Comfort and Discomfort Food (Psalms Part III)
January 6, 2013 | Patrick Preheim
Prayer before the meditation (Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven to Earth, p. 12)
You with ears bent close to our lips
You, you are the one we address,
always you,
only you ... who has given us life,
who waits for us to answer.
We, toward you, speak and remain tongue-tied,
for we lack words that are honest enough,
and dangerous enough,
and fierce enough to match you.
We do not speak first, but after our mothers and fathers,
who knew cadences of honesty about our troubles,
who knew cadences of danger about your presence,
who knew cadences of fierceness to fit our rage and loss.
So we speak to you words that we have always spoken:
words of praise and adoration:
... into you gates with thanksgiving,
into your courts with praise ...
words of confession and remorse:
... against you and only you have we sinned ...
words of rage unabated:
... dash their heads against the rocks.
So many words we need to speak
to you from whom no secret can be hid,
you beyond us, you with us, you for us,
you with ears bent close to our lips,
You ... and our woes turned toward you, always you, only you,
Yet again you.
Amen.
(Title—Rodney Clapp, “American Soundings” editorial in Christian Century (Dec 12, 2002), p. 45 )
This Sunday in our particular latitude of the northern hemisphere we have 16 hours of darkness to 8 hours of light. It is quite fitting, at least for us, that the church has established this day “Epiphany”. This is the day a star’s light guided night wandering gentiles to the house of Jesus. We too are on a journey: personally and congregationally. Like the magi we benefit from bright stars, and the Psalms are such a star. This reality came home to us last Sunday when a few congregational members shared about specific Psalms that have been significant for them. Anita provided me a summary of the stories offered last week.
The sustaining power of the Psalter has much to do with the ability of the Psalms to connect with us when we are in the dark. Kelsey spoke of Psalm 31 and Lydia of Psalm 139. These join other Psalms which have guided people in the dark; Psalms like #51 (David’s confession and restoration) and #137 in which harps are hung on willows. These are dark sentiments and they are reality. We all sin and crave restoration. We all grieve losses bitterly. At times we all dwell in a land of deep darkness. The beauty of the Psalter is that it holds together praise and lament. There are seasons and Psalms of celebration in which we are compelled to make a joyful noise. We need Christmas ham with mashed potatoes, butter tarts and all the fixings—comfort food. There are also seasons and Psalms of confession, lament, and despair. We benefit from fasting, raw vegetables, and unprocessed fruit—what some might call discomfort food. The Psalms in their entirety remind us that our walk in this world will entail both celebration and sorrow (light and dark) and that an appropriate response of God’s people in the midst of every emotional season is direct address to God.
Since this is the season of epiphany I offer a few thoughts on patterns I have seen within the Psalms which allow God to find us in the dark and guide us to the living Christ.
The Psalms give us a model of and language for expressing ourselves. In Anita’s report from last week I was struck by the way both Kelsey and Lydia located their story within the Psalms. They are in good company. Numerous times in the last week of his life Jesus expressed his emotions using phrases and imagery from the Psalms (eg. Mt 23.37 // Ps 91.4, Lk 19.44 // Ps 137.9, crucifixion // Ps 22.1, triumphal entry // Ps 118.26). The Psalms give us a model and vocabulary to argue with God, to petition God, to thank God, to celebrate God’s presence—to place ourselves in God’s salvation history. In my seminary course on the Psalter my instructor had the class transpose Psalms into personalized Psalms and we shared some in class. These personalized Psalms included the joy and despair which is life: miscarriages, vocational calls, betrayals, and more. This is precisely what Howard Willems did with the 23rd Psalm which was read at his funeral. One of my pastoral colleagues has called this practice “letting the Psalms read us”. Applying the Psalms to our personal and congregational life is not easy, but it can be nourishing. This practice can be a guiding light on a dark night.
The Psalms remind us to dwell in a spirit of “Gelassenheit”. Gelassenheit is a fancy German word earlier generations of Mennonites used to describe their trust of God. Literally translated it would mean something like “yielded-ness”. The Psalmist doesn’t know why there are dark valleys or why the wicked seem to prosper or why trouble strikes. The Psalms do not promise that the righteous will flourish, only that the God is present. And we know God is present because we speak directly to God. The Psalms encourage us to open ourselves to the presence of God regardless of the uncertainties that plague us. You don’t need to know what your major will be, or what the markets will do, or how long you might live. It is enough to remember we have a relationship with God and like Jesus entrust ourselves into God’s eternal care. This is God’s world and in due course all will be healed and made right. This long view of the Psalms can be a star in the darkness.
Finally, the Psalms themselves point us to the power of ritual in remembering our identity. For over two thousand years the book of Psalms has been a “primary vehicle” shaping “the public and private worship of Jews and Christians” (William Holladay, The Psalms through Three Thousand Year, p. 1). The regular reading of the Psalms have sunk them and their message deep into many of our psyches. When I say “the steadfast love of the Lord” in the context of Psalm 136 many of you will be mouthing the next phrase of “endures forever”. When I say “The Lord is my shepherd” many of you will know the next phase as “I shall not want”. The repeated movements of worship such as song and scripture are rituals that remind us whose we are even when our faculties fail.
Our service of communion functions in a similar fashion to how I have described the ritual function of the Psalms. The Lord’s table serves as a place of remembering. “Do this in remembrance of me” Jesus said and our table has inscribed. Remember is an interesting word. Certainly to remember something can mean to recall it in our minds. If we inserted a hyphen between the “re” and the “member” we would have different understandings of “Do this in remembrance of me”. In our participation of communion we are re-membered. Like Psalm 51 our sins are acknowledged and we are restored. Like Psalm 80 our confusion at suffering is expressed and our memory of God’s memory gives hope. Like Psalm 90 suggests, we are re-membered to generations who have gone before—the great cloud of witnesses who sing alleluias to the eternal Lord. Communion can be a light in the midst of a dark night.
Like the Psalms, the communion table holds both comfort and discomfort food. We recall God’s past provision and decisive action in the person of Jesus Christ—comfort food. And we also confess our need of nourishment while we await the restoration of all creation and reconciliation among the nations—food taken in unsettling times. The bread we take is both the bread of thanksgiving and the bread of wandering magi in need of strength for the journey. In this spirit let us prepare for communion with the singing of “Let all mortal flesh keep silence”, HWB #463. I invite you to stand as you are able and for the communion servers to come forward.
