There’s a desperate vigilance and awful heaviness about the world at the moment. I think even if we aren’t paying super close attention many of us are still feeling it. A shared, psychic weight to the world. Even as we are hurriedly vaccinating people, the case numbers are rising toward a global highest point, and what, another mass shooting? Wasn’t there just one yesterday? The pressure feels audible, the tension palpable. So many people I know have commented on how utterly exhausted they feel. But at the same time our sleep is fraught and spotty. We are alert, restless and exhausted.
It feels like we’re given two options, and neither one is tenable. One is to watch every minute of the Derek Chauvin trial, read everything we can about little Adam Toledo, break apart the video of Daunte White’s killing, stay up late watching national guardsmen teargassing journalists a few miles away, track the vaccinations, stay on top of the politicians, check in on the suffering children at the border and the conflicts simmering all over the globe, worry about the threat of climate change, and compulsively wonder what more we should be doing. And if we are not out marching or speaking out then we are following those who are because we need to feel like we are doing something, like something is being done that can stop all this, or fix all this, and Lord, it’s all so awful how can we ignore even a moment of it?
The other option we’re given is to go numb and limp, to shut it all off and block it all out and take in nothing but our own lives and desires, and maybe we occasionally feel a teeny bit guilty, but that’s better than helplessness and rage with no outlet. And sometimes we just bounce wildly back and forth between the two.
But there is a third way. And I think this Psalm gives it to us.
It starts with lament. When the tears feel close and sorrow claws up the throat, and anger and rage are right here next to us we aim all of that right at God. We moderns are pretty scared of lament in church, preferring the more palatable confession, but lament is in integral part of our faith. And this particular lament of David, we know, was sung all the voices crying out together, Answer me when I call to you God! How long will this go on?
There is a mystery word here that shows up 71 times in the psalms and twice in Habakkuk, Selah. Because it’s very close to the word for pause and also the word for praise, throughout the millennia it has come to be seen as a kind of mix of both - pause and praise God. Take a beat, and turn your attention back to God.
So built right into the song is a pause, everyone stopping, silent, shifting focus back to God. And then continuing on in unison.
So hear the Psalm again, in this paraphrase:
O God who knows me, answer me when I call!
When I have been confined in anxious misery before,
you opened up expansive space for me to breathe,
please hear me now, give me your grace again.
How long will our humanity be torn down?
How long will lies be elevated,
and people spread vitriol, delusion and exploitation?
Stop.
Take a beat.
Turn your attention to God.
God has drawn us to God’s own being,
those who seek God are claimed for God’s purposes.
When you are worked up and distraught,
don’t turn to division and blame; don’t tear down others.
Instead, sit in it with God,
be silent in a restful space.
Stop.
Take a beat.
Turn your attention to God.
Lay everything before the Almighty in vulnerable honesty,
and trust God with it.
So many people say, “There is no goodness that we can see!”
Oh Lord, let your love and truth shine on all of us!
You have filled me with deep joy,
more happiness than when they have all the wealth
and satisfaction they desire.
I won't stay up babysitting the world,
I will sleep soundly and deeply
because this your world, God,
and my life is held in you.
Lament. Return to God. Then remember.
This earth is heavy with sorrow and need.
And at the same time this planet turns slowly in the utter silence of the vast cosmos, nestled amongst the great lights of burning stars, held in orbit to the sun. And within this planet, while one hemisphere is nestling down in winter hibernation, here the green shoots push up through the soil, and trees are awakening. And all over the planet new babies are born, and broken relationships are mended, and people are tending to each other, and there is laughter and joy, and tears of deep connection, and healing, and hope, and love remains the most powerful force in the universe, always at work, always, always, always.
But oh! We forget. So quickly, without realizing it, even when we’re trying to remember.
This happened to me yesterday. I was remembering, and then I was completely derailed when I read in a commentary from 2012 (Shauna Hannan, Working Preacher) that in the first verse, where it says, you made space for me it originally alluded to “release from a tight noose at the neck,” the opposite of the word for when I was in distress, which is used for “a constricted larynx.” And I stopped hearing the promise of God’s deliverance and the invitation to trust, and all I could see was that God did not make space for George Floyd when he was in distress, and how could I preach this text in the shadow of that?
All day long I spun out, all day long I fixated on my words, the overwhelming sorrow and brokenness of this world, the pain of our city. I did not lament, I obsessed. I did not take my anguish and sit silently before God, I logged onto the news and social media and started babysitting the world again. I did not come in honesty before the Almighty. I got caught up in blame and frustration in the country, and became controlling and edgy in my own house.
And then I looked at the clock and realized it was time for evening prayers. So I sat down on zoom with those who meet together every evening.
Stop. Take a beat. Turn your attention to God.
And suddenly there was joy, in sharing about a day spent with happy little cousins, and our delight and horror at a ridiculous amount of accidentally purchased bananas. Suddenly God was meeting us right there in our humanity, in our need, in our coming together. Then one of them repeated back to me that love is the most powerful force in the universe, and I was invited back into trust.
We are meant to stand with one another and for each other, to hold each other and fight for life for each other and us all, for this whole beautiful and broken world. We are made for love. God calls us into God’s purposes; we are drawn into God’s own being. We get to share in the love God is already, always bringing.
And then, at the end of the day, we sleep.
To sleep is to yield to our most essential humanity – our creaturliness, our need, our soft, vulnerable, universal humanity, the warm breath, closed eyes, heavy limbs of us.
Sleep is trust. It is pure being. Sleep is admitting we are not God. Sleep returns us to the humility of our own humanity. Only from here can we be fully in this life, with and for each other.
We belong to God. This is God’s world. God made it. God came into it to bear our suffering and share our pain and take on our death so that death cannot, will not define us, will not have the last word, will not prevail.
So stop. Take a beat. Turn your attention to God.
There is a poem by Pablo Neruda that I love, called Keeping Quiet. It goes like this:
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth
let’s not speak in any language,
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.”
Christ has risen. He is risen indeed.
Death does not get the last word,
and love is the most powerful force in the universe.
May we join in fully.
And may we sleep soundly.
Amen.
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