Saturday 9 April 2011

Sunday 10 April 2011, Lent 5, Psalm 130, Bruce

Psalm 130

A song of ascents.

1 Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD;
2 Lord, hear my voice.
Let your ears be attentive

to my cry for mercy.

This is the heart of prayer and trust, and a real expression of praise. Imagine Jonah lost in the belly of a fish, beyond all hope. What was it like for Mary and Martha as they buried their beloved brother Lazarus, lost (as they thought) and gone from them forever in the grave? This is true prayer, a heart calling out in desperation directly to God. Couples are at their most honest when they lose their tempers, and we pray most sincerely when we are in distress. It has been estimated that 70% of the psalms are what we describe as psalms of lament. They give us a language to express how we are feeling, to voice our fears and doubts, while always remembering that God loves us and is on our side.

3 If you, LORD, kept a record of sins,
Lord, who could stand?

4 But with you there is forgiveness,
so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

I spoke recently about a Canonical reading of the psalms, that those in this section are a response to the captivity and exile of God’s people, recalling generations of those who had rebelled against the Lord God. This understanding of history suggested strongly that God had judged his people, and that their sufferings were the result of their sinful past.

Tom Wright reminds us that suffering can also be a doorway to depression, that we blame ourselves for all that goes wrong. Psalm 130 is an invitation to see things from a wider perspective; it is not all about us.

The truth is that we do need to confront and acknowledge our utter sinfulness. If you do not take the sickness seriously, you will not submit yourself to the blood tests and procedures that will put you right. If you ignore the judder or strange noise in the car, you may very well end up with a long wait at the roadside, or worse. In the same way, we need to face the fact that nothing we do or accomplish in life is perfect, or even approaching it. All that we do is tainted. And these verses say that true forgiveness, absolute freedom, comes from God. More than that, we are in the position of a servant who has confessed to the boss in fear and trembling, convinced that we will be given the sack, and we have discovered that he is a man of compassion, who forgives and understands. As a result we admire him more, we are more determined than ever to do a good job for him. In the same way as we begin to understand the depth and selfishness of our sin, but also of God’s grace and forgiveness, so our hearts are released to love him, to surrender ourselves to him absolutely. And we are filled with a godly fear, a true and deep reverence that we express in worship and lives of obedience. We are not afraid of God; we love him because he first loved us.

5 I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.

6 I wait for the Lord
more than watchmen wait for the morning,

more than watchmen wait for the morning.

He is the one we cry out to when things go wrong, when we are in the valley of the shadow of death; when we have prayed that we shall not be brought to the time of trial but delivered from the evil one, but then things are bad anyway. At that time we wait. Our whole being waits. These prayers are not idle chatter, the reading of a few words off a sheet. Such is our involvement and distress that we are totally caught up. Ballabriggs was so committed to winning the Grand National that he was too tired to go the winner’s enclosure and went straight back to the stable. We sometimes wonder if God has heard us when we pray, but perhaps it seems to him that we are somehow not interested in the answer. Psalm 130 connects us with those times when are absorbed in prayer.

And we pray in hope and expectation. The watchmen on the walls of a besieged city strain anxiously to hear any dangers or threats. Most of all, though, they look for the coming of daylight, the end of their shift and a better chance of defence. This is an optimistic image, for they know that the day will come. Whatever darkness you are going through, God will answer and bring relief to you.

7 Israel, put your hope in the LORD,
for with the LORD is unfailing love

and with him is full redemption.

8 He himself will redeem Israel
from all their sins.

What started as a personal cry of distress broadens out into an encouragement to all the people to trust together in God. This is one value of the psalms, that we can voice these songs of praise and trust together. You may be in fine spirits today, and may God bless you; in meditating on this psalm together, we stand alongside our sisters and brothers going through hard times. Who knows, there may come a time when they will stand alongside you?

With him is full redemption, he will redeem Israel from all their sins. The image is of the relative or family friend who steps in help when one is sunk in debt or trapped into slavery, and buys us out. There is no limit to the love, generosity and grace of God, for you today. Whatever you feel that you have done or not done, however bad you feel about yourself, Jesus has made a way for you to be fully forgiven and cleansed, and wants you to live life to it’s fullest extent. He loves you.

Next week is Palm Sunday, and then we go through Holy Week together. As we tell again the story of Jesus’ last days and of the salvation he won for us, may we understand more fully the depths of our need, but more than that, the depths of his love and grace for us.

Discussion Starters

1. When was the last time that you felt let down by God, and how did you respond?

2. How do you respond to the thought that deeper awareness and confession of sins brings us closer to God?

3. What does redemption mean for you.

4. How much do you think that God loves you?

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