Crying from Deep Places, Psalm 130

August 9, 2009

The Rev. Dr. E. Scott Winnette

            There is an old British expression that is enjoying a renaissance. I’ve heard Homer Simpson say it. I’ve heard a newscaster say it. Barney, the vulgar character, of the sitcom, How I Met Your Mother, uses it often.   I even have a friend who uses it. I found that one of its earliest uses was in the 1936 Noel Conrad play, In Red Peppers.  He uses it as a parenthetic direction to the actors to pause long enough for the laughter to pass after a joke before moving to their next line.   Currently, the phrase is used to signal that an essential something is about to be said.   I find the phrase rather annoying. Are you ready for it? Have you guessed it? “Wait for it.” -- “Wait for it.” --. Well that’s it, “Wait for it.”         

            I believe its current popularity reveals a glimmer of our culture’s impatience. We live in an immediacy-addicted world.  We live in a sound-bite driven world. We live in a world where we expect that if we cry, we will be heard and someone will respond quickly.    “Waiter, I need more soda.” “Hand me the TV remote, now.” “President Obama, ‘Why haven’t you fixed anything yet?’” “God when will Christ’s peace be fully realized in the world?” Wait for it. 

            Did you know that I am rather impatient about many things? If there is a problem, I want to make a plan and then fix the problem immediately.   Don’t want to wait around and study it. I cannot stand waiting in lines.    As a youth during some troubling, teenager-angst-ridden times, I prayed to God for help. I prayed some very clearly articulated prayers and then expected a reasonably quick response.   My personal theology was rather uncomplicated at that time and I thought God would (God definitely should) get moving on resolving my concern.   Well? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing until about 15 years later.   My patience is tested by God’s sense of timing. I have to realize, God’s got a longer view than I do. Wait for it.

                        ^“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.” The Psalmist waits with hope.  What is she waiting for? She waits for her redemption, for her people’s redemption, for the restoration of herself and her people and the world. We have heard Psalm 130 in three versions; each starts with a cry from the depths. 

            There are many, many cries from deep places pleading for redemption. As I hear that first verse, I imagine the 13 coal miners trapped underground in the Sago mine. One survived the 2006 West Virginia mining disaster. I grieve for the Christian families in Pakistan crying out of the depths of their arson destroyed homes. I think of friends who suffer from the depths of depression and who live under painful grief. We cry with confusion about Global Warming and how we should respond. There are so many dark depths from which to cry, “Hear us O God.”

            All of us can see suffering and discord in the world. All of us can become passionately impatient and compassionately frustrated that God does not eradicate the depths. But through eyes of faith we can see the signs of God’s redemption. We can see God’s health and justice beaming light into darkness. So we wait with hope. It is our job to spread the good news that our God revealed in Jesus Christ hears us and it is in this God that we trust.   “O Israel, hope in the Lord!  For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.” It is our job to remind ourselves and each other to be hope-filled people, to keep at hoping and to keep at working for a world of health, peace, justice and joy.  

In the midst of the cries, our own and our brothers and sisters of the world, we live with hope-filled patience.   “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.” 

            I am an impatient person and I have been brought to shame in the shanty towns of Juarez, Mexico witnessing the faith and trust of the country’s poorest people.   In El Salvador the small congregation of day-laborers sang with great joy as they worshipped God not knowing whether they would have work the next day.    My impatience is brought to shame hearing the hospital volunteers of our church as they share their stories of giving a day-by-day, room-by-room love to the endless patients of Suburban and Sibley. 

            We can learn a lesson. God does not work within our sense of timing. Theologian Paul Tillich examined Psalm 130 and extolled the power of waiting. He argued that too often humanity wants to grasp God pulling God into our timelines and into our agendas.   He criticized theologians for capturing God in doctrine; he criticized biblical students for enclosing God in a book, Church members for enclosing God in an institution, and believers for attempting to enclose God within their own experience. While Tillich respects that it is not easy for us to wait for God, he declares that there is power in our waiting. I quote, “The fact that we wait for something shows that in some way we already possess it. Waiting anticipates that which is not yet real. If we wait in hope and in patience, the power of that for which we wait is already effective in us.”[1] Our very trust in God, our patience for God’s restoration helps us participate in God’s redemption. Our hope-filled stance of prayer helps draw light into the darkness. We actually bring light into the world by always anticipating God’s redemptive power.  

            During the national prayer service the day after the presidential inauguration, United Church of Christ pastor, Sharon Watkins, preached to President Obama and to our country’s leaders. She told them an old Cherokee story.   There was a Cherokee grandfather who wanted to teach his grandson his most important life lesson.   He told the young boy that there are two wolves living inside every person. The two wolves are constantly at battle with each other. One wolf is faith, hope, trust, compassion and love. The other wolf is fear, impatience, anger and resentfulness. The grandson asked, “Which wolf wins in the end.”   And the grandfather responded, “The one you feed.”  Rev. Watkins then implored President Obama and the leaders to feed the good wolves within them.  So I too call us all to remember to feed that good wolf within with hope and trust and patience as we wait and watch and participate in God’s loving restorations. 

            And the greatest food for hope, the greatest witness of our hope is our worship. As our world is filled with anxiety and pain, as many of our minds stir with doubt and fear, as too many of the world’s people suffer from and inflict violence upon each other, as we hear the cries that God hears from the depths, we not only wait with hope, we sing. We sing. We sing praises to God. We join our voices together to broadcast to the world God’s power to transform and our hope in it.   Amen.