Funeral this morning…
Reminded me of power of the Psalms
Favorite psalm used in funerals
Says what we cannot say in those moments
Names our grief, our pain,
Our sense of God’s care, God’s gentleness with us
God’s knowing of us, until the very end
It has happened to us—we know this care, and we will know this care
forever…
But the thing about is that I usually read up until verse 18—and then I
stop, I have to,
Let me read it: Psalm 139:1-18)
Next verses are disturbing
Psalm 139:19-24
doesn’t seem to fit the rest Psalm, or the mood of the Psalm,
doesn’t work in the funeral
Last week we talked about the different kinds of Psalms (Walter
Brueggemann)
--Orientation
--Disorientation
--New Orientation
Explain them again in a sec, but
Psalm 139—is a psalm of disorientation,
Psalmist—you know me, inside and out, and you care for me
completely—so take care of business, Lord—take out my enemies!
Disturbing—harshness, especially at the end.
Last Friday—devotional—wondered out loud how we can incorporate the
scary psalms—
psalms of disorientation—
the ones full of shadow—
vengeful, bitterness, angry
Wrote something based, last part of teaching…
The Bible is true FOR us because it is TO us, to our joy, our shadows,
our pain, our hope and our hopelessness—
Tells us a story we recognize,
Says a truth that we recognize,
that we have felt in our very bones.
The Psalms can even name our bitterness and our angry, vengeful,
bitter side
Especially true for the Psalms, the psalmists gives us words we can use—
and be challenged by…
And the latter part of these words are TRUE for us as much as the first
18 verses:
We just have a hard time admitting that we feel them—
Feel that Christians shouldn’t say or think such things
Reminder to us that God can even take our shadows and harsh side
Tend to have a rosy, unrealistic understanding of faith
The Psalmist doesn’t share that viewpoint
Faith can be as full of shadows as it can of light
Get back to this dilemma, but first…
Last week, we got some of the facts, basics
Like…
Basics of Psalms
--Written between 500-1100 BCE
--before David’s rule and as late as the Bablyonian Captivity
--hymnbook without any tunes
--lyrics without the music
--many different kinds of instruments used to praise God
trumpets, lute harps, tabouruine, pipe, cymbals, etc
--mostly attributed to David, though not always
--sometimes others get credit, like court musicians
--meaning of the word Psalm is “Praise the Lord” or “Praises”
--some of the Psalms probably have roots in other religions of the day
--a few Psalm can be traced back to Egyptian religion and other
contemporary faiths of the time
--more we, less me as we go from 1 to 150
Also Look at Walter Brueggemann’s model for the Psalms
Wanted a useful model for us to get a handle on them, so that we could
use them like the Jews and the church have used—
to us in our prayer, in our lives, in our private worship
Psalms as
o a voice to praise God with,
o a voice to complain to God with,
o a voice to tell of our new birth
Tonight, I want to look at the three different types of Psalms,
Examples of each
to see how they can do that for us,
how they can help us to say what we cannot find the words for.
First of three ways of looking at the Psalms
Psalms of Orientation
Life is going well
The universe and we fit, life is going good,
We work hard and we get rewarded
The way the world should be and is and ought to be.
See the shimmer of God’s goodness and presence everywhere
Creation and how well-ordered it is
Sun rise, sun sets
Season come and go
People reap what they sow, good and bad
Universe is moral
Trust, incredible trust in God is apparent
The world is safe because God makes it safe
Not just rosy colored optimism
The world is really this way—life is good, life is and can be wonderful
The Psalmists is highly aware of that goodness, so he praises God
because of it.
A good example of that kind of hymn
Psalm 8 (whole Psalm on screen)
Another example
Psalm 1 (whole Psalm on screen)
Psalm 133 (whole Psalm on screen)
The world is good, life is good,
No chaos, no challenges to the goodness of life or of God
Great hymns for us—
They remind us that life and God are worth trusting—
There is order, there is meaning, incredible meaning in the universe.
Stuff of life, of good life—to be celebrated.
These psalms
But a problem arises, chaos invades life, goodness gets attacked and
challenged
And goodness itself, God, is called into question
Like those moments when you just can’t believe anything could go wrong.
Something bad has happened and life is thrown into chaos
Moral universe is thrown into question
The good get the bad stuff
The bad get the good stuff
Life shouldn’t be like this
Story: Ever met people that you knew didn’t trust the universe? Or God?
Or other people?
Ever been there yourself? Lost faith that you actually reap what you
sow?
Jennifer’s death from liver failure—for me. Not fair.
This is where the Psalms of Disorientation come into play
Like I said before, the psalmist can even hear these moments
When life and others are unfair to us, to the people we love
Life becomes incoherent
Doesn’t make sense anymore
Life is thrown off-balance
Up is down, down is good
Something has happened that has pushed us to the brink
And we want answers from God
This should not be—why did this happen to me?
And we want justice from God
Will do anything to get what we need, including
Appealing to God’s pride
--you don’t want to look bad, if I or your people look bad?!
Appealing to God’s common sense
--look, if I’m dead, I’m no use to you. Don’t let me die. What use am I in
the grave. The Pit, the grave, Sheol—place of the dead—everyone went
there.
Why do we ignore these psalms?
Because we’re in denial, and we want to be numb to the disorientation
and bad things that just happen—
it’s almost deceptive of us not to acknowledge hard stuff there in the
Psalms—
its about denying pain in our spiritual lives.
Life is different, when the chaos come,
the shadows take over,
and crucifixion happens—
you see the world differently and
God differently
Because you are different—that is how much this has changed you.
And yet, even here, there is faith, a transformed faith, an abiding faith,
Dipped in bitterness, but still faith remains
The psalmist has not given up hope for deliverance,
For God to set the world right again
I will hope when I have no hope left
Examples of Psalms of Disorientation
Psalm 13 (whole Psalm on screen)
Psalm 137 (whole Psalm on screen)
Crucifixion does that to you—takes you to the edge of your own
goodness and bitterness and your faith.
Just ask Christ—My God, my God why have you forsaken me—Psalm 22
The important thing to remember about Psalms of Disorientation:
Psalmist asks God for justice, even vengeance…
But never says “I will avenge this myself…”
The work of payback belongs to God
No Charles Bronson, Deathwish thing going on
But this is not the end of the story, disorientation is not forever,
crucifixion has its moment or moments,
but only for a little while
Tony Campolo: tells of African-American preacher he heard once
Its Friday, But its Sunday Comin’!
They crucified Christ on Friday, but Sunday, the day of his resurrection,
is coming, as surely as the sun rises.
And that sacred, life-giving rhythm finds itself here in the Psalms, and we
have the Psalms of New Orientation
The Psalms that tell us of Sunday,
when the grave coughs us up,
when we, like Christ, get delivered!
Psalms that re-oriented us to the world
Not the same as Psalms of Orientation
We see the world differently because we have been different through
this experience
We all know that truth—life beats you down, you’re going to get up, with
some bruises, and maybe some scars
Can’t go through crucifixion/the grave without seeing it differently
Psalms of New Orientation
--The psalmist is on the other side of the cross, the problem, the pain
--Resolution has happened, deliverance has taken place
--New life and new trust has come about because of God’s deliverance
Psalm 34:1-10, 19-22 (parts of Psalm on screen)
Psalm 124 (whole Psalm on screen)
So, life begins anew,
new life comes from the grave,
God proves to be faithful
But the sacred rhythm of life begins again, over and over
Spend our lives in this pattern
Orientation, disorientation, new orientation
Life, death, resurrection
It never stops, until the end, until we come to the end, as the Psalmist
139 says
Just because we know it doesn’t mean we know it—you never are
comfortable with disorientation, crucifixion, even if you know its coming—
Christ wasn’t.
That is why we need the Psalms—to remind of what is, and what is to
come, and what will eventually be—new life, the grave emptied.
I would invite to do that, to listen to these ancient voices that know your
story, and my story…let them be your companions.
Let them comfort you
Remind you of God’s care, and eventual deliverance
And let them disturb,
Remind you of how human you can be with your bitterness and pain
If you don’t have any Bible reading schedule, I invite you to spend the
next 75 days right here, right in this book. One psalm in the morning,
one in the evening before bedtime, starting with psalm, then going to
psalm two, etc.
There is nothing that faith cannot say, there are no unholy words when
we are in conversation with the living God—surely the Psalms show us
that truth.
The only thing we can ever be unfaithful to God is to stop talking or to
stop screaming or stop arguing with God—as long as you are in the
conversation, you are being faithful to God.
The Psalms are that fitful, challenging, painful beautiful conversation with
God.
If you can’t find the words, good or bad, bitter or beautiful, let the
psalmist say it for you.
Ancient praise, ancient pain, ancient joy, and although they are ancient,
they are all too familiar—that is a good and great thing.
