Pastor's Page
February 2012
Was I Right or Wrong to Use Such a Psalm?
“That’s such churchy language.” These words spoken to me were not intended to be a significant comment, just one challenging my language. But it made me realize how much we are losing in the broader church today.
Let me tell you the short version of the story.
I was meeting with a neighbor of the church, a member of the community who at times considers me to be her pastor. She and her husband who was with her are Christians who attend a mega-church, which, of course, often means that you don’t have a known pastor you can actually meet with. So I, being nearby and more accessible, have become hers.
She came to express a lot of deep pain over some terrible events in her life. You would understand if you heard them.
Then she expressed, in tears, frustration with God for not seeming to care, for not attending to her at that very time she was suffering. “Where was GOD?!” Perhaps you can relate.
After we had talked for some time I said to her, “It’s kind of like Jesus’ own experience: you want to cry out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!’ ”
Suddenly her husband, who had been quiet the whole time, said, “That’s such churchy language. No, she’s saying God didn’t seem to give a rip!”. He then walked out, a little miffed that I would use such old, pious language in the midst of her wife’s pain.
On the one hand, I understand what he’s saying. You want to be as expressive and honest as you can be when voicing such pain and disappointment. But on the other hand, I thought that her husband was losing far more than he was gaining by calling my words “churchy” and rejecting them.
When he said, “No, she’s saying God didn’t give a rip!,” he is saying, “It’s about her today! It’s about no one else! Let her express what she’s feeling in her own way; don’t use that outdated religious language!”. Perhaps.
But when I suggested that she might cry out with words like, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!,” I was suggesting--contrary to our contemporary culture’s perspective--that it wasn’t just about her.
In fact, God’s people have experienced that kind of pain and despair for over 3,000 years. They expressed it back then in the very words I used from Psalm 22:1 and countless of God’s people had prayed those very words in tears and anger ever since. Even more, those words had been the ones that her Savior and Lord, Jesus, God the Son, had himself used to express his excruciating pain and disappointment on the cross 2,000 years ago. So, to use those words was to not only cry out honestly in despair, but it was also to know that this is never the end of the story. Christ was raised from death to life and is seated at the right hand of God. From there, Christ hears our prayers, understands us with full sympathy, and assures us that our suffering is not the end. God’s people through all time have affirmed that although we suffer terribly, there is a more true reality that holds us in our suffering.
So, you see, the language that is just about “me” and doesn’t connect us with the past story of God’s people, leaves us alone and frightened. But the “churchy” language of the Psalms actually blesses us with a much longer, deeper, and richer perspective about our own suffering. It unites us all with God’s own suffering, but also with God’s endless victory! in Christ.
On that day--contrary to our neighbor’s opinion--I gave thanks for the Psalm from which Jesus prayed that prayer. I gave thanks for those who, when I was young, taught me to memorize the Psalms (1, 8, 19, 23, 100, 103, 150, for example). I gave thanks for the church that has preserved and prayed and sung the Psalms for thousands of years--the words God gives us to praise, confess, complain about the political situation, cry out in pain, and so much more.
I also thought how important it would be for us not to fall into the contemporary trap of thinking it’s all just about us, how important it would be to lift up the Psalms again in our lives and thereby join ourselves more closely with God’s people throughout all the ages.
While I write this, I’m anticipating a conference on worship focused on just that: the Psalms. My goal (along with Danae’s who will join in the conference) is to help us at Crossroads pay more attention to the Psalms, “the prayer book of the Bible.” When we do, as foreign as some of it might be, I hope you’ll realize how important that language of God’s people is for your life and all of ours together.
—Pastor Mark Vermaire
last updated 01.26.2012 | © 2006 Crossroads CRC | hosted by ipowerweb