Above the couch of David, according to the Rabbis, there
hung a harp. The midnight breeze, as it rippled over the
strings, made such music that the poet-king was moved to rise
from his bed, and, till the dawn flushed the eastern skies, he
matched words to the strains. The poetry of that tradition is
condensed in the saying that the book of Psalms contains the
whole music of the heart of humanity, swept by the hand of our
maker...the quiet of our tenderness, the moan of our penitence,
"the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat." As Heine said, in
the Psalms are collected "Sunrise and sunset, birth and death,
promise and fulfillment - the whole drama of humanity."(1) Our Old
Testament lesson comes from the Psalms this morning.
Scripture Lesson: Psalm 109:1-20
How is that for the "drama of humanity?" Quite a prayer,
wouldn't you say? Have you ever prayed one like that? You
probably have not heard any sermons based on these verses because
Psalm 109 is one of the half-dozen called the Imprecatory Psalms(2)
(imprecatory means curse). The most famous one is Psalm 137 that
laments being in exile in Babylon (Saddam Hussein's modern day
Iraq) and ends with a blessing on anyone who would dash the heads
of Babylonian infants against rocks. But the granddaddy of them
all for sheer creative hatred and revenge is this one: 109.
The Psalmist begins with a lament. He feels betrayed. He
says that people have been lying about him...speaking hateful
words; he is being attacked without cause. He says, "In return
for my friendship, they accuse me." He is feeling ill-used.
Have you ever felt that way?
Then he moves to some specific requests. Let the guy go to
trial, whoever it is that is doing all these bad things - find
him GUILTY! Let him die soon - may his days be few. Let someone
else have his property - let his children wander around without a
father and his wife without a husband - let his kids starve, let
them beg. May the creditors seize all that he has. Let no one
extend any kindness to him. In fact, let him and all his family
become extinct and fade from memory. My goodness! This is heavy
duty stuff. The language would be almost comic were it not for
the absolute seriousness of the psalmist's request - let the
enemy be completely annihilated!
Have you ever felt like praying such a prayer? I suspect
that not a few might, over the years, have been tempted toward,
"Dear Lord, please do all that and more to Hitler or Saddam or,
more recently, Osama bin Laden, or that nasty neighbor who
poisoned my dog." Some have been inclined to wax poetic (in
memory of Jonathan Edwards' sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God"): a prayer that the divine wrath will burn against the
man (whichever enemy it might be)...that the pit for his
destruction would be prepared, and the fire made ready, the
furnace hot, the flames raging and blowing ready to receive him -
the pit opening its mouth under him as he is dangled above,
twisting, slowly, slowly in the wind. The fire gets hotter and
hotter, boiling his innards, bursting his eyes, sending steam
from his ears and causing him to cry out in anguish. Glory!
Isn't that lovely?
Well, of course, it is NOT lovely, not for Christians. We
who were nurtured at the feet of Jesus, hearing lessons about
loving, not only our neighbor, but even our enemy, recoil at such
a prayer.
Should we recoil? My instinct says yes, and some writers
say the only reason these prayers are in the Bible is to show us
how NOT to pray. But I do not think they should be written off
quite so arrogantly. After all, wanting an enemy to boil may be
what you really feel, and if prayer is communication, then what
kind of communicating can take place if you are not up front
about what is in your heart?
Years ago Mark Twain made fun of our tendency to "clean-up"
our prayers before we make them. In his book Letters From The
Earth, he included a "Letter TO the Earth"(3) from the Office of
the Recording Angel, Department of Petitions, and addressed to a
Mr. Abner Schofield, a coal dealer from Buffalo.
The angel writes regarding Abner's prayers that, for the
week ending January 19th, his petitions would be dealt with as
follows: for cold weather to raise the price of hard coal fifteen
cents a ton, granted; for an influx of laborers to reduce wages
ten percent, granted; for something awful to happen to the man
(or the family of the man), who has set up a competing coal yard
in Rochester, granted, - two cases of diphtheria (one fatal), one
case of scarlet fever to result in imbecility. The angel notes
to Abner that this prayer really should have been directed
against his competitor's backers in the New York Central Railroad
Company, however... Finally, Abner's prayer for some form of
violent death to the neighbor who threw the brick at the family
cat while it was serenading, the answer was held off for a time.
These prayers were Abner Schofield's REAL prayers - "secret
supplications of the heart," Twain called them.
But the angel continues and notes that the rest of Abner's
petitions for the week fall under the heading of what are termed
public prayers, those offered in Prayer Meetings, Sunday School,
family worship, and so on. In Abner's case, the angel says
"prayer for `weather mercifully tempered to the needs of the poor
and the naked,' denied. This was a Prayer Meeting prayer." It
conflicts with the REAL prayer for cold weather which was a
secret supplication of the heart. The angel writes, "By rigid
rule of this office, certain sorts of public prayers...are
forbidden to take precedence over secret supplications of the
heart." Abner's prayer for better times and plenty of food `for
the hard-handed son of toil whose patient and exhausting labors
make comfortable the homes and pleasant the ways of the more
fortunate, and entitle him to our vigilant and effective
protection from the wrongs and injustices which grasping avarice
would do him, and to the tenderest offices of our grateful
hearts.' Prayer Meeting prayer. Refused. Conflicts with the
secret supplication of the heart arranging for the reduction in
wages. You get the idea. Even an old curmudgeon like Mark Twain
knew that the only prayers that REALLY count are the ones that
are REAL to you and me.
"Clean-up" our feelings in our prayers? No. Rather we
should try to take all our worst feelings to God. As one scholar
has it, "What would be gossip when addressed to anyone else is
petition when addressed to God. What is a vengeful curse when
spoken about someone [Damn Osama] is a plea of helpless
dependence when spoken to God."(4) [Lord, it is up to you to damn
this man; you are a just judge.]
But there is still that gnawing sense of discomfort because
of those words of Jesus when he was asked specifically for a
lesson on how to pray: "Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive
everyone who sins against us."(5) How do we put our prayers about
boiling Osama or Hitler or the nasty neighbor together with being
a faithful disciple? I believe that the two are not only NOT
mutually exclusive but, in some cases, are actually inseparable.
There are hate-filled times (and for thousands of us following
September 11th, this is one of them) when we can only come to the
point of moving forward after we have verbalized a prayer like
the one the Psalmist prayed: "Oh Lord, wipe that sucker out!"
Only after we have given voice to those deep feelings can we
experience a catharsis and begin to feel our wounds heal. Only
after we have verbalized those mean-spirited secrets of the heart
can we hear how strange and hard they sound, and only then will
we be able to grow beyond them.
My friend Clint McCann teaches Old Testament at Eden
Seminary in St. Louis. He is an expert on the Psalms. In one of
his books he writes,
If we are honest, we must conclude that Psalm 109
teaches us about ourselves. We are vengeful creatures.
I recently read a book to my five-year-old daughter,
and her response illustrates the point. The book uses
bears as characters but intends to address children's
concerns. In this case, one bear cub had mistreated
and excluded another bear cub, whose feelings were
hurt. Eventually the perpetrator recognized her
misdeeds and changed her ways. The book ends as the
offending cub concludes that, "I've learned my lesson."
My daughter, however, was not content to let the book
end that way. She wanted to continue the story to
include an episode where the perpetrator of exclusion
would suffer the exclusion she had inflicted upon
another. We are vengeful creatures.(6)
These cursing Psalms can teach more than simply lessons
about ourselves though. They can teach how to deal with evil and
injustice, even on such a scale as we witnessed three weeks ago.
I should not try to suppress my reaction of horror and outrage at
evil. Nor should I, like some sort of Rambo, take justice into
my own hands. Rather, I should take those feelings, undisguised,
to God. God can handle my rage. I know that my vindictive
feelings need God's correction - but only by taking those
feelings to God will I have that chance for correction and
healing.
Listen to the words of our President:
We Americans, the President said, "have been preserved,
these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have
grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation
has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have
forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in
peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us;
and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of
our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by
some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too
self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and
preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that
made us!"(7)
The words of the President. Not President Bush, President
Abraham Lincoln. He was proclaiming a National Day of Fasting
and Prayer for March 30, 1863. Words as timely today as they
were back then.
Some of you have heard me tell of the prayer that my Erin
offered one night years ago as she prepared to go to sleep. She
and her kindergarten class had been studying the destruction of
the rain forest and its potentially disastrous effect on our
planet. Her prayer that night (after the obligatory "Now I Lay
Me...), was "and Dear Lord, those people who are cutting down all
the trees in the rain forest, please kill them." It was a prayer
of faith, just as Psalm 109 is a prayer of faith. The words in
both cases are those of someone who is utterly convinced that a
righteous and holy God should not and will not allow evil to go
unchecked.
I do not think God will let the evil of our day go unchecked
either. God HAS dealt with Hitler and Stalin; God WILL deal with
Osama bin Laden. I have no idea how; I have no idea when. I
know that God will. Even now, in God's own way I know
He is trampling out the vintage
where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning
of his terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.
Glory, glory hallelujah.(8)
Amen!
1. Rowland E. Prothero, The Psalms In Human Life and Experience, (New York, E. P.
Dutton Co., 1903,) p. 1
2. Psalms 55, 59, 69, 79, 109 and 137
3. Mark Twain, Letters From The Earth, (New York: Harper & Row, 1938), pp. 103-107
4. Philip Yancey, "How I Learned To Stop Hating And Start Loving The Psalms,"
Christianity Today, October 6, 1989, p. 30
5. Luke 11:4
6. J. Clinton McCann, Jr., A Theological Introduction to the Book of Psalms, (Nashville:
Abingdon, 1993), p. 114
7. http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/fast.htm
8. Julia Ward Howe, "Battle Hymn of the Republic"
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