Psalm 130
"Suffering, A Cry for Help!!"
Psalm 130 begins with these words:"Out of the depths I cry to thee, O Lord!! Lord, hear my voice!! Let thy ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication!!"
Out of the depths, out of the inner reaches of his soul, the psalmist was crying to the Lord. Crying, calling out for the Lord, for God, to come to him. This is one of the most famous lament psalms in the Bible along with Psalm 22:1, as Jesus cried the words from the psalter,"My God,my God why hast thou forsaken me?" These Psalms which are entitled lament psalms are the cry, the longing of someone to pour out the deepest emotions which are penetrated in a person?s heart.
The question I would like us to wrestle with this evening as we look at these lament psalms, and our need to cry out from the depths of our souls, is this:TO WHOM ARE WE ADDRESSING THESE CRIES??? How is this God, this Lord seen? Can we share with God, with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit the deepest emotions we have those emotions of fear, frustration, anger, sorrow, the pain of shattered relationships and the brokenness of this world??? Are we allowed to share these feelings with God, with His Son, with the Holy Spirit ??
Or, or, do we share with God only those emotions we think are acceptable to Him? Our joys, our happiness, our faithfulness to His word. Can God handle my anger, my frustrations, my feelings of injustice and unfairness with life? Can God handle all of me?? Paul says in Romans 8:15ff "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of son ship. When we cry "Abba! Father!" it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ..." Paul continues in verse 26:"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God."
Paul is saying isn?t he?-- that God can handle our deepest emotions, because His Holy Spirit searches our hearts to find those emotions so that His Spirit and our spirit together may cry "Abba Father" or" Daddy God", as we turn to God through prayer. So these lament Psalms are not something new to God, but God is asking us to share with Him all the feelings of life, the good as well as the bad, the happiness as well as the unhappiness, the acceptance as well as the anger we feel or just the broken situations in which we find ourselves in day after day.
To return to our question:TO WHOM ARE WE ADDRESSING THESE CRIES??? We are addressing God with the totality of our emotions, because God can handle it. One of my favorite plays and movies is "The Fiddler on the Roof" and the character Tevye is for me at least, a good example of someone who is comfortable talking with God about all the emotions, all the feelings in his life.
I would like to share some of his words with you this evening: Remember the opening scene: the village and you see a fiddler on the roof and Tevye says:"A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? but in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn?t easy. You may ask, why do we stay here if it?s so dangerous? We stay because Anatevaka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in a word--TRADITION--Because of our traditions, we?ve kept our balance for many, many years. Here in Anatevka we have traditions for everything---how to eat, how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our head covered and always wear a little prayer shawl. This shows our constant devotion to God. You may ask, how did this tradition start? I’ll tell you---I don?t know.
But it?s a tradition. Because of our tradition, everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do."
Tevye is a man who is comfortable with His God. He might not understand everything about this God, he might not understand why he does things for this God, but he is comfortable with God. Later in the play we find Tevye talking to God. Listen to the honest, forthright statements Tevye makes to God. Imagine the relationship he has with God.
Tevye is speaking to God. "Today I am a horse, Dear God, did you have to make my poor old horse lose his shoe just before the Sabbath? That wasn?t nice. It?s enough you pick on me, Tevye, bless me with 5 daughters, a life of poverty. What have You got against my horse? Sometimes I think when thing are too quiet up there, You say to Yourself:?Let?s see, what kind of mischief can I play on my friend, Tevye?? Tevye pulls his cart farther down the lane, silently, looking toward heaven and continues talking, "As the Good Book says, Heal us, O Lord, and we shall be healed. In other words, send us the cure, we?ve got the sickness already. I?m not really complaining---after all, with Your help, I?m starving to death. You made many, many poor people. I realize, of course, that it?s no shame to be poor, but it?s no great honor either. So what would have been so terrible if I had a small fortune?"
In a rather simple and perhaps naive way, Tevye, had his conversation with God and for that moment he shared with God the honest feelings of his heart. He was perhaps not as forceful, as angry, as desperate in his pleading with God as the writer of Psalm 130, never-the-less, Tevye, shared all of his feelings with God because he knew God could handle it. He knew he could share with God his feeling because he and God were friends. To me that is the key,to our question TO WHOM ARE WE ADDRESSING THESE CRIES?? Are we addressing a God who is seen as a friend, a personal being as we sang in that favorite hymn,"What a Friend We Have in Jesus". If so, then, it is natural to share all of one?s passions with that kind of friend.
However, many people see God not as a friend, but as some fatalistic person who pulls all the strings in life, good and bad. With that attitude, one does not cry out to God for fear that these cries might cause even more harm to come into that person?s life.
An example of the many people who feel that way toward God is seen in the following: My brother served his first parish in Massillion, Ohio, as an associate pastor, with the late Pastor Maurice "Mo" White. Pastor White was a very large, strong and vibrant man. During one Lenten season, one of the older, but faithful members of the church came with her husband to an evening Lenten service. As they were leaving the service, the woman somehow fell down the outside flight of steps and broke her hip. For some unknown cause, she did not recover from the hip surgery and died in a few short days. Pastor White stood with the bereaved husband by the casket the night before the funeral. Many people came to offer their sympathies. Some were saying to the sorrowing husband,"God must of had a plan for this, so accept it." Another said,"It was God?s will and we must live by it." Still another said,"Somehow God planned this to test your faith!!" And still another said,"There is a sliver lining in every cloud, you will find God?s reason behind this eventually."
Pastor White left that funeral home filled with a very strong emotion of anger at the "babbling", as he put it, he heard that evening. He went to the study and rewrote the beginning of his funeral sermon.
Pastor White began his funeral sermon with this phrase:"My God does not push old ladies down church steps!!!" Then he proceeded to explain that God cannot be blamed or accused for all the brokenness of this world. If God is the author of death, how, how can He be at the same time the author of life as shown through the resurrection we celebrate each Sunday and especially on Easter. Is God the God of the living, or the God of the dead? You cannot have it both ways.
In Daniel Simundson?s book Where is God in my Suffering? on page 69, he says:"If our inclination is to blame God, we are reminded that God is not our enemy. God always wants what is best for us. Any doubts about God?s good intentions for the world have been forever settled in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ." Pastor Simundson says further on page 70,"If we truly trust in God, we can live even without an answer to our question; ?Whose fault is it?? We can even give up on the question and live with the mystery, knowing that God has promised to be with us and to take care of that which we cannot yet fully understand. All of our questions fade into proper perspective in the knowledge and presence of a God like that.
TO WHOM ARE WE ADDRESSING THESE CRIES?? takes on a further dimension as we focus on our relationship with God. If God is seen as a friend,as we sang earlier in that hymn,"I Come to the Garden Alone!!" then He can handle our emotions, but if we see God as the author and cause of all events in this world,good and bad, then of course we will not want to share our honest emotions with Him in fear that we might offend or provoke Him into some act of punishment for us.
If we look at Psalm 130 a little closer, we will find the answer to the question:TO WHOM ARE WE ADDRESSING THESE CRIES??" as the writer says in verses 5-8: "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning. O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with Him is plenteous redemption. and He will redeem Israel from all his iniquities."
The Psalmist knew to whom he was addressing, a God who was a ally, not an enemy. He saw the Lord as one who had steadfast love, one who had plenteous redemption. So, he could go to God with the inner most cries of his emotions. He went to God with his total being because he understood and felt God to be a God of mercy and love. He went to God with his real emotions, with his brokenness and pain. He had developed a relationship with God that stripped away all the masks, all the pretenses, all the games, all the defenses we build around ourselves so others will not be able to penetrate into our inner being. This man allowed God to remove all of that, then, and only then, was he free to share the reality, the inner most feelings of his heart. God was real for him and he was real with God. And in that reality, honest and even painful sharing takes place.
In these lament Psalms we see honest and open people speaking honestly and openly to the Lord holding nothing back, but giving, sharing, reaching out to God with all of the human emotions that dwell with-in a person. For me, that is reality. Being real, being honest with God, being real for someone else is allowing all of your personal brokenness to mingle, to intertwine with the brokenness and pain of another?s life. Being authentic costs something. Being real for God cost him his son. Being genuine for us costs us to give up the masks, the games, the defenses we hid behind to show others who we "really are." That is painful, that is costly, but in the long run, a deeper, fuller and richer relationship will develop. I believe I can be "REAL" with God and through that reality, that honesty, my relationship with God has been strengthen, has become richer and deeper.
I would like to close with a children?s story entitled "The Velveteen Rabbit" by Shel Silverstein.
"The toys in the nursery come alive each night and one night the velveteen rabbit said to the skin horse: "What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn?t how you are made," said the skin Horse. "It?s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become REAL" "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit. "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse. "When you are REAL you don?t mind being hurt." "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "It doesn?t happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That?s why it doesn?t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are REAL most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don?t matter at all, because once you are REAL you can?t be ugly, except to people who don?t understand." "The boy?s Uncle made me REAL" said the Skin Horse. "That was great many years ago; but one you are REAL you can?t become unreal again, it lasts for always."
Time past and the Velveteen rabbit hoped he would some day become REAL. One night after the boy and the rabbit had played all day outside in the mud and the dirt, as the boy was getting ready for bed, he cried out to the Nanny that he must have his rabbit even though he was dirty and the shine was coming off. "You must have your old Bunny!!" said Nanny. "Fancy all that fuss for a toy." The boy sat up in bed and stretched out hands. "Give me my Bunny!!" he said. "You must not say that. He isn?t a toy. He?s REAL!!! When the little Rabbit heard that he was happy for he knew that what the skin Horse had said was true at last. The nursery magic had happened to him and he was a toy no longer. He was REAL. The boy himself had said it."
Can you be real for God and real for someone else???
amen
