Preached by Winton Boyd on September 30, 2007
Text: Psalm 42
I suspect most of us, at some time in our youth, had the experience of being “forgotten†by parents who were to pick us up from some activity or event. I have vivid memories of sitting outside Creek Valley Elementary school one winter Saturday afternoon waiting for one of my parents to pick me up from a basketball practice. In my mind, I wait for hours – and it may actually have been an hour – but it is one of those unforgettable moments in the life of a child. So much of the good a parent does can be undone by one incident of forgetting a child.
Cell phones – at least theoretically, help with this situation. Or maybe they just raise the expectations. We enjoy the ability to communicate with our kids, to coordinate the many schedules on a given afternoon, and to update one another on last minute changes in the plan. Our children, however, have one huge complaint about their parents and cell phones –we “never have it on.†With each new cell phone our family has acquired, the level of expectation around our need to use them and be responsive to one another has risen…
Expectations, and expectations for a response or an answer are integral to any conversation about our faith, the nature of God, and the efficacy of prayer.
The psalm that Ree read and the song the Bruce sang are not the most uplifting ways to start a sermon – but they are ancient and quite common ways many of us express our faith, or would if we felt able to be completely honest about it.
Psalm 42 is often called a psalm of lament, sometimes a psalm of pilgrimage. It is thought that it is written by one who wants to make a pilgrimage, but can’t – probably because of illness. In that context, illness indicated a disfavor with God. So, it is a prayer in which the psalmist wavers back and forth between understanding and confusion about whether God is present or not. While it ends on a hopeful note, it is filled with heartfelt cries – including “why have you forgotten me?â€
Recently, one of the most revered Christians, and persons of faith in all the world, Mother Theresa was “outed†as one who prayed a very similar prayer for much of her adult life – “why have you forgotten me?†This woman, who is on the fast track to become a canonized saint within the Catholic church, expressed her deep doubts about God’s presence in her life for over 50 years in a series of letters to her spiritual mentor.
A recent Time magazine article, published in connection with a new book on Mother Theresa, began,
“On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the “Saint of the Gutters,” went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, (she) received … the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of …care, (said) “It is not enough for us to say, ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,’” since in dying on the Cross, God had “[made] himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one.” Jesus’ hunger, she said, is what “you and I must find” and alleviate…. She suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world “that the radiating joy is real” because Christ is everywhere — “Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive.”
“Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, she wrote of a different Christ, an absent one. “the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ….”
“The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are amazingly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew.. a woman who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared.”
I don’t intend to analyze Mother Theresa’s faith – but I lift her up because I think her life followed is a fairly common pattern – a period of intense awareness of God’s presence followed by a lengthy period of “drought.†In this series on living in the tragic gap – standing between what is and what could be – this chasm between empty prayers and a strong faith is quite common. Often, it leads to discouragement, disappointment and even anger with God. In addition, it can led to disillusionment with the church, feelings of inadequacy around other, “more faithful†Christians. I suspect the unwillingness to name the doubts also leads to religious judgment and violence – as we seek to react to our uncertainty by taking it out on others.
How do we live in the empty space BETWEEN beautiful songs and psalms that speak of God’s presence and abundance and our deep doubt – WHEN what WE EXPERIENCE is the absence and invisibility of God in our lives? How is this “space†integral to the life of faith and why do we run from it?
Frederick Buechner expresses this ambivalence about doubt beautifully: “Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts (or dryness) you are either kidding yourself or asleep. (These) are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”
Brian McLaren, author and pastor, writes that faith grows in four stages. While his predictable and neat progression is too much of both – it is a helpful look at how our faith evolves.
He calls the first stage simplicity, where everything is simple and easy, black and white, known or knowable.
Then there’s complexity, where you focus on techniques of finding the truth – since the scenario has gotten more complex.
Then there’s perplexity, where you become a kind of disillusioned learner, where you doubt all authority figures and absolutes, where everything seems relative and hazy.
The final stage, he says, is humility, because here you come to terms with your limitations, and you learn to live with mystery, not as a cop-out, but as an honest realization that only God understands everything.
McLaren continues, “I sometimes think that our religious lives are like California, built on a San Andreas fault of suppressed doubt. Under a beautiful surface, the pressure of unexpressed, unresolved doubt is building for more and more people, and sooner or later, the whole landscape will crack and crumble.
In my work as a pastor – with young people and older people alike – by far the most common spiritual problem, is spiritual dryness, what McLaren called perplexity. Time and time again, I hear folks indicate that they aren’t sure where their prayers are going, if anyone or anything is listening, or why the Holy One doesn’t seem to respond.
I think there are three things we can do when these moments come
- Acknowledge that this is part of the faith journey – it is simply part of the territory
- Pray honestly and openly and vividly from our heart. This spiritual dryness is an ancient part of the spiritual life.
Because this is often the most difficult thing to do, this morning we are going to listen to the prayers of several who have been in this place in their lives. 5 among us are going to read vivid, poignant, even desperate prayers. We do this because these words are so seldom uttered within the communities of faith we live in. We do this because it is possible that one of these prayers could be our prayer. We do it because one of these quite possibly has been our prayer, or is the prayer of one we love and we know that saying such a prayer with them is part of how we honor their pain. Each prayer will be followed by a choral response from the choir.
#1
When Katrina roared ashore on Aug. 29, 2005, a dozen people sought shelter in Seashore Mission, a church that serves the poor and homeless in Biloxi. Only six of those people survived. All that’s left of the building is a concrete slab. Teenager and song writer, Elizabeth Cumbest became involved with the mission as a child working with her parents, the Revs. Chris and Sheila Cumbest.
“I’m broken inside
“And this pain in my heart I can’t hide.
“When it seems that everything I love is gone,
“And everything that could went wrong
“When there’s nothing else, I need you.â€
“Cause I’m crying and I’m torn
“My spirit is broken, my heart is worn
And when it seems there’s nothing left to do
“That’s when I need you.â€
CHORAL RESPONSE
On God alone I wait silently
God my deliverer, God my strong tower.
#2In the mid 1980’s young activist and song writer Tracy Chapman wrote a riveting song about the lives of the unseen and unwanted in our larger urban areas. She called their place in society the “subcity†and wrote a song that is a prayer that these unseen will be noticed and cared for.
SUBCITY – Tracy Chapman
People say it doesn’t exist
‘Cause no one would like to admit
That there is a city underground
Where people live everyday
Off the waste and decay
Off the discards of their fellow man
Here in subcity life is hard
…What did I do deserve this
Had my trust in God
Worked everyday of my life
Thought I had some guarantees
That’s what I thought
At least that’s what I thought
CHORAL RESPONSE
On God alone I wait silently
God my deliverer, God my strong tower.
#3
Pastor and writer Ann Weems has written prayers for worship over 25 years. One of her books, Psalms of Lament seek to give voice to the grief and anguish she has felt, and continues to feel, over the death of her son.
I don’t know where to look for you, 0 God!
I’ve called and I’ve called.
I’ve looked and I’ve looked.
Could you give me a sign that you’ve heard?
Could you numb my emotions so I wouldn’t hurt so much?
I walk in circles.
I rock in my chair.
I turn on the TV.
The voices are too loud; the faces are too loud.
I mute the voices; I turn off the faces.
The silence is my friend; the silence is my enemy.
I go upstairs.
I walk to the window.
No sign of you I
I’m dying, 0 God, without you.
O God of wonder, you can change it all. You can distract me from thoughts of death.
You can fill my days with purpose. You can make the nights shorter.
You can let me find you.
Don’t hide from me any longer, 0 God.
CHORAL RESPONSE
On God alone I wait silently
God my deliverer, God my strong tower.
-#4
Catholic layman William Cleary of Shelburne, Vermont has written 5 books on prayer. This prayer is part of his attempt to craft prayers based on the strong new names for God, including “She Who Is.†This comes from his book Prayers to She Who Is.
YOU SUFFER? By William Cleary
Sophia-Wisdom, Dynamic Creating Mystery,
is it possible that you are really in solidarity with all who suffer?”
Can it be you have not abandoned them-as it seems?
How is it possible you care terribly that they have so little peace of mind,
so little confidence they will have food for another day,
so little security against illness, attack, homelessness,
and hatred?
How is it possible for you to be God, and to be unable to alleviate our pain?
Help me reformulate my concept of the divine. Inexhaustible Mystery,
are you limited to doing what Love can do? I long to give you my faith and trust.
Help thou my unbelief.
CHORAL RESPONSE
On God alone I wait silently
God my deliverer, God my strong tower.
#5
Retired Old Testament professor Walter Brueggemann collected prayers that he began his seminary lectures with into a book called, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth. He has written “It is an awesome matter to voice one’s life before God, and our lives should therefore be awesomely uttered.â€
Among us are Shriveled Women, by Walter Brueggemann
Among us are shriveled women
who in despair do not eat,
who in powerlessness weep downcast,
whose lips tremble and
who barely dare ask otherwise.
We in our compassion and sensitivity
stand alongside those shriveled women,
who in despair do not eat,
who in powerlessness weep downcast,
whose lips tremble, and
who barely dare ask otherwise.
Down deep in all candor we ourselves
are among those shriveled women;
who also in despair do not eat,
we also in powerlessness weep downcast,
we also have lips that tremble, and
we also barely dare ask otherwise.
They wait…
We wait alongside them…
We wait.
And you…sometimes…speak shalom and the world is made new.
This day in our despairing hope,
grant that we, along with all shriveled women,
may – before sundown – eat and praise and depart in peace.
For now, we wait. Amen-
CHORAL RESPONSE
On God alone I wait silently
God my deliverer, God my strong tower.
#3
The third thing: wait, trust, hope
The pain is not the end of the story. It is the testimony of the ancients. It is the testimony of the church. It is the witness of the Spirit of God in our midst.
When our faith that is tried and tested by doubt, may we remain it strong enough to send us into the world with love for God expressed through love for our neighbors, especially those most in need.
But finally, may the deep doubts of our faith and the pain of unanswered prayers lead us finally to the profound and loving and upholding mystery of God in the world and in our our lives.
