November 30

Psalm 44:9-17

Yet you have rejected us and abased us,
   and have not gone out with our armies.
You made us turn back from the foe,
   and our enemies have gotten spoil.
You have made us like sheep for slaughter,
   and have scattered us among the nations.
You have sold your people for a trifle,
   demanding no high price for them.

You have made us the taunt of our neighbors,
   the derision and scorn of those around us.
You have made us a byword among the nations,
   a laughingstock among the peoples.
All day long my disgrace is before me,
   and shame has covered my face
at the words of the taunters and revilers,
   at the sight of the enemy and the avenger.

All this has come upon us,
   yet we have not forgotten you,
   or been false to your covenant.

I am struck by the contrasts surrounding Advent. Culturally, our commercialized holiday season is full of jolly Santas, colorful lights and warm, family scenes. Yet we know sociologically that the season is marked by great stress, heightened isolation and deepening depression by many individuals. Spiritually, Advent is to be celebrated in a persistent, hopeful longing for the joy of once again experiencing the Incarnation, God’s reconciling embrace of us and the world. Yet, Biblically, we encounter the contrasting voices proclaiming God’s absence or indifference. Remember Job’s indictment of God or Jeremiah’s cries of pain (cf. Jeremiah 20:14-18.)  While searching for a Biblical base for this devotion, I reheard these expressions of spiritual desolation in what are termed the psalms of lament. And I could not shake them.

Among the many, I chose Psalm 44 and the verses noted above as representative. “You have made us like sheep for the slaughter,” or “All day long my disgrace is before me....”. These are typical statements of desolation, addressed directly to God and that mark the psalms of lament. Frankly, they leave us confused. How can believers challenge God so unreservedly?

We can quickly note that these brutal, desolate cries are usually (not in Psalm 88) bracketed by statements proclaiming God’s past favors, pledges of ongoing commitment or trust in God’s forthcoming help.  For example, see verses 1-8 and 17-18 in Psalm 44. In fact, these typical bracketings of a lament led one Biblical scholar to claim that laments are really praises of God “in a minor key” (B. Anderson, Out of the Depths, p. 76), But that is a much too hasty and unqualified judgment. That is like jumping over the confession of sin to the assurance of pardon, forgetting that the confession must express genuine contrition to appreciate and receive the peace-giving forgiveness of God. No, set the brackets aside, and hear the genuine pain in these laments. They are not to be muted or smoothed of their sharpness. So, does that mean that these cries stand in utter, complete contrast to the anticipation of Advent, a contrast without any linkage?

Not quite. These cries bring us close to the edge of denial, but they are not denials. They are addressed to God. And the fact of that address reminds us of who we are, how we are God-centered creatures.

As God’s creatures we are limited, finite beings and those limits bring us up against losses which sometimes overwhelm us. That we can express and bring those losses to God indicates that we have not let our centeredness collapse into ourselves. Our cries acknowledge, as one theologian (D. Kelsey) put it, that we live on borrowed breath, i.e., a breath that is finally not ours but God’s. The longing for God-with-us and the expressing to God the pain of our limitation share a connection to God. The contrast remains. The cries to God and the longing for God’s embrace are not in harmony, but they share the address to God.

 

Phil Muntzel