Psalm 129
"They have greatly oppressed me from my youth,”
let Israel say;
“they have greatly oppressed me from my youth,
but they have not gained the victory over me.
Plowmen have plowed my back
and made their furrows long.
But the Lord is righteous;
he has cut me free from the cords of the wicked.”
May all who hate Zion be turned back in shame. May they be like grass on the roof, which withers before it can grow; a reaper cannot fill his hands with it, nor one who gathers fill his arms. May those who pass by not say to them, “The blessing of the Lord be on you; we bless you in the name of the Lord.”
The Psalms are nearly perfect devotional material. I pray one every morning because they are some of the most beautiful and poetic prayers ever written. Their metaphors have stood the test of time. Some of the greatest hymns of all time, not to mention some of today’s most popular praise songs, are based on the Psalms. Praying the Psalms is such a powerful way to talk to God because we can draw such inspiration from knowing that we are praying prayers that have been prayed for thousands of years. The Psalms are nearly perfect devotional material.
NEARLY perfect… Because, if I’m being honest, there’s way too much enemy talk for my taste. Take a Psalm like 137… “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and we wept…” It’s a lyrical lament that really expresses the poet’s sadness at being separated from his homeland.He talks about weeping by the river and hanging his harps in the trees because he is exiled for Jerusalem. "How can I sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land," he asks.But then he comes around saying he would sooner forget how to sing and play the harp than to forget Jerusalem. It's a beautiful sentiment. Many of us who are separated from our Church buildings might pray the same prayer… EXCEPT… at the very end, the Psalm veers off wildly into revenge-against-my-enemies territory. The last two verses say:
Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
To quote the great theologian, Ron Burgundy, “that escalated quickly.” Psalm 137 was turned into a reggae song back in the early 80s. Needless to say they skipped the last part.
Psalm 137 is just one example of this but there is a LOT of revenge against my enemies talk in the Psalms. Otherwise perfectly beautiful Psalms are ruined by the hard turn toward revenge talk. Psalm 46:10… “Be still and know that I am God…” gets a lot of airplay. I dare you to read the verses leading up to it. Vengeance city. Our Psalm this morning is a good example. If you cut through the poetry, the Psalmist is basically saying: “may my enemies die like grass and may no one ever say a kind word to them…” Harsh.
So what do we do with all this talk about enemies? One option, the one taken by Reggae singers and the editors of the United Methodist Hymnal, is to just skip over those parts. This “chew the meat, spit out the bones…” approach is certainly tempting. You can just sort of cast off all that enemy talk as “bronze age stuff” that’s not really relevant today and focus on the parts of the Psalms that still speak to us. But surely you see the danger in this sort of approach to scripture.
Another way to deal with these Psalms is to spiritualize the enemy talk. Taking our lead from the Apostle Paul who writes, in the 6th chapter of Ephesians, that: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms..” We could reason that the true enemies that we are asking God to vanquish in the Psalms are the forces of evil in the world. I think this approach has its merits and can be helpful. But if we’re honest, King David or the anonymous Psalmist who wrote Psalm 129, probably didn’t have the Devil in mind when they wrote about enemies. They probably had the flesh and blood faces they were thinking about.
Jesus commands us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. That’s hard stuff. That’s an ideal most of us don’t live up to.
What I love so much about the Psalms is that they are real prayers written by flawed human beings. They reflect all the ups and downs of life. There are times when we feel so near to God that he is like a Shepherd guiding us through the darkest valley “an ever present help in times of trouble…”, “Our rock and our redeemer.” Other times we don’t feel him at all. We cry “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Or “how long? How long, O Lord, will you stay hidden.” Sometimes we are pious and we can pray with certainty that “like a deer pants for water, so my soul longs after you…” and “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere…” Because “Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” Other times we are cruel and vindictive. We want our enemies to die like grass and we desire to repay them evil for evil.
Maybe the problem isn’t the Psalms. Maybe the problem is us. We’re uncomfortable with the enemy talk because we don’t like the mirror being held up to our face. We like to keep our feelings compartmentalized where the peas don’t touch the mashed potatoes. God forbid our deep frustration toward our boss, or our abuser, or the people who have wronged us should work its way into our quiet time. When we’re drinking our tea in the morning, we’d rather pretend we’re not the sort of person who thinks hateful thoughts. But the Psalms remind us of both all the good and all the evil we are capable of. They paint with all the colors of the human experience. Maybe they've endured for so long because they reflect the good, the bad, and the holy of every heart who has longed to connect with God. They are not prayers only fit for the lips of perfect saints but the songs of real people making sense of real life.
Perhaps if we find the grace in ourselves to accept the Psalms just as they are, then we can be reminded that we serve a God who accepts us just the way we are. A God who needs neither a perfect prayer nor a perfect prayer.
Lord, We are frail and imperfect. We often pray to you in ways that are selfish and hurtful. But we thank you that you listen to us lovingly and we pray that your Holy Spirit would continue to transform us into the people you are calling us to be. Amen.
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