Bits O’Sermon: Psalm 88
Psalm 88 may be the darkest Psalm of them all. One scholar calls it “a wintry landscape of unrelieved bleakness” (Martin Marty). And, while it would be nice to think that none of us have experienced this kind of bleakness, we just know that isn’t true. Too often we fail to acknowledge this in the Church. It is time to not only acknowledge it as part of the human experience, but be a place where everyone feels welcome to share their own cries from the pit.
Thrown into a pit? This I understand.
This, we all understand because we have experienced a global pandemic. There isn’t one single person on the planet who hasn’t been affected by Covid-19. Even the most remote tribes of people in the most remote places have lost loved ones to the virus. 600,000 Americans have died so far and the number continues to rise as new variants appear. Almost 70 people died in the last week alone (in the USA) and those numbers are likely low because every state is not reporting in the same way that it was a year ago. Being thrown into a dark pit, we get. We get it collectively in a way we likely haven’t gotten it before.
And, it has been disorienting. It has often felt like God has left us, given up on us, tossed us into the pit and left us there to suffer.
Now, about the time I say something like that, I hear in my own head — “but you know God doesn’t do that.” Of course I do. And, maybe you are more comfortable with questioning where God is in the darkest moments than I am. I’m always willing to question it, but I don’t let myself sit with it too long for fear that it will mean I have totally lost my faith.
This is what the Psalmist does for us. They help us see that God welcomes our questions, God welcomes our cries, God welcomes our screams of anguish, even our blame of God for finding ourselves in the pit.
My favorite Christian conversion story is Anne Lamott’s. The short version is that she had had an abortion and was hemorrhaging while drunk. Because she had gone home and gotten drunk after having an abortion, she was too embarrassed to call for help. She resigned herself to die that night. Then she felt the presence of the Living Jesus kneeling in the corner of her room. While she lay bleeding and crying on the bed, Jesus simply sat with her, stayed with her until morning. He didn’t speak. There was no burning bush. Jesus didn’t condemn her for the choices she had made. Jesus didn’t even encourage her to look on the bright side of life. He just sat with her. His presence was so real, so strong, there was no question in her mind that it was Jesus.
The Psalmist makes it clear that God understands the human condition completely and sits with us in the pit when things are really dark in our lives. There is no admonition to get yourself together. There is no “if you had faith, you wouldn’t be so sad.” There is no “trust God and whatever is wrong will be made right.” It simply is.
That may not be good news for some of us. I find it to be incredible news- that Jesus understands my suffering, sadness, despair and grief in ways that no one can, that Jesus simply sits with me in the midst of it all, and that Jesus stands with us when we raise our fists to the sky and cry out, “How long? God? How long?” This seems like great news to me. Jesus gets it.
I know some of you are in the pit right now. Me? I’m climbing out of it and can actually see the top. Some days I even think I’ve made it and am looking back down at the pit behind me. Either way, the point is that God meets each of us wherever we are. Settled? Disoriented? Doesn’t matter. God meets us there, sits with us in it, and will walk with us out of it when the time comes.
