February 28, 2021 | Worship

Let us begin with a Living Psalm. This is Psalm 22:23-31, as interpreted by rev dr. chris davies.

Who do you think you are, people of faith!?  How do you think we got here?  (Spoiler alert: it’s God.)

Our faith survived generations because we adapted and innovated. (and colonized. And killed. Let’s be real.)

But God keeps offering us redemption.  So I praise God.  (And all that is divine.)

God is with those who are most and multiply oppressed.  So: so am I.

Because God has been with me through all this crud.

So I will be attentive to how I can help God keep making this world better.

When I cried so hard my body shook, God was with me.

So I will show up, the best I can:

For the poor, the hungry, the lonely.

Those who have not had Choice to live abundantly.

There IS enough for EVERYONE in this world.

Enough Food. Love. Care. Meaningful Work.  Home. Gardens. Earth. Liberation.

All the world could engage to remember that we have all we need and more… and this is not ours, but God’s.

The creation, the communities, the creatures; and those who care for them? God’s.

To God I offer humble thanks.  And a partnership to work towards a better world, until I am but dust.

Because I want my great-great-great-great- granddaughter to survive.  And thrive.

I want that for yours, too.

Do you?

Adapted from living psalm by rev dr. chris davies

I don’t know about you, but I needed that re-interpretation this morning. I had trouble connecting to this psalm, no matter how many commentaries I read, or which Bible version I went to. I listened intently as Judy read it while we filmed on Friday, hoping that hearing the words from someone else, they would open up for me. I REWROTE the whole darned thing, and meditated on the meaning using this week’s worship aid. [Show coloring sheet] Nothing.

Sometimes it’s like that. Finally, I did what I should have done in the first place. I started at the beginning. No, not at the beginning of the Bible or of the Book of Psalms. I started at Psalm 22:1. Here’s the thing about the Revised Common Lectionary, which we follow every week. It’s excellent for thematically tying multiple parts of scripture together—and oh, how beautiful it is when can get a glimpse of the story-arc, of the through lines tying us together with ancient wisdom! But, also, sometimes it prematurely cuts off in a weird place, or it starts just after the part that gives it the wings to allow that scripture to soar. That was the case with Psalm 22. While I appreciated the “God is good, Praise God!” tone of the latter half of Psalm 22, I didn’t connect to it in a way that my own soul was needing in this moment. I woudn’t be surprised if your soul DID connect with the reading, however. We don’t all come to these readings from the same place, and we won’t ever come to the again from the same place as our lives change and our relationship to the divine Holy One matures.

What my soul needed as I was searching through Psalm 22 for wisdom, guidance, and the words to pray today comes in the two halves of this psalm meeting up. Please indulge me as I read the beginning of the psalm to you, and then follow up with the day’s lection.

Psalm 22

Plea for Deliverance from Suffering and Hostility

To the leader: according to The Deer of the Dawn. A Psalm of David.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
    and by night, but find no rest.

Yet you are holy,
    enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our ancestors trusted;
    they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried, and were saved;
    in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.

But I am a worm, and not human;
    scorned by others, and despised by the people.
All who see me mock at me;
    they make mouths at me, they shake their heads;
“Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver—
    let him rescue the one in whom he delights!”

Yet it was you who took me from the womb;
    you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.
On you I was cast from my birth,
    and since my mother bore me you have been my God.
Do not be far from me,
    for trouble is near
    and there is no one to help.

Many bulls encircle me,
    strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
they open wide their mouths at me,
    like a ravening and roaring lion.

I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
    it is melted within my breast;
my mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
    and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
    you lay me in the dust of death.

For dogs are all around me;
    a company of evildoers encircles me.
My hands and feet have shriveled;
I can count all my bones.
They stare and gloat over me;
they divide my clothes among themselves,
    and for my clothing they cast lots.

But you, O Lord, do not be far away!
    O my help, come quickly to my aid!
Deliver my soul from the sword,
    my life from the power of the dog!
    Save me from the mouth of the lion!

From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.
I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters;
    in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
You who fear the Lord, praise him!
    All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him;
    stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
For he did not despise or abhor
    the affliction of the afflicted;
he did not hide his face from me,
    but heard when I cried to him.

From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
    my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
The poor shall eat and be satisfied;
    those who seek him shall praise the Lord.
    May your hearts live forever!

All the ends of the earth shall remember
    and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations
    shall worship before him.
For dominion belongs to the Lord,
    and he rules over the nations.

To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;
    before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
    and I shall live for him.
Posterity will serve him;
    future generations will be told about the Lord,
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
    saying that he has done it.

There it is. As soon as I brought in the full context of the psalm, I connected to the lectionary chunk of it. As I mentioned last week, I am reading Walter Brueggemann’s Praying the Psalms as part of my Lenten journey. IN the very first chapter, he offers that the Psalms are for a time that is beyond the comfort of equilibrium. In other words, everything be nice and orderly is nice, but the psalms are best applied to those topsy-turvy moments. That’s when they truly shine. The psalms are raw and emotive, and so they almost don’t hit quite in the same way when we’re trying to hold everything together and repressing our feelings. He says,

“For the normal, conventional functioning of public life, the raw edges of disorientation and reorientation must be denied or suppressed for purposes of public equilibrium. As a result, our speech is dulled and mundane. Our passion has been stilled and is without imagination. And mostly the Holy One is not addressed—not because we dare not but because God is far away and hardly seems important. This means that the agenda and intention of the psalms is considerably at odds with the normal speech of most people, the normal speech of a stable, functioning, self-deceptive culture in which everything must be kept running young and smooth.” (page 7.)

Ouch.

Did anyone else feel that? I don’t think I connected with the lectionary selection because it jumps to the God is Good part without that initial lamentation, that plea for deliverance from suffering. It leads directly into the equilibrium part without all of the relatable hardship that one often goes through before reaching that point of balance. Often, we use the psalms in a way that doesn’t dig in deep to their dangerously raw spirit because, as Brueggemann says, we are constantly denying and suppressing those raw edges in order to keep up some self-deceptive semblance of poise, even when we are literally falling to pieces just under the surface. The psalms are not intended to help keep that veneer up, they exist to speak from a common place in human existence—suffering, and they help us to address God (or yell at God, which God is big enough to take, and gracious enough not to hold against us) in those tough times. And like, this last year has been one of those tough times. It’s okay to be upset. It’s okay to lay your fears and pain at Jesus’ feet. We know this because we can put the first half of this psalm in conversation with the second half.

In the first half, we have a line of scripture that Jesus himself uses from the cross. “My god, my god why have you forsaken me?” We have a line that anyone who has ever struggled with impostor syndrome or self esteem can identify with, “But I am a worm, and not human;
    scorned by others, and despised by the people.” We have the words for heartbreak, “I am poured out like water,
    and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
    it is melted within my breast;”

And it is through this lament, as the Psalmist puts all of their woes out there for God to hear, that we get to a turning point in the psalm. At verse 21, it starts with   “ Save me from the mouth of the lion!”

And then there is a break. There’s a space. The psalmist comes back for the second part of verse 21 with, “From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.” One gets the sense that the psalmist has even put down their pen. I think about the diaries I wrote in as a teen, and I would stop writing because something was happening, then come back and report on whatever it was that took place. So the psalmist asks for salvation, and then comes back with “…you have rescued me.”

That’s where we come into today’s reading. All of this has taken place, and it is from a well of deep joy that the psalmist is drawing from as we read about the greatness of god. I go into all of this detail about the beginning of psalm 22 to make sure that if you’re also coming from the place before the lection starts, you don’t only see the end result. There’s a lot of talk about the way that social media makes it appear as though folks have perfect lives because what they show on their instagram or facebook feed is carefully curated to share a life that is in a state of equilibrium, and we can begin feeling as though we’re, well, worms in comparison. That’s because we’re seeing the God is Good! half. The part of their personal psalm that cut in half at the turning point and left out the lament but only showed the glorious, joyful part.

This weekend I shared photos of my trip to the coast, but what no one saw was the Wednesday mid-day ugly cry because I was overwhelmed. But you know what, the psalms are written from a place of overwhelm and were preserved in the Canon because they speak directly to people who are living in a state of overwhelm. Brueggemann also says, “For most of us, liturgical or devotional entry into the Psalms requires a real change fo pace. It asks us to depart from the closely managed world of public survival, to move into the open, frightening, healing world of speech with the Holy One.” (page 8). The Psalms can be powerful allies in bringing what is troubling us to God, but we have to strip away that curated-content, only the good parts tendency we have—the same one that instinctively says “I’m alright!” when someone asks how we’re doing, even though we have a long list of problems that are plaguing us.

This week, I invite you to pray Psalm 22. Bring your lamentations, your struggles, and your fears into it as you read those first 21 verses, and then pause for a moment. Mentally set your pen down and sit, listening for God. Don’t push God away or let your worries drown out the still-speaking voice. Then, read verses 22-31. Access the psalmist’s relief, their joy. Find that place within yourself where you are also proclaiming about the future generations who will also experience the endless, timeless mercy of our God who loves us and delivers us from torment and pain again, and again, and again. Many blessings, my dearest friends.