10.17.21 - Psalm 77 & Our 11th Birthday! (Kenny Camacho)
SCRIPTURE: Psalm 77
“This year, we’ve been talking about discovering our permission to hope, and Psalm 77 gives that effort a clearer expression and vocabulary than any other we’ve seen thus far. Here, where we have been and what we have seen helps to resolve our doubts about God and to have a stronger sense of his love and his character. Then, those very things enable us to look ahead to our future with confidence that, whether we succeed or fail, God will continue being who he has consistently shown himself to be: he will keep loving, he will keep working, he will keep delivering. Whatever roles we do or don’t play in God’s work are secondary to the hope we have in those core promises: God loves his creation, and he will continue to work for its good.”
SCRIPT:
I want to start by asking you a question: are any of you verbal processors? Do you ever talk things out, even as you’re still thinking about them?Does this ever get you into trouble?
This past weekend, my youngest, Graham, was learning how to play the board game Ticket to Ride with us. It was his first time. If you’re familiar with the game, the basic idea is that you use these multi-colored train cards to buy these small, shorter routes between cities in order to eventually be able to add them up to bigger routes that give you points. Over the course of a game–particularly with 5 people playing–things can get pretty crowded and pretty competitive...and thus, secrecy is paramount. But Graham was new at this, so he kept laying all his cards out on the table and, each turn, he would talk through what he was planning to do for himself. This makes sense for someone learning, right? But it also meant that the rest of us had to do our best to not pay attention to what he was saying, and then, once we failed at that, to not thwart him! So, in the end...we all kind of beat up on a seven year old. It was not our family’s finest moment. In any case, what Graham was doing was verbally processing: he wasn’t sure at the start of things what he was going to do, so he talked it out to himself (and to us) in order to figure things out. But what we were doing was eavesdropping on that verbal processing...and trying to figure out how to respond to it.
I bring this up because today, on our 11th birthday, we are taking a break from our typical sermon series in order to talk about a particular psalm–Psalm 77–and I think the best way to think about this psalm is as an example of verbal processing in written form that we get to eavesdrop on: the psalmist begins in a dark place, and then he talks out what he’s feeling and arrives at a renewed hope. But what strikes me as curious about this whole thing, about the very existence of this psalm in a text that is two and a half millennia old, is why we keep copying all that processing work instead of just cutting to the chase, cutting to the ending, keeping the secret. As we’ll see, the “processing” takes the psalmist down some pretty dark roads! So, if we know the final answer by the end...what is the benefit in seeing how the writer gets there? The answer, I think, is that the end of Psalm 77 isn’t actually the point, it’s not why the psalm exists! Instead, I think Psalm 77 is meant to help us walk through our own thinking, our own processes, by giving us a guide to what that kind of work can look like.
So, let’s get into it. Because we’re outdoors here and we don’t have a screen to help keep us organized, I’m going to work through the psalm bit by bit...which should work, because the psalmist is working through it in the same way! Here’s how it starts:
I cried out to God for help;
I cried out to God to hear me.
When I was in distress, I sought the Lord;
at night I stretched out untiring hands,
and I would not be comforted.
We begin in grief and desperation. There’s a crisis, and the psalmist cries for help. There’s no real premeditation or ritual here: just that primal calling out to God that I imagine most everyone, at some point or another, participates in...whether they believe in God or not. That’s how the psalm begins: with a cry. And then, in the next verses, the psalmist gets more organized: we shift from crying to more formal practices of prayer and meditation. He writes,
3 I remembered you, God, and I groaned;
I meditated, and my spirit grew faint.
Then, he writes that God
4 kept my eyes from closing;
I was too troubled to speak.
5 I thought about the former days,
the years of long ago;
6 I remembered my songs in the night.
The psalmist was crying, shifted to praying, but that’s not working, so now he says he would most like to just go to sleep. I gotta say: this is highly relatable content. But no matter, because God won’t let him close his eyes. So, he sits silently, “too troubled to speak.” And then–just as often happens to me and also probably often happens to you when you pray–his mind begins to wander. He “thinks about the former days, the years of long ago”...and then also the “songs in the night” he has sung before. There’s a pattern he’s realizing this current moment of distress is connected to! And so, he goes on:
My heart meditated and my spirit asked:
7 “Will the Lord reject forever?
Will he never show his favor again?
8 Has his unfailing love vanished forever?
Has his promise failed for all time?
9 Has God forgotten to be merciful?
Has he in anger withheld his compassion?”
This part is so, so important: knowing that he’s been here before, that he’s cried out in pain to God before, that he’s felt alone and abandoned by God before, the psalmist tries to map out the implications of this pattern. It’s a bit like having an aunt or an uncle who has forgotten to send you a birthday card for a few years in a row: at this point, are we forgetting, or have they just given up? The psalmist wonders, “will the Lord reject forever? Will he never show his favor again?” In other words, should I even be upset? Are you even out there? These first verses represent private worries; they are only about the psalmist. But what if the problem is bigger than him? If he can be abandoned, what does that imply about God? With that in mind, the psalmist asks, “Has [God’s] unfailing love vanished forever?” There’s a kind sarcasm here, right? If the love has vanished, it wasn’t unfailing! Which is to say, God isn’t who he said he was. Then: “Has his promise failed for all time? Has God forgotten to be merciful?” Has he become so angry that he no longer feels compassion?
This is where I feel so amazed by this bit of verbal processing: it takes courage for the psalmist to take what he’s feeling and stretch it out and look at what it would mean if what he is feeling is true! If we’re honest, I would bet we’ve all been in a similar place...but we aren’t always so brave. When Meredith and I are in an argument, I might feel, in that moment, that she hates me, that she’s given up on me, or on us. But do I have the courage to play that out in my mind? To think through that, if what I feel is true, what will happen next? Is she going to leave? Is she going to shut me out? Am I unlovable? These are all really scary thoughts! But that’s what’s happening here: the psalmist feels abandoned...and so they start to think through what it means if those feelings are true: if a God who says he is faithful forever leaves you...then hasn’t he failed to be an honest god? Is that possible? The psalm enters a dark place here as the poet wrestles with the real possibility that his own hardships undermine the very authority and commitment of God.
But then, because the psalmist is willing to actually map that dark place, he begins to see how what he fears is out of step with what he has experienced in the past! He says,
10 Then I thought, “To this I will appeal:
the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand.
11 I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
12 I will consider all your works
and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”
13 Your ways, God, are holy.
What god is as great as our God?
14 You are the God who performs miracles;
you display your power among the peoples.
15 With your mighty arm you redeemed your people,
the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.
16 The waters saw you, God,
the waters saw you and writhed;
the very depths were convulsed.
17 The clouds poured down water,
the heavens resounded with thunder;
your arrows flashed back and forth.
18 Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind,
your lightning lit up the world;
the earth trembled and quaked.
19 Your path led through the sea,
your way through the mighty waters,
though your footprints were not seen.
That was a long stretch there, but I just couldn’t bear to break it up or interrupt it. In the midst of his own doubts and his own pain, the psalmist finds comfort in remembering what he knows of God. He thinks, first, of God’s presence in his own life, in the ways that he has been blessed and loved in the past. And then he thinks: that God, the loving and faithful and invested God, is the God that most lines up not just with my history, but with all history. He remembers God’s miracles. He remembers how God redeemed Jacob’s family after Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. And then he remembers the moment during the Exodus when God parts the sea and leads his people across on dry land. And there, in that event, he finds the ancient analog to his own circumstance: he is drowning, lifting up his hands and desperately trying to escape his suffering...but his God creates a path that leads “through the sea,” “through the mighty waters” and not over them, “though [his] footprints were not seen.” God is both strong enough and loving enough to deliver you right where you are...and also great enough and mysterious enough to do it in ways you might not expect or recognize. His footsteps may be hidden–which is how the psalmist feels at the beginning! But that doesn’t mean he has forgotten or abandoned you. It doesn’t even mean he isn’t working out your deliverance even now. It’s an encouraging final thought: even though we don’t always see or feel him, we can trust from God’s track record that he loves us, and he will deliver us.
Which leads back to the verbal processing problem, right? If the conclusion is, “God is great! God works miracles! God is delivering you, even when you don’t recognize you are being delivered!”, what do we need those first 12 verses for? What purpose do they serve, aside from giving language to our own doubts and despair? Isn’t that a kind of harm? The best answer, I think, is that we’re not just looking at an answer we’re supposed to accept, we’re looking at a process we’re supposed to follow. And what is that process? I want to propose that it consists of three steps:
First, the psalmist is honest about where he is right now in his relationships with God, with others, and with himself. He’s desperate, he’s despairing...and then, in that lovely little moment in verses 3 and 4, he’s tired, he’s bored, he’s distracted and losing focus. There’s no performance here: he’s seeking honesty. And in our own lives, this is something we can and should model. We need to be challenged to take the mask off, put down the desire to spin things, and just name what we’re feeling. Oh man, I struggle with this! I don’t want folks to worry about me, so I’ll often share where I’m at...and then explain how it’s not a big deal; things will be fine. But what I’m doing is refusing a chance for verbal processing, for welcoming somebody else into the middle of the mess with me, instead of trying to just tell them about it after the fact. I’m chasing control, and I shouldn’t do that, if only because it short circuits my ability to do the second step.
The second step is to tell and listen to stories: in your life, in others’ lives, in the history of the Church, and in Scripture. Take the things you’re feeling and put them next to the things you know. The psalmist recognizes that he’s been in this pit before; he then remembers that there have been other times when he hasn’t been in the pit, and those also have to be accounted for in his view of who God is. He can’t build his skepticism out of only his lowest moments! This leads him to remember who God has been not only to him, but to others, to Israel: sure, God feels distant right now, but is God’s distance a fact or a reality about him? Is he prone to distance? Or is he prone to presence, to compassion, to deliverance? These questions may feel like ones where the answer is obvious, but don’t let them be: have the courage to really face the implications of what you’re thinking, and then hold them up next to the bigger picture to see how things compare. Do the stories validate a belief that God is indifferent to you, indifferent to others? Or do they suggest something different?
These hard questions can then get us to the third step, which is to let what you know shape where you’re going. The psalmist has the formula, “if this is true about God, then I can trust He ___________” running right under the surface of the psalm. Rather than letting the short-term fears and emotions direct his hopes, he seeks out anchors to either reinforce or correct what he’s feeling. That doesn’t mean he’s rejecting his feelings! It means he’s trying to accept them and then hold them up to the whole of his story, of God’s story. So, this is a reasonable way to organize the psalm, and, I am arguing, a reasonable way to navigate our own dark nights of the soul: Have the courage to take an honest look at your feelings, put what you’re feeling in conversation with the stories of others, of the church, and even of yourself, and then let what you know shape where you’re going.
All year long, we’ve been talking about discovering permission to hope. In fact, it’s been our 2021 theme. And this psalm gives that claim a clearer expression and vocabulary than we’ve seen so far. Here, where we have been and what we have seen helps to resolve our doubts about God and to have a stronger sense of his love and his character...and then those very things enable us to look ahead to our future with confidence that, whether we succeed or fail, God will continue being who he has consistently shown himself to be: he will keep loving, he will keep working, he will keep delivering. Whatever roles we do or don’t play in God’s work are secondary to the hope we have in those core promises: God loves his creation, and he will continue to work for its good.
So, today is Revolution’s birthday party. We’re celebrating eleven years since our church was planted, eleven years of life and service in our city. And I’m drawn to Psalm 77 today because it feels like the process that this psalm is mapping out is also the right process for us on a day like today: Where are we? What stories can we share? What do we have permission to hope for?
I’d actually encourage you to talk about these very things in just a bit when we are socializing and eating cupcakes; if you think you might forget them, you can find them on your program! But to set the stage, I’ll close this morning by answering those three questions for myself.
Where are we? We’re a church that was deeply engaged in the hard work of reforging our culture and identity as a community–a process that was triggered by some major shifts in our sense of vision and then a major change in our leadership–before a global pandemic hit. So, we’re in a state of arrested transition: are we still the church we used to be? Are we trying to start over? Can we keep going at all? Does this matter? There have been difficult and discouraging times over the last 6 months as we’ve attempted to find a new normal! We can be honest about that.
But at the same time, even in facing hardship, what stories can we share? What have we seen in our own church’s history? In our personal histories? In 11 years, we’ve provided literally millions of meals for people who need them. We’ve been a major part of directly planting at least 7 churches. We’ve seen a hundred people begin their journey as Christians through baptism. We’ve forged partnerships, we’ve loved our neighbors, we’ve done our best to care radically for one another, and even though we’re small, God has used us to do big things: our debt relief efforts have wiped out more than six million dollars of debt in our state over two years. And even more: the stories of our efforts played a part in inspiring hundreds of other churches to follow our lead, resulting in more than half a billion dollars of debt forgiveness. All that to say, God has used us to bless others at a national level, at a local level, and at a personal level. This church and my relationships with all of you are an anchor for my growth and my faith. Absolutely, you are.
So, what happens when we put those stories in conversation with this moment? Things are hard right now; amazing things have happened in the past. Is this proof that we will survive, that we will grow and buy a building and remake our city for Jesus? No! Here’s what it is: we see, when we let where we have been shape how we think about where we are, that God uses our mistakes. God is patient. God is working love into our lives like a baker works yeast into bread, and then he is working us (and the love we are carrying) into our city in the same way. We see the importance of humility, of repentance, of trust in our own story. And I think we find real and living hope here: hope that God is good, that he loves us, and that he is not finished with us yet, no matter what happens next. I can step forward into that future with confidence not in myself or in our plans but in God’s love for me and for everyone around me.
My dear, dear friends: if we can trust in that, if we can believe God loves us and others deeply, we will see much better things than a 12th birthday. But our 12th birthday will be a great time to talk about them!
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
Where are you right now? Read through Psalm 77 again on your own. What sometimes keeps you from being as honest about where you are as you want or need to be?
What stories do you have? If look back on your life, can see times or seasons when God has been more/less present? Who has God shown himself to be to you, over time?
What stories surround you?
If God is consistent to his character, what can you trust him to be like now? What can you expect from him in the future?