Western Seminary Chapel Sermon, Communion 9-22-06, T. Billings

Scripture: Psalm 88

Our Happy Lives: A Lament

One aspect of culture-shock in moving from Boston, MA to Holland, MI was adjusting to Christian radio. As it happens – I sometimes like the songs on these airwaves, songs by Switchfoot, Nichole Nordeman and others. But I wasn’t prepared for the radio station’s self-description: “we play positive hits.” There are interludes with “encouraging words from your Bible.” Positive hits, positive thinking – is that really the same as “Christian?” Is the Bible a positive-thinking motivation manual? I think that Switchfoot diagnoses the problem with the stations that play their songs in their lyrics: “Happy is a YUPPIE word.” Indeed, a thoroughly Americanized Christianity – about positive thoughts, encouraging themes – seems much more “YUPPIE” than biblical. The lament seems far from us, and Psalm 88 gets no air time on the radio.

Unlike most Psalms of lament, Psalm 88 does not begin with a complaint and end with an affirmation of trust and praise. It is lament all the way down. Complaint, lament – crying out to God. Yet, the Psalm itself is not a hopeless or despairing lament. I was recently listening to one of Bob Dylan’s many laments, and I was struck at how different the tone is from this Psalm. Dylan’s song, “Not Dark Yet,” Dylan goes this way:

Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.
I was born here and I’ll die here against my own will
I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standing still
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don’t even hear the murmur of a prayer
It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.

The Psalmist, like Dylan, is painfully honest about feeling trapped, feeling corned, feeling abandoned. As this Psalm is part of our prayer book, we need not be ashamed of these feelings, as somehow being less than Christian, or less than sanctified. The world is not the way it is supposed to be. It is OK to feel trapped, cornered and abandoned.

The difference between the Psalm and Dylan’s lament, however, is that the Psalmist has someone to cry out to, someone even to blame. All of the laments in this Psalm are in the context of the opening stanza: “O Lord, God of my salvation, when, at night, I cry out in your presence, let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry.” Thus, when the Psalmist cries “my soul is full of troubles” and “I am shut in so I cannot escape” it is not a prayer of paralyzing despair. It is not from a “vacant and numb” body, with no “murmur of a prayer,” as with Dylan, but an active covenant partner with God. The Psalmist calls upon God to live up to his covenant reputation. That is why and how the Psalmist complains.

Yet, Psalm 88 goes even further than these complaints toward God. It goes so far as to BLAME God—to hold the Covenant God responsible – for this is not the way things are supposed to be. “You have caused my companions to shun me;” “I suffer your terrors; I am desperate.” “You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me.” We may find these images in the prayer disturbing. Is God the author of evil? Well, no. But if God cannot be blamed for evil, then we are in a bad situation indeed. If we cannot cry out to the Covenant-God to be faithful to the covenant promises, then perhaps God is as helpless before evil as we are. But the Psalmist does not think that God is helpless before evil. That is why the Psalmist can cry out in prayer. That is why the Psalmist can be active – rather than paralyzed – in working against evil.

A few years ago, a friend of mine was a chaplain in a children’s hospital. He was telling me about a nurse who was working with terminally ill children – children who would be expected to die before adulthood. Maybe in a week. Maybe in a year. Maybe tomorrow. The medicine just seemed to be delaying the inevitable. One of the nurses came to my friend and said: why do I go in, day after day, to give medicine to these children? They are going to die. Most likely, they will not even leave the hospital. Why do it?

My friend’s response was this: you go in as an act of protest, and act of complaint, an act of civil disobedience against this present Kingdom of Darkness. Things are not the way they are supposed to be. Children are not meant to die. But they do. We should not be paralyzed, but active in the face of suffering, because we are invited to protest and complain to the covenant God. In the words of Psalm 88: “Every day I call on you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you. Do you work wonders for the dead? Is your steadfast love declared in the grave? Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness?” This prayer is an active prayer – a prayer that cries out from a place of lowliness, from a place of suffering. If you are the nurse or the chaplain, you can pray this prayer by your seemingly “useless” service to the dying child, by taking on the cause of the suffering and bringing that cause before the covenant Lord, the Lord of wonders and of Life.

So, is there anything that we could call “happy” in the prayer of this Psalm? I think so. But it is not the YUPPIE happiness of fleeting material pleasure or a sense of control over our world. This Psalm is completely compatible with happiness, but happiness of a different sort. If you read this Psalm with your heart, if you LIVE this Psalm with your life, by coming alongside the downcast – and calling out to God when they – and when YOU are suffering and cornered, you may get a sense of happiness that is something like this:

Happy are you who are poor,
       for yours is the kingdom of God.

  Happy are you who hunger now,
       for you will be satisfied.
  Happy are you who weep now,
       for you will laugh.

Until that day, when our hunger will be satisfied and our weeping will be turned to laughing, we live in remembrance of what covenant Lord has done for us, in communion with One whom we can blame and cry out to, and in hope of a heavenly banquet to come. Let us celebrate our - happy - feast together.

©2007 J. Todd Billings