Sermon: Psalm 102 (April 7, 2019)

Psalm 102 

¹Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry come to you.

²Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me; answer me speedily in the day when I call.

³For my days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace.

⁴My heart is stricken and withered like grass; I am too wasted to eat my bread.

⁵Because of my loud groaning my bones cling to my skin.

⁶I am like an owl of the wilderness, like a little owl of the waste places.

⁷I lie awake; I am like a lonely bird on the housetop.

⁸All day long my enemies taunt me; those who deride me use my name for a curse.

⁹For I eat ashes like bread, and mingle tears with my drink,

¹⁰because of your indignation and anger; for you have lifted me up and thrown me aside.

¹¹My days are like an evening shadow; I wither away like grass.

¹²But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever; your name endures to all generations.

¹³You will rise up and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to favor it; the appointed time has come.

¹⁴For your servants hold its stones dear, and have pity on its dust.

¹⁵The nations will fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth your glory.

¹⁶For the Lord will build up Zion; he will appear in his glory.

¹⁷He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer.

¹⁸Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord:

¹⁹that he looked down from his holy height, from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,

²⁰to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die;

²¹so that the name of the Lord may be declared in Zion, and his praise in Jerusalem,

²²when peoples gather together, and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.

²³He has broken my strength in midcourse; he has shortened my days.

²⁴“O my God,” I say, “do not take me away at the mid-point of my life, you whose years endure throughout all generations.”

²⁵Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.

²⁶They will perish, but you endure; they will all wear out like a garment. You change them like clothing, and they pass away;

²⁷but you are the same, and your years have no end.

²⁸The children of your servants shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in your presence.

A student once came to me concerned that they didn’t feel close to God. They had grown up in the church and continued as a campus ministry leader, attending worship, leading small groups, serving on the council, taking theology classes. They knew all the things they were “supposed” to do. So it was alarming, at 22 years old, to feel like God had just been “lost” or had pulled away.

Although we don’t usually talk about these moments, they are neither unique nor rare. I don’t know any faithful person who hasn’t been there. It isn’t about believing in God or not; it’s about wondering where God is, wondering how to find God, or how to feel God, wondering if God is far away and it’s up to me to figure out how to get closer. 

Sometimes it happens because of an event, a tragedy, something beyond our control that we didn’t see coming. We panic, we hurt, we look around and can’t find God when we were sure God was just there a moment ago. So we buckle down and try to fix whatever is wrong, so we can get it out of the way and find God again.

I imagine something like this is going on for the person in our psalm today. They describe immense pain in body and soul:

“My days drift away like smoke

My bones are hot as burning coals

My heart is stricken like grass and withered

I forget to eat my bread

I am but skin and bones.”

When humans hurt that much, we just want the pain to stop. We go to doctors or counselors, we take medicine or drugs, we change what we can or we just complain. But the psalmist isn’t doing any of that. Maybe they have, but what we know they do in the psalm is to pray. They don’t go to a doctor; they go to God.

Hear my prayer,

let my cry come before you,

hide not your face from me,

incline your ear to me,

answer me.

Maybe their options have been exhausted; maybe nothing else has worked. Or maybe they know God is the best option and should come first. However it happens, we have this rich psalm that is a prayer, reaching out from pain in trust toward God.

This psalm provokes an image for me: I see the person wallowing in pain, curled up in a ball, longing for relief. And in this cry to God, they begin to open up—open their heart, their mind, their expectations, their view of reality. As they open up, the world around them is included in their prayer. They breathe the air in the room, not just the air of their little circle. They see a larger view, perhaps another person in the room or a bird in a tree outside the window, not just their own dismal pain. They hear the sounds of life, not just their own cries of agony. None of this lessens the pain, but they are reminded they are not alone. In making their prayer bigger, they make more space for even God to enter, to be part of the pain and part of the healing.

In this psalm there is movement. One person, in immense pain, moves toward God. And in that moving they are opened up, brought into community, into the world, into the future. The pain is about now—it is real and intense and personal. But the healing requested is larger than even that immense pain. The healing is for the world, for the future. The healing is what God will do not only for one who hurts, but for all creation. 

Author Ann Lamott tells this story: “A nun I know once told me she kept begging God to take her character defects away from her. After years of this prayer, God finally got back to her: I'm not going to take anything away from you, you have to give it to Me.” 
― Anne Lamott, Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

Now, that doesn’t sound very Lutheran, right? That we have to make a first move, that we have to do something for God to respond. But there is something about this movement of prayer, this opening ourselves up so God has space to work, this letting go of our need to be self-sufficient, our need to prove that we can handle it. When we open ourselves up—hearts, hands, minds, whole self—then here we are, open to God—what God has done, what God will do. When we “let go and let God”, then we are able to experience the healing, the leading, the forgiveness, the transformation God offers.

When the student was struggling with not being able to find God, I hugged them. Sometimes we can’t see God because God is so close, God is holding us so tightly. In that hug, they couldn’t see my face—we were looking past each other. That’s what we need to remember: God has us. In pain and misery, in joy and peace, God is holding us tight and will not let us go. The psalmist trusts in that, and opens up to God. When we open ourselves up to God in prayer, we create space for God to come into our pain, our reality, our despair, our lost-ness.  We give all that to God, who can hold it, and heal it, for us. And when we can’t open up, when we can’t pray—we forget, we don’t know what to say, we don’t think it will make any difference—God still has hold of us, still has life for us.