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“To Sing Amongst the Peoples”
Psalm 57
A Sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
I have just returned from the
Baptist Peace Fellowship Conference. As
always, it was a great experience to gather with peacemakers and
justice-seekers from many Baptist denominations in the
As peacemakers, it’s hard to sing songs of praise these days. There’s too much warfare, too much bloodshed, and the praise of many churches has been co-opted into praising the military or the present administration. In the midst of this, it’s hard for peacemakers to find their voice. By and large, we have been silent in the midst of the current war on terrorism. It’s too confusing and our loyalties are torn between wanting to remain safe and secure from all alarms and the methods of attaining that safety. So we find ourselves searching for a voice, searching for a safe harbor, searching for a word from God. It’s hard to sing amongst the peoples when our song might be misunderstood, or worse, co-opted by the other side.
And that is exactly where the psalms come in to play.
The Psalms give us some of the most beautiful and at times violent imagery in the Bible. At first blush, the Psalms seem contradictory.
Psalm 137 starts out “By the
willows there, we laid down our harps and wept when we remembered
Psalm 139 holds those familiar words, “O God you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar…” It goes on with this beautiful assuring language for 18 verses. But then verses 19 and following intrude and disturb our complacency: “O that you would kill the wicked, O God, and that the bloodthirsty would depart from me—those who speak of you maliciously, and lift themselves up against you for evil! Do I not hate those who hate you?...I hate them with perfect hatred.”
These are not the praise songs that we often think of when we think of the Psalms.
George Behr has suggested that we sing more Psalms in the coming fall. But if we do this, we had better remember that Psalms are not always pious feel good scriptures. They are raw, often angry and perhaps as such they are some of the most honest scriptures in the Bible.
Many of the Psalms are raw and confusing, just like
we are at times. Two thirds of the
Psalms are laments. They are places
where people cry to God, rail at God, saying things that are not very pretty.
We’re not pretty people when we grieve, yet that is where many of us are. We grieve over the loss of loved ones and today
we think of Fred Battell and the two children of
Cathy Follett and Myron Johnson. We think of loves lost, of family members
sick, of broken relationships, of harsh words said and heard, of violence
perpetrated and repentance rebuffed. And
yet in our orderly Protestant services, we don’t find places to lament. Are we too busy? Too focused on the positive? Denial ain’t only a
river in
Our Jewish sisters and brothers have portion of their Shabbat services where they sing or read a kaddish, a lament, a prayer for the dead and grieving. Sheila sang a beautiful kaddish earlier this morning during our offering. The Psalms remind us that in our grief, wailing to and railing at God is perfectly acceptable. In fact, it’s encouraged. And only after that, can praise come. Only after that might we find our voice to sing amongst the peoples.
Think about what you might want to complain to God about. How might you weep and gnash your teeth? What violent thoughts exist below the surface of your pious facade that we dare not speak aloud? God will hear it all.
Psalm 57 is
listed as a psalm of the falsely accused.
Many of us know what this is about.
We are told we don’t know what reality is all about. We are called unfaithful because we go to a
liberal
There are
those within our own denomination who have publicly said that Welcoming and
Still more of us fell misunderstood by those we love. We want to run and hide. When we tell a truth we are called uppity. When we dare to let someone into a portion of our lives which does not agree with their view of us, they say, we are just going through a phase. Some of us are told to turn to Jesus, even though we say we are saved, we are told we are not. We are falsely accused.
Some of us who dare to speak out are called strident and are ordered to submit. We are falsely accused.
The woman caught in adultery was falsely accused. It was a trumped up charge designed to trap Jesus and her cries were unrecorded in scripture. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t wail at her tormentors, calling them hypocrites and wondering why a loving and merciful God would employ such scoundrels in the priestly profession.
Psalm 57 is a Psalm of one falsely accused.
It is attributed to David as he fled and hid in the cave from King Saul. Saul was jealous of David’s fame and his good favor among the people. So what does the insecure leader do? He trumps up charges on him. He hires his own special prosecutor, robs the treasury and then tries to impeach poor David. This was before David raped Bathsheba and rebuffed his daughter Tamar. He eventually got caught in the cycle of domination, lust and greed. But here, David hides in a cave and prays to God. Like many of us, David is trying to sing the sacred songs in a strange land.
It begins innocently enough, “Be merciful to me of God…In the shadow of your wings I take refuge until the storms of destruction pass.” Another Psalm, number 91 has God saying “I will raise you up on the wings of eagles.”
Then comes the anguish: “I lie in the midst of lions that greedily devour children; their teeth are spears and arrows their tongues sharp swords…They set a net for my steps; my soul was bowed down.”
David weeps here in the cave. In his own cave, in his closet he weeps and mourns. He articulates the wrong done to him. He pours out his soul to the only one guaranteed to listen.
Sometimes we need to be in a cave. Sometimes we need to mourn, to grieve, to gnash our teeth, to even shake a fist or two at God. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus quoted those words from Psalm 22 as he hung upon the cross.
We need to have places where it’s safe to grieve. Where it’s safe to mourn. Where it’s safe to pour out our souls. When the church is at its best is when we make space safe for people to mourn to grieve to wail at God, to complain about injustice and eventually find a way to reintegrate our lives.
The lamentation psalms don’t end with the lamentation. They end with praise. But the praise takes on a new meaning after a lamentation has been laid bare. It’s no longer just feel-good praise songs, it’s praise on the other end of the cave. It’s praise from the mountaintop after 40 years of toil in the desert and seeing the promised land off in the distance.
David says from the cave, “My heart is steadfast O God. I will sing and make melody. Awake my soul! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake at the dawn. I will give thanks to you and I will sing amongst the peoples.” David says these words to convince himself, so that despair doesn’t have the last word. It’s not always such a quick fix. We don’t know how long it took to get from the lament to the praise, but it got there eventually. And the praise took on new meaning. It was deeper, more heartfelt, more passionate, more relevant because it comes on the way out of the cave.
The song that is finally sung from out of the cave is not a song of hard-heartedness. It’s not a cover for the grief. It’s the prayer of one who can honestly pray because he or she has let the grief go.
There was a time in my life when I could count the number of times I cried over a 15-year period on one hand. I integrated the childhood lesson, “big boys don’t cry.” It was a control thing. We men are notorious for this. We try to hold in our feelings so as not to appear weak. In the meantime we cut ourselves off to depth of feeling, to passion. It took years of intentional work, but I have re-learned how to cry. And as I have done so, rediscovering the child within me, rediscovering my own depth, I have found a new view of the Spirit of God. It’s easier for me to cry nowadays and when I do, I feel more in touch with an aspect of myself which holds new power. I am often even more able to praise because I realize that I am no longer the one in control. Another who is more powerful holds my life in those divine hands.
I hope that this can be a place where we can certainly praise God, but also where we can grieve and allow others that space. At times, there may seem like there are no answers. We don’t need to fix everything. What we need is to be present with one another. We need to be patient with one another as we try to find our song on the other side of the cave. And I know that through all of that, we will find our voices. We will find a way to sing amongst the peoples.
How do you sing? Well, the song doesn’t have to be pretty or even have all of the answers. But the song must follow lament. It must follow a recognition of your humility and seeming powerlessness. When we articulate that, then God grants us power to find new life and new opportunities to sing amongst the peoples. Maybe we peacemakers can then find our individual and collective voices.
Sisters and brothers, let us continue to make this place a safe space to lament, to grieve, to mourn, to reconnect with our deepest needs and our most profound longings. When we do that, we may just find our voices. We may just be more whole, more passionate, more real, more faithful. Maybe we can find our voices even in the midst of being falsely accused. We can turn our mourning into praise and finally sing along with the Psalmist: “My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast! I will sing and make melody! Awake, my soul! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn! I will give thanks to you O God among the peoples; I will sing praises to you amongst the peoples. For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens! Let your glory be over all the earth!” (Psalm 57:7-11/Psalm 108:1-5)
Amen.