6 Pentecost, Year A
Psalm
13
Sermon
by Pastor Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson
“How
long, O LORD?”
The
life journey of human beings will, inevitably, face the reality of suffering.
There is no avoiding or denying it—suffering happens! Whether we’re
young, old, rich, poor, a genius or challenged physically, mentally, or in any
other way—before our life runs its full coarse, from birth up to death,
somewhere along the journey we will face some kind of suffering. Contrary
to the often-wrongheaded belief that God’s faithful will always prosper and the
unfaithful will always suffer and not prosper; today’s psalm presents us
with the truth that God’s faithful do suffer and do not always prosper.
In today’s psalm, which is written in the
form of a personal lamentation, the psalmist is utterly honest with God. Obviously
the psalmist is in a deep pit of suffering, things are not going well at all.
In this time of suffering, the psalmist lets fly four related questions, which
are addressed to God. In each of these questions, the psalmist opens the
flood-gates of a soul afflicted and tried to the limits—sharing with God
doubts, fears, depression, anger, deep hurt, pain and sufferings. Each of the
four questions begins with the two words, “How long.”
I know I certainly can empathise with the
psalmist who asks God: “How long.” I don’t know if you’ve had the experience in
your sufferings or not, but in my experiences of sufferings, sometimes it seems
as if time stops, as if a minute is like an eternity, while enduring unbearable
pains, heartbreak and sorrow. At such
times, one feels the suffering is so intense and overwhelming, that one may
very well not endure or survive it. One is so focussed on the suffering that
one cannot, at the moment, see or hope beyond it. When time seems to stand
still, we cry out from our soul to God: “How long!?” The words, “How long,” may
be worn right out in our fast paced world. Are these words not a constant
litany uttered by most people in this age of spaceships, jet planes, and
fibber-optic chips? We are an extremely impatient society, are we not? We want
everything and everyone to work, live and travel faster. So, what happens when
severe suffering hits us like a ton of bricks? Does it not merely make us even
more impatient?
In the psalmist’s first question: “How
long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” the words ring true for us all, do
they not? We tend to associate God with being totally good and loving. When we
are on the receiving end of illness, ill-will, hatred and hostility, do we not
tend to believe in a rather distorted way that the source of these sufferings
are happening to us because God has forgotten us, and is no longer listening to
our cries for help and deliverance? Or perhaps, if we’re prone to be easily
afflicted with guilt; we begin doubting ourselves and start blaming ourselves
for things that we may have done to offend God and thus come to believe that
we’re being punished for our sinfulness. Or maybe we, in a rather twisted way
believe that God forgets—perhaps God suffers from amnesia, or worse yet,
dementia or Alzheimer’s, therefore we sense the need to keep reminding God not
to forget us. Maybe our God is too small. Maybe we believe God only selectively
comes around to us in a capricious way at some whimsical moment or other.
Whatever we may believe about God and God’s
forgetfulness; is it not vital for us at times like that to remember and trust
that God is with us always? God has not forgotten us, in spite of how things
may seem to be to us at the moment. Our pain may blind our vision and suffering
right now; we all need to be reminded that our LORD bears our pain and
suffering with us.
In the second question: “How long will you
hide your face from me?” the psalmist expresses the sense that God is absent,
God has abandoned the psalmist. The feeling of abandonment is a very real one
for a lot of people. The young child who is sexually abused by an adult,
perhaps even someone from their own family; the faithful person who lived an
exemplary life, was a leader in the church and the community, was kind and
generous, loving and understanding, but now is suffering and dying of a chronic
disease; the man or woman who has worked for the company for several years and
now is unemployed and cannot find another job; the growing number of orphans,
who never knew their parents; the poverty-stricken millions in third world
nations who have never known what it is like to have 3 meals a day, a
comfortable home with clean, running water, the opportunity to attend school,
and adequate access to healthcare; people like this and many more cry out to
God every day: “How long will you hide your face from me?”
When one is afflicted with severe pain and
suffering, it is very difficult to see the face of God in and through it all.
It all seems at the time as if it is a colossal waste, useless, senseless, and
yes, bad and evil. So we cry to God as our thoughts and feelings of God’s
absence and abandonment afflict and overwhelm us. We cry to God because there
is no one else to whom we feel we can turn. We cry to God with still a tiny
particle of hope and trust that God will eventually show God’s face and reveal
God’s presence to us.
In the third question: “How long must I
bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?” the psalmist
appears to be in a deep state of depression. Maybe you too have been afflicted
with depression before. Depression so all-pervasive that it becomes a major
ordeal to carry on with even the basic routines of daily life. Depression that
makes one inclined to crawl into a shell; to escape from the world, life and
living. Depression so blind and malevolent that all one is able to see is an
enemy in everyone and everything. Depression that destroys one’s self-esteem
and confidence. Depression so all-invasive that it destroys one’s overall
health and well-being and will to live. Depression that is unable to see a
tomorrow.
The psalmist’s question focuses on the
self’s ability to bear one’s own soul pain and one’s own sorrow-filled heart.
Yet, is it not God whom we need to go to and ask to bear these things? We
cannot bear these things on our own—that’s why we suffer from soul pain and a
sorrow-filled heart. The LORD will lighten our heavy loads if we but turn to
him and ask him for help. As people of faith who live in community with one
another; we are called on to bear each other burdens; and in so doing fulfil
the law of Christ. How many of us have had the experience of confiding in a
trustworthy person of faith our deep dark secrets of soul pain and
sorrow-filled heart; only to feel a sense of relief and freedom afterwards.
In the fourth question, “How long shall my
enemy be exalted over me?” the psalmist struggles with the enemy being blessed
by God while the psalmist suffers and does not flourish. Although it is
difficult to say for certain—perhaps the psalmist’s enemy is a chronic illness.
The psalmist may believe that (s)he is dying and very close to death. If so,
then the psalmist may, in turn, have believed that (s)he was being punished by
God for some sin or another. When we face great sufferings and struggle with
dying and death as our enemy, do we feel punished by God too for some sin or
another? How are we to cope with and deal with such suffering?
Well, one
way is to view the enemy upside down completely by regarding them as if they
were your friend. Is there anything to fear—including death if we regard it
as a friend rather than an enemy. Don’t get me wrong—I’m definitely not
advocating that everyone become a suicide bomber like the Palestinian and
Muslim world is teaching at the present time. God is a God of life and love not
of death and hatred; hence God definitely does not bless suicide bombers or
bombings. Rather, what I’m advocating here by regarding death as a friend
is the way of Jesus, the way of the cross; the way of turning the world
upside-down by finding life in cross-bearing suffering; suffering that
sacrifices for the sake of love; suffering that creates new life—new
resurrection life, where once there was only death. In regarding the enemy as
if they were our friend, we are able, with God’s help, to be more at peace—and,
again God willing, be blessed and reconciled with the enemy. This is the way of
Jesus, who journeyed to the cross for our sake and the sake of all humankind;
that we may live in peace and be reconciled with each other and with God. This
is the true peace and reconciliation that will take root in hearts and souls
and lives and last forever—rendering obsolete all fear, violence, hatred and
war.
[ Home ] [ Sermons ] [ E-mail Pastor Garth ]