Psalms 42

This morning, the psalmist cried out, “My tears have been my food day and night…”  Did you know there are more prayers of lament in the Bible than there are prayers of praise?  Fully one third of the psalms are psalms of lament.  Psalm 42 is one of them.

A biblical lament is an impassioned plea: It exclaims, “There is something wrong here.  Things are not right.  I must give voice to my complaint.”  And we have to remember lament is not whining.  We do not like whiners.   God does not like whiners, either.  Whiners always find a way to whine, regardless of the circumstances, whereas lament is a legitimate response to hardship.  The well-known gospel singer and civil rights activist, Mahalia Jackson used to say, “Anybody singing the blues is in a deep pit yelling for help.”  I believe the same could be said of lament.  These two have much in common.

When I listen to “Strange Fruit,” by Billie Holiday, I hear the psalmist crying out, “Tears have been my food, day and night.”  I also hear a psychotherapist, saying (that) tears that are never shed do not go away.  They become something else – bitterness, depression, hardness of heart, increased grief, which are all included in the concept of han.

Because of the profound human suffering in Korean peninsula for thousands of years, Koreans refer themselves as a people of han.  Every Korean knows what han is.  But, the concept of han cannot be easily translated or explained.  Generally speaking, han is “the deep wound of the heart,” “frustrated hope,” a “collapsed feeling of pain.”  It is the deep experience of the sinned against, the bitterness felt by victims of the unjust and oppressive actions of others.  Han can be experienced at the levels of both the individual and the group (for example, the Jew under Hitler and the Black in America).  People experience han everyday and everywhere.  

In his book, The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin,Andrew Sung Park who teaches at the United Theological Seminary, argues that EVEN GOD experiences han.  Yes, God not only knows our han, but s/he shares han with us.  God has been there with us all the way.  Therefore, we can offer lament in the confidence that God invites us to bring the fullness of our han: our sorrow, our grief, our wounded hearts, our resentment, our frustrated hope, and our collapsed feeling of pain.

In Psalm 56, there is this plea to God:  “Put my tears in your bottle.” 

Imagine:  God has a bottle for our tears.  That means we don’t need to keep our tears in the tight little bottle within us where they are usually kept, burning and vengeful, because God has a bottle for our tears.

It must be a bottle as big as the ocean because in it are all the psalmists’ tears throughout the history; the tears of countless people from immeasurable han.  Yes, God receives our tears – the literal tears and the musical ones – as readily as God receives our songs of praise.

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?”  “My tears have been my food day and night…”  Ever felt that way?  Most of us have.  I know at least one family in our community is lamenting this psalm today.

Usually, this lamenting is exacerbated by the taunts of “Where is your God?” which, in the psalm comes from external sources, but in our lives is a question that may well have passed from our own lips.  In the midst of chronic illness, death, disaster, divorce, pain, misery, despair, where are you, God?  Why have you forgotten me?  Why must I go about mourning, suffering, hardship…?  My bones suffer mortal agony….  And there are those relentless taunts again: “Where is your God?”

But then, (my friends), from the depths of the tortured psyche, something wells up, and the rhetorical question, “Why are you downcast, O my soul?  Why so disturbed within me?” is answered: “Put your hope in God; for I will yet praise him, my savior and my God (v. 5).”  Two times in these few verses, not only is the question repeated, so is the answer.  Despair and hope coexist.  They did in Jesus – we heard it in his prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.  Yet not as I will, but as you will.”  The message is simple enough: even though the day’s news may be depressing, at the end of the day, what gets us beyond despair is the fact that the day’s news is not the end of the story.  It was not for Jesus; it is not for you and me. 

The Scripture says, “Put your hope in God.”  By the way, what is hope?  Rev. Jim Wallis, one of the progressive Christian leaders in our society, says “Hope is not a feeling; it is a decision.  And the decision for hope is based upon what you believe at the deepest levels – what your most basic convictions are about the world and what the future holds – all based upon your faith.  You choose hope, not as a naive wish, but as a choice, with your eyes wide open to the reality of the world….” 

So, when the psalmist’s question rises within you – “Why are you downcast, O my soul?  Why so disturbed within me?” – (my brothers and sisters in Christ), the response is “Put your hope in God” because we know and believe that this is not the end of the story.  It is something I know down in the depths of my being.  No matter how “downcast” or “disturbed” my soul ever gets – and it does, for all of us – I know there is more to the story, and that makes all the difference. 

Horatio G. Spafford is a name with which you are probably not familiar.  Mr. Spafford was a successful Chicago lawyer who lost most of his wealth in the financial crisis of 1873.  He sent his wife and four daughters on a trip to France, but on their way, their ship was struck by another, and sank.  Of 225 passengers, only 87 survived.  Mrs. Spafford was among the survivors, but the four daughters perished.  As soon as she reached land, she telegraphed to her husband: “Saved alone.  Children lost.  What shall I do?”

Spafford left for France to join his wife and return her to Chicago.  In the depth of this bereavement, he wrote something that keeps his name alive, a hymn (his one and only):

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrow like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot,
Thou hast taught me to say,

It is well, it is well with my soul.

“Why are you downcast, O my soul?  Why so disturbed within me?” My brothers and sisters in Christ, move beyond despair.  “Put your hope in God…”   Amen!