Psalm
86
Ordinary
12
June
21, 2020
William G. Carter
Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.
Preserve my life, for I am devoted to
you; save your servant who trusts in you.
You are my God; be gracious to me, O
Lord, for to you do I cry all day long.
Gladden the soul of your servant, for to
you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you.
Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer; listen to my
cry of supplication.
There is none like you among the gods, O
Lord, nor are there any works like yours.
All the nations you have made shall come
and bow down before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name.
For you are great and do wondrous
things; you alone are God.
Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may
walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart to revere
your name.
I give thanks to you, O Lord my God,
with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever.
For great is your steadfast love toward
me; you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.
O God, the insolent rise up against me;
a band of ruffians seeks my life, and they do not set you before them.
But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and
gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
Turn to me and be gracious to me; give
your strength to your servant; save the child of your serving girl.
Show me a sign of your favor, so that
those who hate me may see it and be put to shame,
because you, Lord, have helped me and
comforted me.
This Covid-19 pandemic has affected all of us in many ways.
For three months, we have lived as hermits. We have been eating our own food
and waving to one another from a distance. Sometimes we have lost track of what
day it was. The loss of familiar routines has scrambled our schedules. All of us
are a lot more cautious about the contact we have with others.
But I have noticed positive outcomes as well. Those of us
with families are eating meals with them. All of us are rediscovering the art
of conversation. We have finished rainy day projects and developed new skills. And
in my neighborhood, everybody is walking.
My street is a half-mile horseshoe. There are people walking
on it from dawn until dark. The senior man with the coffee mug and the walking stick
saunters by as the mourning doves wake up. Three power-walking soccer moms in
spandex charge up the incline side by side. Late in the afternoon, here comes
the dad with a new pandemic beard and a backwards Yankees cap, conversing with
his middle school daughter. Shortly after supper, mom pushes a stroller while
dad shepherds a couple of circling siblings.
From the look of it, everybody is on their feet. When this
virus is finally done, they are going to be in great shape. They are walking.
Walking is one of the best things we can do. Thirty minutes
of walking each day can reduce blood pressure, improve weight loss, positively
affect blood sugar, even out stress, and clear a foggy head. Not only that, walkers
start noticing all the little things they normally speed by: the new patch of
day lilies at the green house, the insulated windows in yellow house, and the
curious things that the neighbors put out on garbage night.
It's no wonder the Bible often refers to the spiritual life
as a good walk. That is how Psalm 86 describes it. Smack-dab in the middle of
this psalm is a prayer: “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your
truth.” Walk, not crawl. Walk, not sprint. Walk like a human being, with one
foot in front of another. The truth of God cannot lead us anywhere if we remain
seated. We must get up on our feet and start moving.
So what I propose today is we take a walk with psalmist.
Let’s keep in step with him, see what he sees, listen to what he says, and pray
as he prays. Since Psalm 86 is labeled a “psalm of David,” let’s call him David.
The first thing to notice: David is having a tough day. The
first words out of his mouth are these, “Listen to me, Lord, I’m poor and needy.”
If David is the David of scripture, it is a remarkable thing for the King of
Israel to say. Certainly, kings have their bad days. They have troubles popping
up all the time. But most kings I have ever heard about will go to
extraordinary lengths to avoid looking poor. None of them ever want to appear needy.
It seems David is in danger. “Preserve my life,” he prays. So
I imagine him darting between the shadows, trying to stay ahead of whatever
threat lurks in the dark.
If this is King David of the Bible, maybe he is worried
about Absalom, his renegade son. Ever since Absalom’s daughter was attacked, he
has been nothing but trouble. Once upon a time he was a cute little kid, standing
around, combing his long locks of hair. But now he plots to steal the throne
even though his father is still sitting on it.
So David goes for a long walk. “Preserve my life, Lord,” he
says. “The insolent rise up against me. A band of violent marauders is coming
after my neck. Not only have they no regard for me, Lord, they pay no attention
to you.” And when enemies are lawless enough to ignore the scriptures, ignore
the commandments, ignore God’s basic instructions for life, they become a law unto
themselves – and that’s when chaos ensues.
As we walk with David, we are stunned by his vulnerability.
He admits he needs help. He confesses that he cannot prevail on his own power.
He knows he cannot save his own skin and he says so. This is honest prayer. No
illusion, no sidestepping, no hiding. David sums up his prayer by saying, “In
the day of my trouble I call on you, for you will answer me.”
Let’s stop walking a minute and ask the question. How many
times in the past three months have we bottled up our fears and not spoken them
to God? We sit before the television and expect it to provide all the answers.
We look in every direction for help – east, west, north, south – but we do not
look up. We get to the end of our rope and hang on even longer, assuming
some breakthrough will come like magic. And the whole time, are we crying out for
God to help?
David dares to speak the truth. “I can’t do this difficult
thing,” he says. “I don’t see how it will turn out.” But he keeps walking. He does
not stop. He does not give up, and in a deep sense he does give in – he is
ready to welcome the holy help that he cannot find in himself.
And after a while there is a turn in the road. The hill he
has been climbing begins to level out. The path flattens. For some inexplicable
reason, David changes up and starts complimenting God. “You, O Lord, are good
and forgiving,” he exclaims. “You are abounding in steadfast love to all who
call on you.” Then he says it again, in words that echo other psalms, “You, O
Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast
love and faithfulness.”
Who knows what happened? The prayer for help is apparently answered.
We don’t know how. Perhaps the panic in his soul has leveled out. Maybe a few
more steps and a bit more breathing has helped. A good walk can do that, you
know. If you keep walking, it helps put some distance between you and your
fear.
I learned this from the wisdom of a wise old sage. “There
are many fearsome dangers that don’t look so bad after a good night’s sleep,”
he said. He was right. When I survey some of the worries that have consumed me
after dark, they don’t look so bad in daylight. Some of our greatest fears are
not so frightening if we are able to take a long view, a God-sized view. God is
present in the pain as well as the relief. This is what we learn as we walk.
David says God is “slow to anger.” That’s what it looks
like to take a long view. It is difficult to perceive of an eternal God when we
are worried now, when we want everything fixed now, when we presume to know
what’s best. There is some good news in declaring God is slow to anger, that
God is not in any hurry. This is what opens us to the mercy and grace, the steadfast
love and abounding faithfulness.
David is in good company. Moses spent forty years walking
to the Promised Land. He paused a couple of times to say, “God is slow to anger
and abounding in steadfast love.” (Numbers 14:18) The prophet Joel said it
again, many years later, “God is slow to anger and abounding steadfast love,” suggesting
that now’s the time to start walking with the Lord (Joel 2:13). The prophet
Jonah walked to Nineveh to preach gloom and doom, never expecting God would be slow
to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and of course, God won out (Jonah
4:2).
This is the definition of grace. God always wins out. It
may take a while. It may happen quietly or in ways you never imagined. But the
steadfast love that abounds so much is the steadfast love that endures forever.
When we keep walking, eventually we will see it. This is the way of God. This
is the truth we cannot see until we put one foot in front of the other.
Psalm 86 sounds like a lot of the other 149 psalms. The
scholars classify it as a lament. A lament is more than a complaint. It is a
prayer that recognizes the distance between how life feels today and what God
promises. So many times, there is a distance. Life is not always sunshine and
roses. The gift of the psalms of lament is that they call us to pray. They call
us to be honest. They call us to reach toward God even if it looks like God is
not there.
We are in a season of lament. Our freedom has been limited
by a virus we cannot see, and some among us can testify how deadly it can be.
Too many people have ignored the warnings, thinking they can outrun the
consequences. When the spring sunshine returned, some pretended there is no
danger at all. Yet public health officials have not wavered from their wisdom,
so here we are, limited, diminished, frustrated, and impatient. Let’s lament
the whole mess and make it an opportunity for prayer.
The pandemic’s threat has been more than the dangerous virus.
We have also been confronted of the unpleasant truth that some have health care
and others do not. Some can escape to the second home in the mountains and
others can only stay home in the South Bronx. Some have privileges they do not
even realize, and others are excluded, harmed, or murdered because of the color
of their skin. The national wound of racism is exposed yet one more time. The truth
is inescapable, and the slow work of justice is gaining momentum. Again, this
is an occasion for lament, for us to state our national pain and to pray for
God to make it right.
And perhaps this is the reason a series on the psalms bubbled
up for me as the texts for our summer. In coming weeks, we will continue to pray
with the saints of Israel and church. We pray because life is not what we wish
it would be. We pray if things get better. And as we pray, we are walking with
God. That is the word for today.
Today, let me conclude with the words of Frederick
Buechner, the wise Presbyterian saint. “If you want to know who you are,” he
writes, “you could do a lot worse than look to your feet for an answer.” It’s
all about walking, both when life is hard and when God’s grace is revealed.
When you wake
up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who
you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you
are.[1]
So David prays, “teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk
in your truth.”
(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.
[1] Frederick Buechner, The
Alphabet of Grace (New York: HarperCollins, 1970) 25.
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