayed these Psalms? How would you pray them?
