“When I am down and oh my soul so weary
When troubles come and my heart burdened be
Then I am still and wait here in the silence
Until you come and sit awhile with me. “
In the Bible study at the jail this past Thursday night, one of the prisoners asked me this question. “Does God ever get tired?”
I said that I think that God is full of inexhaustible energy.
Two weeks ago, we talked about the Trinity as perichorisis, the idea that the three divine persons mutually exist permanently in one another. The three draw life from one another, and are what they are by relation to one another. This is a dance of mutual love, and this dance is ongoing and eternal and full of divine energy.
Now let’s face it. We’re all getting older, and we just can’t go like we used to. Aging has a way of sapping our energy. And not having the energy we once had is frustrating, because we can remember when we did have the energy to get up in the morning, go all day and get piles of stuff done, and then do it all over again the next day, over and over.
That’s why today’s stories about Elijah praying to God for divine energy and reviving the son of a widow, and Jesus having compassion on a widow whose son has just died, and then using his own divine energy to raise her dead son, have a lot to say to us in our frustrations. Both of these stories point to the fact that God, and God alone is ultimately the one who saves us and that God saves us through God’s divine energy.
In Psalm 30, the psalmist captures the themes that run through the rest of today’s scripture, themes of God’s love for us, God’s compassion and goodness toward frustrated people, toward vulnerable people, toward helpless people –God’s compassion toward the sick, exhausted and feeling some days near to death people—people like us.
The Psalmist comes to the conclusion that apart from God, he is nothing. He might as well be dead. And he tells us about how he found God, and God’s energy, even in adversity.
We can open ourselves NOW, to the divine loving energy that draws us into itself and gives us the strength and energy that is the beginning of and will ultimately become the strength and energy of eternal life for each one of us This divine loving energy turns our wailing into dancing, and clothes us with joy.
So how do we open ourselves to this divine energy?
The Psalmist reminds us that praying for ourselves is essential if we want to have a dynamic relationship with God.
Sometimes people say to me that they don’t feel “right” praying for themselves, that God already knows what we need before we ask.
And yet this Psalmist prays energetically and passionately for himself in Psalm 30. Listen to this paraphrase from Eugene Peterson, which you can find in The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language.
“God, my God, I yelled for help and you put me together. God, you pulled me out of the grave, gave me another chance at life when I was down and out.”
“I called out to you, God: I laid my case before you: ‘Can you sell me for a profit when I’m dead? Auction me off at a cemetery yard sale? When I’m ‘dust to dust’ my songs and stories of you won’t sell. So listen! And be kind! Help me out of this!”
And the Psalmist reminds us that we are to pray not only with passion, but with humility.
Peterson’s paraphrase goes like this.
“When things were going great I crowed, ‘I’ve got it made. I’m God’s favorite. He made me king of the mountain.’ Then you looked the other way and I fell to pieces.” Now the psalmist realizes that his strength is totally dependent on God.
This could have been Paul’s prayer before God got him straightened out. Paul was certainly not a man of humility. In the passage we heard today, Paul tells the Galatians that “he had advanced in Judaism beyond many among his people of the same age, for he was far more zealous for the traditions of his ancestors.” You might say that Paul had been king of the mountain in his zeal for his religion.
But then he found himself knocked down to size, and his life took an entirely different and difficult turn when he finally opened himself to God’s will and did what God wanted him to do, which was to proclaim our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. His life didn’t get easier, but his relationship with God received the divine energy that gave Paul the strength to thrive as God’s witness, even in the most adverse of situations.
So both Paul and the Psalmist remind us—pray passionately, but pray with humility, knowing that we are in God’s hands and that God alone is the one who will ultimately save us and give us eternal life and eternal energy.
Even as we grow older and we all know that, to use that old cliché, “none of us will get out of here alive,” the Psalmist also reminds us that extravagant praise is an essential part of praying to God.
Peterson’s paraphrase goes like this.
“All you saints! Sing your hearts out to God! Thank him to his face! He gets angry once in a while, but across a lifetime there is only love. The nights of crying your eyes out give way to days of laughter….You did it, God, you changed wild lament into whirling dance; You ripped off my black mourning band and decked me with wildflowers, I’m about to burst with song: I can’t keep quiet about you. God my God, I can’t thank you enough.”
Catherine LaCugna reminds us that because we’ve experienced it, we know about “God’s steadfast love, and God’s gracious and everlasting presence among us.” “Our union with God and communion with each other” become real through praise.
Passionate and humble prayer for ourselves, full of praise for God, draws us closer to God, and deepens our relationship with God, and opens us to God’s divine energy. And as LaCugna says, “We praise God because of what God is doing, has done, and will do on our behalf.”
When we praise God, even in our worst moments, we receive the divine energy to get through those moments. We even can hear these words at a funeral and say them with conviction for ourselves.
“All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.” Because we know, with the Psalmist, that God’s wrath endures but the twinkling of an eye, his favor for a lifetime, and that even in death, we will be able to see the gate of eternal life.
I’d like to end with a story that you can take with you to help you when you have no strength, when you’re in pain, when you find yourself caught up in adversity, when you find yourself staring into your own grave, when you are desperately in need of divine energy.
Bernhard Anderson tells this story at the beginning of his book Out of the Depths: the Psalms Speak for Us Today.
Nathan Sharansky, a Jewish dissident in the Soviet Union, was arrested by the KGB (the Soviet secret police) and was imprisoned by them for nine long years. He had one possession throughout this time, a book of Psalms that his wife had given to him. Sharansky was not a deeply religious man, but in prison he read the psalms over and over and even memorized them. Anderson says that “to his astonishment, Sharansky found a striking affinity between his experience of bondage and the distresses of the psalmists. Their prayers of lament became his own and their hope of deliverance became a gleam of light in his cell.”
Anderson says that “after nine grueling years…Sharansky was finally transported to an airport outside Moscow for his trip to East Germany and then to freedom. “ This release was done to paint a positive picture of the Soviet regime for the world press, so photographers were on the scene to capture this moment when Sharansky would be on his way to freedom. When he got out of the car at the end of the runway, Sharansky asked where his Psalm book was. The official said that Sharansky had been given everything that was allowed. In front of the Soviet photographers who had been brought along, Sharansky dropped onto the snowy ground and said that he would not move until the Psalm book was returned. The photographers stopped taking pictures when nothing happened. Sharansky lay down in the snow and started shouting, ‘Give me back my Psalm book.’ At last, the boss handed him his psalm book and Sharansky boarded his plane to freedom.”
And on that flight, Anderson says that “Sharansky opened his book of Psalms to keep a promise he had made to himself. While in prison, he had vowed that his first act in freedom would be to read Psalm 30. He turned the well worn pages to the appropriate place and began.”
“I will exalt you, O Lord, because you have lifted me up
And have not let my enemies triumph over me.
O Lord my God, I cried out to you,
And you restored me to health.
You brought me up, O Lord, from the dead;
Your restored my life as I was going down to the grave.”
“You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains,
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders
You raise me up, to more than I can be.
You raise me up, to more than I can be.”
Amen
References
The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, by Eugene Peterson. NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO, 2002.
God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life, by Catherine Mowry LaCugna. HarperSanFrancisco, 1973.
Out of the Depths: The Psalms Speak for Us Today, by Bernhard W. Anderson, with Steven Bishop. 3rd edition. Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY, 2000.
You raise me up. Music by Rolf Lovland, and lyrics by Brendan Graham