Thank
God for the Book of Psalms! They have helped me to express my faith through the
good times and the bad times.
I
became facebook friends with someone I met a while back. I didn’t even know if he was a Christian but
this is what he wrote about himself on his facebook profile, which relates to
our worship theme today. He writes:
“Reading
the Psalms allowed me to grow into my own haphazard
prayers and to inch my way before God with all my conflicting thoughts and
feelings. If people in the Bible could shake their fists at God while truly
believing in the majesty of God, then maybe I can too.”
For my friend, it was through the Psalms
that he was able to reconnect to his faith.
And I think this is true for a lot of people.
The Psalms are centuries old prayers
grounded in Hebrew spirituality. The
Book of Psalms found in the Old Testament is a collection of 150 biblical
psalms. The psalms emerge from a people
who are in love with life and want to see good or better days. Each generation passes these time-tested
prayers on to the next. Passed on but
never passed over – such is the prayer book called Psalms.
The God of the psalmists is the God of
Israel, the God of the covenant. And
this God is interested in human troubles, triumphs and trust. This God initiated the relationship with
Israel in the first place by calling Abraham and Sarah to leave their home and
move on to a new place. The same God
invited Moses to come right up to the burning bush and learn God’s name. The psalms celebrate this relationship that
we can have with God.
There are different types of Psalms to
help us express whatever emotion or experience we may be facing in any given
moment. There are what I would call the “praise psalms” when everything seems
to be just right with the world and you want to offer praise to God.
There are the “thankful psalms” when we
are in need of just the right words to express our gratitude for our blessings
or for how God helped us through a challenging situation or problem. You might
have offered a thankful prayer that day you were speeding, and for whatever
reason, the police officer chose not to give you a ticket.
There are also fancier psalms called,
“enthronement psalms” to praise God for a righteous king or to acknowledge that
God is the true king over all creation. These psalms remind us that no matter
how crazy this world may seem, God continues to be the true King over all
creation. This is particularly helpful if you don't care that much for either presidential candidate.
And then there is another category of
psalms that I like to call, “psalms of tears,” also known as “psalms of
lament.”
So what are Psalms of lament? To lament is to feel, show, or express grief,
sorrow, or regret. In the Jewish
tradition in which these Psalms were written, the initial grief process is
known as “shiva.” This is a time of
formal mourning when for at least a full week, you don’t go to work or cook or
take care of errands around the house or do anything else. Other people take care of those things for
you. And the reason for this is to provide
you the time to face the reality of your loss and not to minimize or deny it.
If you have experienced the death of a
loved one or have been angry about the unfairness of life, psalms of lament can
be an emotionally and spiritually healthy spiritual exercise. As Renee Rust, author of the book, “Making
the Psalms Your Prayer” shares, the Psalms of Lament are the bible’s complaint
department.
Some people attend self-help seminars to reduce
stress. Others might turn to drugs or
alcohol. Maybe eating a pint of ice cream while watching “Sleepless in Seattle”
is how people try to get rid of the stress in their lives.
There is a more biblical approach to help
you reduce the built up stress in your life. The Psalmist’s program for stress
reduction is heard through throbbing wails of lament. And these wails of lament are ultimately
directed to God and this is what helps us to know that not all is lost, because
no matter how deep the loss may be, God cares about our pain.
Psalms of Lament: Loss
There are three main areas that Psalms of
lament cover. And the first area is
loss. Now this can be a death, or
another type of loss, like the end of a friendship or another type of
significant relationship.
David from the Old Testament is a good
example of how this works. For anyone
who has felt betrayed by a friend as David did, maybe his words from Psalm 55
hit home – “For it is not an enemy who
reproaches me: that I could bear. It is
not a rival who taunts me, but you, my other self, my companion and my close
friend!”
But here’s the key to these Psalms of lament. As I mentioned before, Psalms of lament
remind us that no matter what life may throw our way, that not all is
lost. Just a few verses later in that
same Psalm, David prays, “But for me, I
will call on God who will save me.”
Psalms of Lament: Sin
Another main area of Psalms of lament is
in the area of our own sins. And not
only our own personal sins but the sins and brokenness of a whole community. A lot of the Psalmists express this mourning
and sadness because they have sinned against God.
Instead of Psalms of lament, some people
might call these penitential psalms. Psalms
of lament aren’t meant to leave us feeling empty and terrible about ourselves,
they are meant to help us face the reality of our unfaithfulness so that we can
receive God’s forgiveness and redeeming love.
Psalms of lament related to our sins are
meant to help us to admit what we did, take responsibility for what we can
change, and receive God’s healing and forgiving love so that we can move
forward in life and learn from our mistakes.
At the Coventry Cathedral in England there is
probably the most dramatic symbol of forgiveness.
The old cathedral there was destroyed in the blitzkrieg of World War II, in the
constant bombings of England. Only a shell of the old cathedral was left.
The
congregation left it, and built the new cathedral right next to it, so that the
entrance into the new is through the ruins of the old. You enter new life
through forgiving the past. So in the courtyard of Coventry Cathedral, where
the altar was in the old church, there is a cross made out of the charred
timbers of the roof of the old cathedral. It says these words, "Father,
forgive."
I
remember standing there at that site wondering how this congregation was able
to choose forgiveness over hatred and revenge.
This charred cathedral is a testimony to the healing power of God’s love
and forgiveness. But it’s only as we
first walk through the charred past of our sins, that we are able to enter into
the new future that God has in store for us, a future of love and forgiveness.
In
Psalm 130, we hear these words of hope and new life – “Out of the depths I cry to you, O God; God, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to my cry for
mercy. If you, O God, mark our guilt,
who can stand? But with you is forgiveness, and for this we revere you.”
John
Newton who wrote the lyrics of the hymn, “Amazing Grace” is quoted as saying, “Although my memory is fading, I remember
two things very clearly. I am a great
sinner. And Christ is a great Savior.”
Newton, who before his
conversion was a captain of a ship that transported slaves during the 18th
century didn’t deny his many sins when he wrote, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found; was blind,
but now I see.”
Psalms of Lament: Feeling Lost
Psalms of lament help us to not only express our sense of loss and sorrow
for our sins, but thirdly, they also help us to express whenever we feel
lost. Have you been there? Maybe you’re there right now, where you feel
disoriented and confused about your direction in life. Psalms of lament can help us to express that
feeling of being lost so that we can find our way again.
Some
people have a better sense of direction than others. Have you ever noticed that? When one of our kids was in High School marching
band, Penny and I went to MapQuest to get directions to go to one of the away
football games which was about a 45 minute drive for us.
The directions worked really well
until we got off the highway. It had us
turn onto this one lane road that went straight down a hill into a secluded
wooded area. It started as a paved road
but then turned into a dirt road.
I
thought that maybe it was a back road that would take us to the high school but
instead it became a dead end with thick woods preventing us from going any
farther. I felt embarrassed and confused
but then in my rearview mirror there were other cars immediately behind us that
had been following us to the game.
One
time, I was in Michigan and driving back to Ohio when I ran into a detour. My GPS recalculated sending me a different
route. But something didn’t seem right.
When I clicked on my GPS to bring up a map of where I was located, it had a
picture of my car driving through the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of
Africa.
Even
with modern day technology, it’s still easy to get lost. The bible recognizes this and provides us
with psalms of lament whenever we feel disoriented and we get lost in our
spiritual journey. This sense of feeling lost may be due to a major change that
has happened in our lives and we don’t know what direction to go.
Sometimes life is unfair and it makes us question our faith and the
meaning of life. It’s times like this
that some of the Psalmists offer their psalms of lament expressing that feeling
of being lost and in need of direction.
The
Psalmist from our Psalm 77 reading this morning is an example of someone who
was feeling lost in life. “I cried aloud to you, O God, I cried, and
you heard me. In the day of my distress
I sought you, Lord, and by night I stretched out my hands in prayer. I lay sweating and nothing would cool me; I
refused all comfort. When I remembered
you, I groaned; as I pondered, darkness came over my spirit. My eyelids would not close; I was troubled
and I could not speak.”
But then listen to the change of tone by the end
of this same Psalm. The Psalmist says, “Your path led through the sea, your way was
through mighty waters, and no one marked your footsteps. You guide your people like a flock of sheep,
under the hand of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam.”
Because God has guided and directed the people
of Israel in the past, God will do the same for this Psalmist and for us as
well.
These
are the main areas of Psalms of lament – when we have experienced a death or a
loss, when we have sinned, and whenever we feel lost and in need of direction.
The
psalms of lament provide a wealth of helpful images of God whenever we express
our tears of faith.
These
images include God, the merciful forgiver; the just judge; the healer of
confusion & uncertainty; the one who answers our pleas; and the one who
promises to one day make all things new.
The
Psalms of lament remind us that God created the world to be a place of love,
peace, harmony, joy, and justice. And
whenever this world is anything less than this, we know that God shares in our
lament.
Jesus
was no stranger to tears of faith. A great example of this is when he wept at
the tomb of his good friend Lazarus who had died. But then those same tears of
faith led him tell Mary and Martha who were also grieving, “I am the resurrection and the life.
Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone
who lives and believes in me will never die.”
And when Jesus hung on
the cross, he was lamenting all three areas that we find in the psalms of
lament. He was experiencing a sense of
loss as he was offering his very life by dying on the cross. He was experiencing the pain of sin as he was
taking upon himself the sins of the world.
And he was experiencing loneliness and a sense of abandonment as he hung
on the hard wood of the cross.
We
are in good company when we cry tears of faith. We are in the company of so
many of the psalmists who cried out to God. We are in the company of Jesus
whose tears of faith led him to bring salvation to the world through his life,
death, and resurrection.
We
are in good company when we cry tears of faith. Sometimes, our tears of faith
happen right here in church when we gather for worship.
During a Sunday morning in January a couple of years ago in my previous
church, I preached a sermon that led me to cry like I had never cried before,
right there in the pulpit in the middle of my sermon! I was sharing a personal story
about my mother. It’s the same story that I shared in a sermon with you when I
first arrived here, but I was much more composed the second time around.
In
this sermon at my last church, I shared how my brother, two sisters, and I met
at our family farm in Pennsylvania to prepare our mom’s farm to be sold. The
story seemed to be a really good personal illustration for the point I was
trying to make.
And
so, I was sharing this story about getting our mom’s farm ready to be sold. Everything
was going fine as I was sharing that personal family story until around the
middle of it, I started to cry.
In
all of my almost 30 years of preaching, there have been times when I have
gotten choked up when I shared a personal story, but I had never, ever cried
uncontrollably like I did that Sunday morning in the middle of my sermon.
I
mean, it was so bad that I had to take off my glasses, and I almost couldn’t
continue to finish the story. At one point, I just had to wait for a about ten
seconds to be able to continue. I was a blubbering mess in front of 300 people.
Here
is why I am telling you all this. After I got home from church that morning, it
suddenly dawned on me why that story had caught me off guard, leading me to cry
uncontrollably.
I had
never allowed myself to grieve from that day when we had all helped mom move
out of the farmhouse. That was the house where she was born, grew up, and
raised all of us. Looking back, the four of us didn’t have time to grieve that
week when we were together because we had to get a lot of work done in a short
amount of time.
Two
months later, though, the emotions of that personal experience had finally
caught up with me when I attempted to tell that story in a sermon.
Psalms of lament remind us that it’s ok to
cry out to God. We all experience loss in our lives. We all experience the pain
of our own brokenness and sin. We all long for a better world. We all sometimes
lose our way in life.
What
do we do? We cry out. We cry out, not because there is no hope. We cry tears of
faith, because no matter how heavy our hearts may be, we know this one thing,
and it makes all the difference in the world. And the Psalms are here to never
let us forget. Through times of both joy and sorrow, the Psalms remind us…
God
is faithful.
Tears of Faith
Small Group Questions
Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20
June 26, 2016
There are basically four different types of Psalms. These include:
- Praise Psalms
- Thankful Psalms
- Enthronement Psalms
- Psalms of Lament
The Psalm for this past Sunday is considered a Psalm of Lament. Read Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20 as a group.
In his sermon, Pastor Robert shared a personal story of grief and loss and how it's important to allow ourselves to cry so that we can receive comfort from God. How do tears help you to experience God's healing presence when you go through a time of loss?
Our church offers trained Stephen Ministers who are available for one to one peer support when we are going through a difficult transition/loss in our lives. Our Stephen Leaders are Rick Seiter and Sharon Stoltzfus.
In addition to our Stephen Ministers, in what ways can we help people to experience God's comforting presence during times of loss?
Share how you have experienced God's comforting presence when you went through a loss or difficult time in your life.
