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Psalm 130
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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable
in your sight, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
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Every one of us, I think, can remember some time when we cried out to
God from the depths of our soul. For we all have some understanding
of “the depths” in human life that the Psalmist in Psalm 130
is talking about this morning. Whether we arrived there through
circumstances beyond our control or through some painful personal
experience, we have all been caught at one time or another in our
culpable humanity, needing God’s help.
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That’s what the ancient Israelites knew as they made pilgrimages
back to Jerusalem every year for festivals at the Temple. They knew
they were going back to Jerusalem to meet with God, and they knew, as
they made those journeys, that they were not innocent in his
sight. Things had happened. They had made some
mistakes. So as they walked those long miles along dusty roads, as
they made their pilgrimage back to Jerusalem, they sang those Psalms of
Lament, confessing their faults and praying for God’s
forgiveness. And Psalm 130 is one of those Psalms of Lament.
Help, God – the bottom has fallen out of my life!
Master, hear my cry for help!
Listen hard! Open your ears!
Listen for my cries for mercy.
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But even as they lamented all the ways they had fallen short of
God’s high standards, even as they confessed their need for his
mercy and forgiveness, they also rejoiced. For they remembered
God’s steadfast love, his forgiving ways.
If you, God, kept records of wrongdoings,
who would stand a chance?
As it turns out, forgiveness is your habit,
and that’s why you are worshipped.
You see, they weren’t denying their own wrongdoing. They
called it what it was. They called it sin. At the same time,
as they anticipated God’s forgiveness, his warm welcome home, they
rejoiced and they praised him.
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Of course, these journeys weren’t quick overnight jaunts, by air
or rail. These pilgrims walked, often hundreds of miles, from the
far corners of the Roman Empire. The long–anticipated trip,
a trip they might make only once or twice their whole lives long, could
take weeks. So they had plenty of time to think over their own
need for forgiveness – and plenty of company as they talked things
over with one another, as they were encouraged by each other’s
faith and humility.
I pray to God – my life a prayer –
and wait for what he’ll say and do.
My life’s on the line before God, my Lord,
waiting and watching till morning,
waiting and watching till morning.
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For in the Hebrew idiom to wait on God was to hope in God. No one
was impatient as they waited on the mercy of God. They knew
God’s reputation for mercy and compassion and trusted that they
too would be included in his steadfast love. So at the end of his
psalm, the Psalmist exhorts the entire nation:
O Israel, wait and watch for God –
with God’s arrival comes love,
with God’s arrival comes generous redemption.
No doubt about it – he’ll redeem Israel,
buy back Israel from captivity to sin.
Each individual’s sin, you see, had affected others. And now
the Psalmist was calling on the whole nation to repent, to eradicate
widespread infection.
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I guess what amazes me about this psalm is the Psalmist’s ready
admission of wrongdoing, his acknowledgement that he and his fellow
pilgrims are in need of God’s forgiveness, God’s mercy and
his love. For here in our own country, though everyone
acknowledges that things aren’t going well, no one seems to take
responsibility for any wrongdoing. Instead, fingers are pointing
every which way as we blame others for what has gone wrong – for
racial tensions we find rising up all over the place, for gun violence
in our streets, our homes and our schools, for the lack of cooperation
we see in our politics these days. And then, of course,
there’s the global warming that affects everyone and everything on
the planet. No one is taking responsibility for that, but it
affects everyone as whole populations are forced to flee lands that
have become uninhabitable and become refugees. And none of us can
pretend that we don’t know about these situations. If the
pandemic did anything, it exposed human need, human poverty, human
inequities all around the world.
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Now I don’t mean to suggest this morning that any single one of
us is personally responsible for any of these situations, but it occurs
to me, having read this Psalm of Lament, that every one of us could
probably do something to alleviate them. And maybe it’s just
something small. Everyone one of us can pray, confessing at least
our indifference to others’ suffering. But beyond that,
every one of us can share more of what we have to help others. Every
one of us can be more concerned for the wellbeing of others. And in
saying all that, I don’t mean you. I mean me. I
already help some. I already give where I see a chance to
give – but I know I could do more. I just get compassion
fatigue. I begin to think, “I’ve done enough. Let
someone else take up the slack.”
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But doing something to help others is what our faith is all
about. In the Book of Genesis, when God came looking for Cain and
Abel after Cain had just killed Abel in a fit of jealousy,
God — probably suspecting what Cain had done — asked Cain
where Abel was. Cain replied with his own question. “Am
I my brother’s keeper?” And Biblical scholars say all
the rest of the Bible is written to answer that question.
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The answer, of course, is ‘Yes.’ We are our brothers
and sisters’ keepers. We are – or we need to
be – concerned for their wellbeing – no matter what their
race, no matter if they live close or far away, no matter what
magnitude the problems they face. If we are exempting ourselves
from this basic humanity then we too – like the
Psalmist – need to come before God and admit we need his help to
do what he has asked us to do. We too need his forgiveness.
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When we do that, then we too can wait joyfully on the Lord. When
we do that then we too can hope for his favor. When we do that
then we too can count on his love. And last but not least, when
we do that then we too can trust in his redemption. And
that’s my hope for us this morning. For each of us as
individuals and for our nation.
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Amen.
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