Philip Yancy calls it the question that will not go away: ‘Where
Is God When It Hurts?’, or to give it its theological name ‘the problem of
evil’: if evil exists, in the face of
suffering, can God be both all-powerful and all loving. When I sat down to plan
out the year I had originally thought I’d handle that topic as one of several
burning questions in a series on apologetics for November. Apologetics is
providing a reasoned argument for our faith in God, and there is polemic
(logical argument) and propositional truth about God, which offers solutions to
this issue…on one level. But one of the reasons it is the question that will
not go away is that it’s not just an intellectual conundrum, it’s not all up
here. It is a question that confronts us again and again in different forms, in
the ebb and flow of life, and it reaches down to the very depth of our
being.
For example…After many trials and tribulations in his life,
and few years before his death reformer
and theologian Martin Luther’s thirteen year old daughter died and he said “how
sick at heart it has left me, so much do I grieve for her… even the death of
Christ is unable to take all this away as it should.”
When you look at how it is handled in scripture, you see
that it is not wrestled with through polemic and proposition but in poem and
prayer, though lament or Jewish blues as bono calls them. I want, through some
of these laments, to look at the question ‘Where is God when it hurts?’, and
hopefully be able to address that question that will not go away theologically
and pastorally and today also in terms of spiritual formation.
The Bible reading we had this morning was Psalm 42 & 43.
In our bibles it is two psalms but there is much evidence for it being
considered one Psalm… There is no heading for Psalm 43, similar to Psalm 10,
which is seen as the second half of Psalm 9.
The language and theme is
constant and of course there is that haunting refrain running through both… “Why
are you so downcast O my soul”.
The setting for this Psalm seems to be the exile from
Jerusalem. A worship leader a musician or singer is dragged off across the
Golan Heights into exile by the Babylonians. The city that was the centre of
his faith is desolate and destroyed. He looks back and its only memories of
what was, that he can see, at first he is unable to look forwards. This is a
good place for us to start looking at the question of where is God when it
hurts because that is a focus of the Psalmist lament. In the midst of this tragedy the things that
seems to hurt the most is the taunt “where is Your God?” It’s in the first stanza, and it finishes off
the second one. On a personal level he calls out “why have you forgotten me
God? Even in the midst of the more hope filled psalm 43 is the phrase, “How
long will you reject me?” Times of
trouble suffering tragedy can make us feel cut off from God. John Perowne summed
it up like this “there are hours when physical suffering darkens the windows of
the Soul; days in which shattered nerves make life simply endurance; months and
years in which intellectual difficulties, pressing for solution, shut out God.”
This can turn us away from God, but like with the psalm he does not stop there
Perowne goes on “then faith must be replaced by hope.” The question, suffering
invites us to seek deeper and to know more fully Where God is, that is the
journey of the Psalm.
The Psalm follows a process, a journey that Walter Brueggemann
sees running through all the psalms. In stanza one there is a sense of the
psalmist looking back to the way things were. In what Brueggemann calls a psalm
of orientation, the psalmist remembers when it all made sense. When things were
the way they were supposed to be. God was blessing his people, there was a
vibrant and joy filled worship life at the Temple in Jerusalem. The writer of
this Psalm is identified as the Sons of Korah, who are probably Levite
musicians. For this person the way he felt the presence of God was in the midst
of music and worship. There was meaning
and purpose and order to his life. It revolved round a place, Jerusalem,
ritual, festivals the Jewish calendar, activity, worship and music and
singing. There is the truth of the fact
that God inhabits the praise of his people. We looked at Psalm 104 last week
which epitomises a psalm of orientation because it was an enthronement Psalm;
remember the whole of creation was in place and in order because YHWH, Israel’s
God was on the throne.
Now, suffering tragedy trauma have taken that away from him.
He expresses that reality in that wonderful metaphor at the beginning of the
Psalm. “as the deer pants for water so my soul longs after you”. Maybe we look
at that from a European or even Kiwi understanding of deer as forest dwellers
beside a calm lake or tentatively coming out of lush vegetation to a babbling
brook. But the image is a desert one. The image is a deer in a time of drought,
desperately searching for water to save its life. Water that may have been
there yesterday is not there anymore.
It’s just sand and dust. For the
psalmist the things that had connected him with God have been taken away and he
goes looking for a new and reliable water source. Greif, loss, suffering
tragedy can dry up those water sources that keep us in times of orientation.
The idea of living water, the metaphor that Jesus used of himself in John’s
gospel, comes from a water source, a life giving source, that does not run dry
even in severe drought. This is what the Psalmist goes looking for. He no
longer has place and ritual even identity where will he find the living God
now.
Brueggemann calls the psalms from these times of suffering,
when it seems as if God has gone, when it’s not the way it should be when it’s
dark and sorrow filled Psalms of disorientation. The water metaphor in the
second stanza of Psalm 42 encapsulates that disorientation very well. Instead
of streams of life giving water, the water wants to take the Psalmists life.
Deep calls to Deep, there is the boom and roar of the waterfall and rapids, the
head waters of the Jordan river as it rushes down the slopes of Mt Hermon. Then
the response the crash of waves, Mediterranean storms like we encountered in
Psalm 29 , and they can’t shelter in the temple this time. Or storm fuelled waves on the lake of Galilee like the ones in the gospel narratives, that threatened to swamp the boat. If you've ever gone to the beach and been caught by a wave and tossed over and over you'll understand, with thoughts of ...which way is up, which way is the way to go, how do we get out of here with our
lives.
The Psalmists response is this feeling of being abandoned
and being downcast. It is the emotional response that the body makes to loss,
or suffering or trauma, or stress, It’s depression and sorrow or grief. “why
are you so down cast O my Soul’ Why so disturbed within me. We need to realise that
depression and grief are physical ways in which our bodies responds and adjusts
to tragedy and suffering. Almost as if to protect ourselves we shut down, and in doing that we can shut God out.Sometimes however, it can be triggered by an imbalance in our
system somewhere, it is a medical condition. But for the Psalmist it’s not the
end. He speaks to his down cast spirit and offers hope, hope based on knowing
who God is rather than where God is, and this is the way out of the darkness,
this is the rock in the midst of the rapids and crashing waves.
Brueggemann then talks of Psalms of reorientation. Psalms
that express a new understanding of God, one that still wrestles with suffering
and pain, but one that encounters the reality of God. There are elements of
this in Psalm 42 and 43.
It may not be that striking a contrast in our English
translation, but all the way through this psalm and for most of the psalms in
the second book of psalms 42-73, the word for God used most often is El Elohim,
God most God, But right in the middle of this Psalm in verse 8. The Psalmist
find a glimmer of hope. He uses that name of God given to Moses YHWH, the name
that carries with it the idea of God’s
covenant love and relationship with Israel. That evokes, Gods mercy and God’s
saving actions in the past. In the first stanza he had talked about remembering
the good times, but know he says I will remember you, I will remember the good
God. He had looked for living water and now he prays to the God of his life.
All the other stuff has been stripped away, the means by which the psalmist had
met with God, but that did not mean God had disappeared. He remembers God’s
salvation, just as we can look to the cross and see God’s salvation in Christ.
I love the line right at the middle of this psalm “at night
his song came to me” for a musician a singer that is a great way for God would speak: A
song that reminded them of God’s love, God’s goodness in the past even when it
seemed dark and hopeless that God was Israel’s saviour. Maybe they got past
missing the tunes and got to the lyrics. Through it the Psalmist remembered
God’s promise that he would send his people off into exile if they did not keep
their covenant relationship with God but that he would also bring them back.
Because in Psalm 43 we have this renewed hope of once again returning to Jerusalem,
which is rather an amazing admission of hope and of God’s greatness in the face
of such total defeat.
It’s not that this is a panacea, that suddenly it’s all
good. While the Psalmist is in the midst of the turmoil he is aware that God is
with him. He uses that more intimate name for God. He still suffering, he is
still in that place of turmoil, it’s still dark, But there is hope. In who God
is he sees a way forwards. He remembers God and God’s word; it’s no longer just
that response of the soul but one that beginning to be shaped by the knowledge
of God. So in psalm 43 he is able to
call out send your truth and your light to guide me.
The refrain why are you so downcast O my Soul, is the
Psalmists self-speak in response to what he is feeling. It’s as if each time it
is used, he is listening to the truth about who God is, and the emphasis is
more and more on the hope rather than the downcast soul. One of the emphases of
his memory of the temple worship and the hope of the future is being with the
congregation and hearing them tell of the things that God has done. Often it’s
hard for us to hear our own self speak, we need to hear the hope, the goodness
of God through the lives of our brothers and sisters. Tuesday was a bit of a
black dog day for me, as Winston Churchill used to call his down days. And God
sent someone through the door of the church to speak encouragement into my
life. I likened it to an undercover angel. I couldn't hear above the deep
booming of those turbulent waters in my life, it took having to listen
carefully to God’s word spoken in broken English to move me from the down cast
soul to the put your hope in him. We need to do that for each other. To speak
hope and what we know of God.
Orientation, disorientation, reorientation is the process
suffering can take us through. Not everyone makes it through but it is one of
the ways we mature spiritually. Reorientation, is the discovery of God’s
presence with us in a new and profound way even in the face of suffering. Where
is God when it hurts? The psalmist found God singing love songs in the dark,
dark night: As a rock in the midst of the torrents. Desmond Tutu, a man acquainted with suffer
and a man of Hope, tells the story of a Jew in a concentration camp who had
been forced to clean toilets. The man knelt with his hands immersed, swabbing
and scrubbing away the filth, as he did this, his Nazi guard sought to
humiliate him further. “Where is your God now?” he sneered. Quietly without
removing his hands from the toilet, the prisoner replied, ”He is right here
with me in the muck”. (from Pete Greig's book God on Mute). Jesus last words to us were lo I am with you till the end
of the age...even in the muck
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why
so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for
I will yet praise him,
my Saviour
and my God.
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