Year C. Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany.
January 28, 2001
Lord of the Lake Lutheran Church
Web page http://lordofthelake.org
By The Rev. Jerry Morrissey, Esq., Pastor
E-mail pastor@southshore.com
Heavenly Father thank you for Jesus unconditional love. Amen.
Psalm 71
Title: “Growing old.”
Modern scholarship classifies the psalms according to type – Songs of Praise, Thanksgiving, Laments, Confidence and other types. Some of these types overlap in individual psalms. The original authors were not bound by these modern classifications. Such is the case with Psalm 71. The overall spirit is so tranquil, even when speaking of enemies, and so confident that the lament cannot be separated from the confidence, praise and thanksgiving that permeate every line of this prayer poem.
The author is old, maybe no more than fifty, but considered old in those days when people died “young”. He laments two “enemies”: physical death-threatening sickness and people who are taking advantage of his weakened condition to accuse him falsely of sin, perhaps a life of sin.
The author knew how to pray, learned from a lifetime of experience of singing the psalms in liturgy and using them for personal prayer. He either quotes other Psalms or uses their phrases, exhibiting a personal appropriation of their sentiments with ease and grace. Even though virtually every verse can find its antecedent in another psalm, it is clear that the author has made these thoughts his own. His confidence in God in the midst of suffering outshines his darkened state.
The structure is easy to discern, yet lament and confidence cannot be separated.
In verses 1-8 contain both petitions and expressions of trust, with verse 8 promising praise. Verses 9-16 describe his distress, petition for deliverance and end in verse 16 with another promise of praise. Verses 17-24 fluctuate between petition and praise.
In verses 1-3: These verses are also found in Psalm 31:2-4. These or similar sentiments would be expressed upon entering the Temple or any place of sanctuary. People felt safe in God’s holy place. One could take or find asylum there. The psalmist may be speaking of a physical entry to a place, but just as likely and appropriately this could express a psychological state of feeling protected, as when one enters formal prayer, no matter what the physical locality. Despite the threats the one at prayer concentrates on God as source of strength and protection, symbolized by “rock,” “stronghold,” “fortress.”
In verse 2 in your justice rescue me: The psalmist is claiming innocence and asking God to “set things right.”
In verse 5 my hope…from my youth: Throughout his life he has depended on God, who never let him down. He reminds himself of this before God to receive the confidence he needs from the fidelity and consistent pattern of God’s behavior, which is true of God and, though to a lesser extent, true of him.
In verse 7 a portent to many: “portent” translates mopheth. Though it can mean a “sign” of God’s providential care, it can also mean a “dreadful sign,” of God’s punishment. The latter seems to be the meaning here. His enemies are capitalizing on his physical sickness to accuse him of sin. They believed that suffering was caused by sin, the personal sin of the sufferer. Suffering exposed secret sin, especially. His enemies were saying, “He is sick because he did thus and so.” What they are accusing him of is not specified, however. To those who choose to believe them, he has become a “portent,” a sinner ”signed” as such by sickness.
You are my strong refuge: The psalmist does not go so far as to explicitly claim innocence from sin, but, in effect, says, “God knows better. He will protect me from this onslaught.” Of course, implied in this is the hope that God will cure him of his sickness. This would prove them wrong.
In verse 8 my mouth shall be filled with your praise: This is more a promise to praise, upon delivery, rather than praise itself. The thought is that a cure will confound the nay Sayers and be a “sign” of God’s care for the psalmist.
In verse 9 do not cast me aside in old age: An old person would have outlived most friends and family members at least the contemporary ones. That is bad enough. But to be deprived of God’s companionship would be the worst fate of all.
In verse 10 they watch and plot against me: These “enemies” are not specified. They could run the gamut of the “gossipers” who insinuate through whisper and innuendo that he is a sinner of some sort because a sufferer to formal accusers, at law, accusing him of a public crime. In any event, they are capitalizing on his weakened state to kick him while he is down, claiming that God has abandoned him because of his sin.
In verse 13 bring to a shameful end those who attack me: This is not a prayer of vindictiveness, but for vindication, that God’s justice will prevail. In those days a false accuser was sentenced to the same punishment his innocent victim would have received if found guilty.
In verse 15 though I cannot number them all: The longer he has lived the more of God’s deeds in his behalf and the nation he can recount; in order to give praise and stimulate others to do so. This long and growing list is his “refuge” against the present situation. It gives him confidence that God will act in the present as he has done in the past.
In verse 18 that I might proclaim your might to all generations yet to come: Even in old age there is much more to be done and he is eager to do it. Mostly, he sees his mission as proclaiming to the young the character and deeds of God. As they listen to his story and stories of Israel, they will be inspired to place the same trust and confidence in God as he has- even in the midst of hard times, troubles, crises, darkness, and “many bitter afflictions.
In verse 20 from the watery depths of the earth: These were the subterranean waters of chaos through which the deceased entered Sheol, the “area of death.” Any diminution of vital power could be considered a Sheol-condition, an invasion of life by death.
Once more raise me up: The psalmist asks God do again what he has always done. This may be an intuition of an after-life more vital than Sheol, a precursor, though a faint one, of the idea of resurrection from the dead.
In verses 21 –24: When the Lord answers, which he is sure he will, the psalmist promises to continue and increase doing what he has done all his life –praise God. Now, he will have yet another reason to do so, more evidence for the young that God is God after all and that he is good and just. Injustice and those who do it have no real future. They fall into the pit they dig for others.
From the beginning of humanity people have loved sitting down at the end of a day’s work, either by the fire or on the porch or shore or wherever, and listening to stories. This is where the elders shine. Now old and too infirm to work, they entertain the younger generations with their reminiscences of they way things were and “used to be.” It is here that the young get inspired to become whatever their dreams encourage them to be. They also vow to imitate, equal and or excel former family members whose “stories” capture their imagination.
This is not only entertainment. It is one of the most positive contributions the old still have to make. Before they pass on, they must pass on the torch, particularly the flame of faith. Giving witness to God’s fidelity, care, intervention, miracles and salvation through decades and from the longer perspective also gives the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It is a true mission, perhaps the final and like the wine at Cana, the best and ever-new legacy of an older person. The personal witness of God’s love, given to people who love them is so powerful that it, more than any formal preaching in church, has passed on the faith since its beginning, both in Old Testament and New Testament times.
The psalmist knows this. He has lived his life, is “old and gray,” yet wants to live a little longer so that he can pass on what he has received and learned and experienced of God’s love. He is so steeped in prayer that he values this mission one that others would scoff at immensely. Yet, he does not merely want to live in the past. He wants to continually praise God for new experiences. He prays for deliverance from his twin enemies of infirmity and calumny so that he can tell the younger ones to keep the faith, that God will protect them too. He wants to say, “You need proof? Look at me.”
This psalm reminds us that we are never done and that evil is never done with us. Until we breathe our last we will be challenged to keep faith with the Lord. Long years of prayer and confidence in him will not inoculate us from evil in any of its forms. Worse, the longer we live, the fewer props, other than God himself, do we have. We lose the support of friends, the convenience of good health and physical agility, the engagement of work. We learn, as we grow older, to depend only on God. He may have blessed us in our youth with various supports, but it is in their absence that our mettle is tested. This psalm teaches us not to fear, but to keep faith with the Lord. The onslaughts will not stop, but as we get physically weaker and socially lonelier, we become that much stronger in the Lord, especially through prayer. And we begin to understand why a person with, let’s say Alzheimer’s disease, can forget even their name, but when the Lord’s Prayer is begun, they can recite it perfectly. Like the psalmist who was quoting psalms from his lifetime of prayer, we realize that there are some things that are so much a part of us, like our faith, that we never lose them.
It is not in any way to patronize the elderly to say their mission is to pass on to the next generation all the faith and instances of faith confirmed to those who remain behind to fight yet another day the battle against evil and injustice. For that is precisely how we got this far in the worldwide growth of the Church. The real sermons we preach, the really effective ones, are our lives.
Growing Old: Everyone who lives long enough becomes “old,” but not everyone “grows” old, i.e. continues growing despite physical old age. In many ways it is harder to continue to grow internally, as a person, as we grow physically older. The many supports open to us when we were younger are either no longer there or weakening. The vigor of our physical bodies diminishes with age. We can still think a pretty exciting and fulfilling life, but we find the very thinking about it tires us out. Our bodies no longer have the strength or the sustaining power they once had. Worse than that, the older we are, the more likely we will have fewer friends, especially those lifetime friends. The longer we live the more of them we bury. They are no longer there to inspire us, support us, be company for us, in the darker times. Yet, the very absence of those friends and loved ones and the very absence of physical, bodily agility can be seen, with the right attitude, as graces, graces calling us to depend even more on God than we ever did before. Our dependence on God is less and less theoretical and more and more practical as we age. So, we grow, grow in awareness of our absolute dependency on God. For those who did not learn this lesson earlier in life, at least in some measure beyond the merely theoretical: Oh, yes, I believe in God, but…. I do things on my own power, unless I absolutely have to ask for help, God’s help or anybody else’s, the aging process is a demeaning and a personally diminishing one. If we have bought into the notion that old people are not really people, but fading stars, batteries running out of energy, then we become in old age merely examples of the false belief we held our whole lives. Growing in awareness of our absolute and total dependence upon God for everything is indeed growing. It is not something to be bemoaned or regretted. Indeed, the more our bodies force us to sit still and think, the more we can bring to the forefront of our minds the myriad experiences of God’s presence in our past lives. Yet, because God is ever-present the reality, the goodness, the richness of those past experiences come alive in the present and we are filled with a holy spirit, his Holy Spirit, and life is again rich and full and full of love. And we did not even have to get out of out chair or bed to appreciate it! That is growth!
The Mission: To a person who thinks he or she must be “active” in order to be, the idea that an older person has a mission to pass on to the next generation their accumulated experience of God may seem to be a very minor mission indeed. But, to God it is THE mission. It was the mission of the prophets to both remind the Israelites of God’s past presence and assure them of his present presence. They did so by telling stories of when God was there, obviously there in the past and of reminding people that God is nothing if not faithful, so he is still present today in our stories of life. That was also the mission of Christ. He did it by example and by attitude. It is the attitude of old people in the face of adversity, sickness, debility, that younger people are looking at. Just like infants look to adult example to learn how to eat, drink, walk, talk, etc, so too, we all look to other people, including old people, to learn how to grow old ourselves. The prejudice against old people probably will never be stopped just like other prejudices, but old people need not contribute to its prominence by fulfilling those false prophecies that being physically weaker means a weaker character or a diminished enjoyment of or contribution to life. Amen.
