Psalms of Lament

Psalm 51
            Today is our third Sunday of looking at the psalms and today we were supposed to be looking at the psalms of lament.  That being said, I woke up this morning feeling the need to talk more about what is happening in our world today.  The Hebrew word that we translate “lament” literally means “Howl” or “wail”.  A lament, then, is a crying out, and it formed a ritualized way of dealing with grief, with loss, with pain.  Somehow that feels appropriate given what is happening in our world.  Lament psalms could be very personal, such as today’s psalm.  But other laments were corporate.  And I think that today, as we face this pandemic and the crisis that has turned all of our lives over, at least for a time, we are in need of a way of expressing our corporate lament. 
            These laments, these spoken rituals of mourning were so important and so central in practice for the Israelites that there are more laments than any other type of psalm.  Again, there are more laments than ANY other type of psalm.  While there are approximately ten different categories of psalms, laments comprise more than a third of the psalms that we have in our Bible.  Last week I mentioned that trust was the single most dominant theme within the psalms and trust is expressed in all of our psalms, including the lament psalms.  When we think about it, we can recognize that it takes a great deal of trust in God’s grace, God’s mercy, and especially, God’s deep and abiding love for us to be able to complain to God.  We would not dare to complain to a tyrant.  But because we trust that God hears us, that God loves us and that God will respond to our laments, that trust gives us permission to express our pain and petitions for God’s care in the midst of that pain.  Laments are expressed many other places in scripture as well – the book of lamentations consists of five poems mourning the loss of the temple and Jerusalem.  Jesus offers laments, and not only the one from the cross when he quotes psalm 22 with “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”.  For example, in Luke 13: 34-35 when Jesus says, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. ³⁵ Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” he is expressing lament.
            Psalms of lament follow a prescribed format.  That format is:
Incantation – or calling on God
Expressions of Complaint
Expression of trust
Petitions asking God for specific things
            and
Praise of God.
           The corporate psalms of lament also add an aspect of remembering God’s past actions.  Each lament may have each of these components in different quantities, however.  For example, psalm 22, the psalm of lament that is perhaps the most well known because Jesus begins to quote it when he says on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” – this psalm is mostly complaints and praise, while psalm 51,which we heard today, is mostly petition.
             Psalms of lament truly let all feelings be expressed before God.  And while I think at a cognitive level, all of us understand that we can express anything to God, and that, in fact, nothing should be withheld from God, still, there are aspects of psalms of lament that are challenging, I believe, for all of us.  The first is doubt or accusation against God.  It can feel disrespectful to us to hear phrases such as “How long, O Lord?  Will you be angry forever?”  “How long will your wrath burn like fire?”  “How long shall the wicked exult?”  “Rouse yourself!  Why do you sleep O God?”  And even the well known, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Does that feel disrespectful to you?  It would be understandable if it did.  But again, I cannot emphasize enough that our ability to express our deepest pain, anger and other feelings are in fact deep expressions of our trust in God.  We trust that God will hear us, will respond, that is the context of these expressions of complaint. 
          The second aspect of our psalms that are difficult for us to hear are the many expressions in the psalms of vengeance, anger, and violence.  Phrases such as “God will punish you with a warrior’s sharp arrows, with burning coals of the broom bush.” (120), “They cried for help, but there was no one to save them—to the Lord, but he did not answer.  I beat them as fine as windblown dust; I trampled them like mud in the streets.” (18), “The Lord will swallow them up in his wrath, and fire will consume them. You will destroy their offspring from the earth, and their children from among humankind.” (21), “O God, break the teeth in their mouths; tear out the fangs of the young lions, O Lord! ⁷ Let them vanish like water that runs away; like grass let them be trodden down and wither.  Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime; like the untimely birth that never sees the sun.”(58), and perhaps the hardest to hear - “Happy is the one who seizes your infants, and dashes them against the rocks.” (137) 
          We are uneasy with these phrases for very good reasons.  Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:44, “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  And he says in Luke 6:27, “But I say to you that listen, love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.”  In the context of Jesus’ words of love and compassion, and his call to us to enact only love and compassion, we find the judgments, violence, anger and deep desire for vengeance to be unChristian at least!  W.H. Bellinger writes this, “The laments amazing candor is sometimes shocking to the reader, but it is crucial to the honest dialogue of faith.  The psalms do not bear witness to prayer ‘as it ought to be’ but to brutally honest prayer from the depths of life.  An honest faith acknowledges life’s realities.  In the Psalms, no part of life is ever beyond dialogue with God….the psalms that seek vengeance call God to the divine task of justice and take the desire for vengeance to the Lord who can act upon it.”  Additionally, it is not necessary that we read these words as our own prayers, though there are no doubt times when we might feel that angry, or that hurt.  And these words give us permission, encouragement even, to be honest with God about our feelings.  Does that mean we are given permission to harbor resentments?  To plan vengeance?  To dwell in anger?  To act out violence?  No.  We are still called to love, even our enemies.  But sometimes the expression of these feelings to God allows us to release them from our own souls.  God knows what we feel and God is a safe being, a loving being to whom we can express even the “unacceptable” feelings.  There is relief in knowing that we have a God with whom we can be completely open and honest.
           Bob sent me an article from the New York Times this week that was talking about the terrible way humans have behaved when pandemics have happened before.  It went into great detail about the horrible ways we have behaved when we were scared or in fear of diseases killing us.  In the past when there have been pandemics, people have even forsaken their children, all children, in their terror and fear and desire to stay safe themselves.  Children were left to die, often to starve, by parents trying to get away. I would hope that we have progressed enough as people that we would never, ever, do this to our children.  But then I see that we cage children at the border, and I realize that this is not so.  Those who live in a state of fear tend to behave badly.  They tend to focus on themselves and their needs above everyone else’s.  You know that this is NOT what we are called to do.  You know this.  So to me, while this article talks about a moral disease accompanying a physical one, I would say this is a spiritual disease that is accompanying a physical one.  We are called to love, no matter what the threat is to our own lives.  We are called to be willing to walk the path towards the cross, towards death even, in the service of that love. 
            Psalms of Lament invite us to express our fear, our pain, our anger, to God so that we may release it and not allow it to control us.  This would be a good time for you to write one of your own.  And I would strongly encourage you to do that.  Don’t let your fear control you.  Don’t let it turn you away from God, from light, and most especially from Love.  THAT is the bottom line.  The expressions to God of all of our feelings allow us to release them.  We hand over our anger and our fear to God, literally through our words and our expressions, through our laments – and that allows us to behave better.  To not act on those feelings, but instead to live into our calls to love, no matter what else is going on.
           In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter was expressing extreme pain over the death of someone he had deeply loved.  The wise Dumbledore recognized the great value in simply allowing Harry to express those feelings.  I want to read you a part of the book: (p. 823):
            “I know how you are feeling, Harry,” said Dumbledore very quietly.
             “No, you don’t,” said Harry, and his voice was suddenly loud and strong.  White-hot anger leapt inside him.  Dumbledore knew nothing about his feelings….
              …
            “There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry,” said Dumbledore’s voice.  “On the contrary…the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength.”
            Harry felt the white-hot anger lick his insides, blazing in the terrible emptiness, filling him with the desire to hurt Dumbledore for his calmness and his empty words.
           “My greatest strength, is it?” said Harry, his voice shaking as he stared out at the Quidditch stadium, no longer seeing it. “You haven’t got a clue…You don’t know…”
            “What don’t I know?” asked Dumbledore calmly.
            It was too much.  Harry turned around, shaking with rage.
           “I don’t want to talk about how I feel, all right?”
            “Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man!  This pain is part of being human –”
           “THEN – I – DON’T – WANT – TO – BE- HUMAN!” Harry roared, and he seized one of the delicate silver instruments form the spindle-legged table beside him and flung it across the room.  It shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall.
              …
              “I DON’T CARE!” Harry yelled … snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace.  “I’VE HAD ENOUGH, I’VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON’T CARE ANYMORE - ”
            He seized the table on which the silver instrument had stood and threw that too.  It broke apart on the floor and the legs rolled in different directions.
           “You do care,” said Dumbledore.  He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office.  His expression was calm, almost detached.  “You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it.”
           That pain, that deep, bleeding anger, rage, sense of wanting justice and revenge – these are the feelings that psalms of lament express and allow us to express in our own words as well.            Harry did not want to talk through his feelings, so instead he was acting them out, throwing things around the room, destroying things.  When we keep our fears and our pain bottled up, it has a tendency to come out anyway in our actions.  Expressing those feelings to God allows us to choose to behave differently.
             In Mitch Albom’s book, “have a little faith” (p 81-82), the Rabbi, too, expressed the gift in this ability to express and share those feelings.  He said,
           “I had a doctor once who was an atheist.  Did I ever tell you about him?”
             No.
          “This doctor, he liked to jab at me and my beliefs.  He used to schedule my appointments deliberately on Saturdays, so I would have to call the receptionist and explain why, because of my religion, that wouldn’t work.”
            Nice guy, I said.
           “Anyhow, one day, I read in the paper that his brother had died.  So I made a condolence call.”
            After the way he treated you?
           “In this job,” the Reb said, “you don’t retaliate….So I go to his house and he sees me.  I can tell he is upset.  I tell him I am sorry for his loss.  And he says, with an angry face, ‘I envy you.’
         “ “Why do you envy me?’ I said.
          “ ‘Because when you lose someone you love, you can curse God.  You can yell.  You can blame him.  You can demand to know why.  But I don’t believe in God.  I’m a doctor and I couldn’t help my brother!”
        “He was near tears. ‘Who do I blame?’ he kept asking me.  ‘I don’t believe in God, so I can only blame myself.’
           The Reb’s face tightened, “That,” he said softly, “is a terrible self-indictment.”
        Worse than an unanswered prayer?
        “Oh yes.  It is far more comforting to think God listened and said no, than to think that nobody’s out there.”
            Because of our understanding of what it means to be respectful towards God, because of our recognition that we are called towards love and compassion, we can struggle at times with the expression of lament.  But when we don’t express those feelings, they can eat us alive.
             Sometimes we find it easier to express our pain to other people, and that is okay, too.  But again, I encourage us also to come to God with all of those feelings.  God already knows them anyway, and God wants us, calls us, to take the time, take the risk of sharing them consciously with God.  Towards that end, I am going to have us end today by offering up psalm 6, another prayer of lament, together.  And I encourage you again to feel the feelings that are expressed, to allow them to touch you personally in whatever way the words speak to you.  Let us pray together:

Psalm 6:1-10 (NRSV)
¹ O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger, or discipline me in your wrath.
² Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am languishing; O LORD, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror.
³ My soul also is struck with terror, while you, O LORD—how long?
⁴ Turn, O LORD, save my life; deliver me for the sake of your steadfast love.
⁵ For in death there is no remembrance of you; in Sheol who can give you praise?
⁶ I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping.
⁷ My eyes waste away because of grief; they grow weak because of all my foes.
⁸ Depart from me, all you workers of evil, for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping.
⁹ The LORD has heard my supplication; the LORD accepts my prayer.
¹⁰ All my enemies shall be ashamed and struck with terror; they shall turn back, and in a moment be put to shame. 

In expressing these feelings we can trust absolutely that God cares, that God hears, that God invites us forward into new life, healing from our griefs and stepping forward into tomorrow with God at our side.  Amen.