June 27, 2010 at
Trinity Church
The Rev. Shelby Ochs Owen
“Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?”
These are the words of poet Mary Oliver and they proclaim very well what our psalm for today is all about- the full engagement of our life with God.
I asked our lector this morning to read the full psalm, not just the portions assigned by the lectionary (vs. 1, 2 and 11-20) because we need to hear the entire psalm to begin to appreciate its full meaning. This type of psalm is called a lament psalm, a format for grief, as the writer expresses a great deal of pain and misery to God. Let’s look at the first 6 verses:
I will cry aloud to God; I will cry aloud and he will hear me.
In the day of trouble I sought the Lord; My hands were stretched out by night and did not tire;
I refused to be comforted.
I think of God, I am restless, I ponder, and my spirit faints.
You will not let my eyelids close; I am troubled and I cannot speak.
I consider the days of old; I remember the years long past;
I commune with my heart in the night; I ponder and search my mind.
What is going on in these first 6 verses? In 6 verses there are 19 references to me, myself and I! It is all about the psalmist. He is turned inward, wrapped up in self-pity, rolling in self-absorption. He appears to only see life as it concerns HIM. Even as he expresses his anguish to God, he is trying to bring God into HIS orbit of life ---and it isn’t working! With his very limited vision he goes on in the next two verses to say:
Will the Lord cast me off forever?
Will he no more show his favor?
Has his loving-kindness come to an end forever?
Has his promise failed forevermore?
Even with these rhetorical questions, the psalmist is still coming at life from the angle that it is all about him. “What about me?” He seems to continually say. And then we come to the verse (v.10) that holds the tension, all the honesty, all the poignancy, all the potential power of a turning point:
And I said, “My grief is this:
The right hand of the Most High has lost its power.”
The translation from the Hebrew has several possibilities and there are many different translations . Here are a few: “I do fear that God has changed.” “This is what distresses me; that the power of the Most High is no longer what it was.” (Jerusalem Bible) and this one, perhaps the most poignant “Has his right hand, I said, lost its grasp? Does it hang powerless, the arm of the most high?” (New English) It seems almost as if the psalmist is baiting God ---and God is not taking the bait! As the writer challenges God he enters a dangerous and risky place. It is a place where he could either lose his faith entirely or open himself up to a new faith?
Have we not all had those moments when we cry out to God and he appears not to have heard us, appears to have gone behind a cloud, appears not to be present, much less to care, at all? We cry out and stomp our feet and rail and shake our fist at God when things don’t go the way we think they should-like when we are faced with a divorce that we didn’t choose or when we see photographs of helpless birds covered in oil, when the stock market seems to take away our retirement funds, when our bodies defy us as we age, when earthquakes cause great losses for the poorest of the poor? (If you have never gotten angry with God, you might want to consider this psalm as permission to do so!) But note, the psalm does not end here. Something happens between v. 10 and v. 11. In v. 11 he says, “I will remember the works of the Lord; and call to mind your wonders of old time.” You have to wonder how the psalmist got from verse 10 to v. 11? How does he get from focusing on himself to focusing on God? Did it take a few minutes, did it take weeks or maybe even years to get from the “It’s all about me” to “It’s all about you, God?”
It is as if in the first half of the psalm the writer is exhaling deeply, breathing out, letting go of all the hurt and misery that the writer feels and dumping it on God, for he knows that it is a safe place to do so. He is saying, “This is where I am, and I am outraged.” He lays it all out there and somehow in his vulnerability, he is able to open himself up to a new faith. And he is able to trust this holy God, who might not be the image of the God he thought he knew but is able to allow the God who is to be. After his deep exhale he can inhale the God who is. And he inhales deeply. As the psalmist reorients himself He recalls the mighty acts of God, he recalls that God is holy and a great God; he remembers how God has saved his people in the past, how God led the people through the Red Sea by the hand of Moses. Essentially it is in the psalmist’s ability to step out of himself for a moment that he can recall that life is NOT all about him, that life is bigger than him. He recalls that God in his infinite power and mercy redeemed his people: “You are the God who works wonders and have declared your power among the peoples” (v.14) “By your strength you have redeemed your people, the children of Jacob and Joseph” (v.15) and his focus shifts from “I” to “You.”
In his book, Everything Belongs Richard Rohr talks about the Spirit of God being like a river and he writes, “Strangely, your life is not about ‘you’. It is part of a much larger stream called God…faith might be precisely that ability to trust the river, to trust the flow and the lover. It is a process we don’t have to change, coerce, or improve. We need to allow it to flow. That takes immense confidence in God, especially when we are hurting.” (p.142)
So how do we move into this place of trusting the river, trusting the lover we call God? Whether we are conscious of it or not, I think we come to church as a faithful act of trusting the river, to be set free from self-absorption, to turn loose our old selves, to remember that the world does not revolve around us but does revolve around God. The beauty of the liturgy, the words and actions through which we worship each week is that it reminds us that God is our starting point. With God as our starting point we can reorient ourselves as we look at life. It is o.k to rail at God, to dump on him all our cares and woes; he can handle it all. But as the psalmist did can we see our railings, our worries, our disappointments as an opening for a new faith? As we face that divorce we might ask, “What do you need me to do now, Lord? How can I become the person you need me to be now and what is the most loving thing I can do for all concerned?” As we look at the photograph of the oil covered birds, can we increase our prayers asking God how might we respond to this catastrophe that makes us feel so vulnerable? Perhaps we can pray, or perhaps we can send money through the ERD (Episcopal Relief and Development) in today’s collection that will assist with the Gulf Coast oil spill, or perhaps we can cut down on our own consumption habits that drive this quest for more oil? When we remember the earthquake in Haiti and the people it has effected, how might God want us to respond? Through prayer, through financial support of St. Mark’s school, by taking part in our next trip to Haiti? When we orient our lives to God, it is hard to stay focused on self; when we realize we cannot control or contain God we can then acknowledge our lives as pure gift, which frees us to be used by God to his glory. When we orient our lives to God, we can inhale deeply, knowing that whether we have a complete understanding or not, God can be trusted.
Breathe deeply and confidently. Trust the river.
Amen.