SING OF TROUBLE

A Sermon by Bill McDonald from Psalm 77

July 1, 2007

 

Psalm 77

1    I cry aloud to God,

       aloud to God, that he may hear me.

2    In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;

       in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;

       my soul refuses to be comforted.

3    I think of God, and I moan;

       I meditate, and my spirit faints.

Selah

4    You keep my eyelids from closing;

       I am so troubled that I cannot speak.

5    I consider the days of old,

       and remember the years of long ago.

6    I commune with my heart in the night;

       I meditate and search my spirit:

7    “Will the Lord spurn forever,

       and never again be favorable?

8    Has his steadfast love ceased forever?

       Are his promises at an end for all time?

9    Has God forgotten to be gracious?

       Has he in anger shut up his compassion?”

Selah

10  And I say, “It is my grief

       that the right hand of the Most High has changed.”

11  I will call to mind the deeds of the LORD;

       I will remember your wonders of old.

12  I will meditate on all your work,

       and muse on your mighty deeds.

13  Your way, O God, is holy.

       What god is so great as our God?

14  You are the God who works wonders;

       you have displayed your might among the peoples.

15  With your strong arm you redeemed your people,

       the descendants of Jacob and Joseph.

Selah

16  When the waters saw you, O God,

       when the waters saw you, they were afraid;

       the very deep trembled.

17  The clouds poured out water;

       the skies thundered;

       your arrows flashed on every side.

18  The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind;

       your lightnings lit up the world;

       the earth trembled and shook.

19  Your way was through the sea,

       your path, through the mighty waters;

       yet your footprints were unseen.

20  You led your people like a flock

            by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

 

You can’t always believe what you read.  I stood waiting at the elevator at St. Joseph hospital this week and out of boredom began reading the signs posted.  The sign right between the two elevator doors is a common one that we see all the time and, having been a volunteer fireman, I know that the truth of it is undeniable.  The sign says, “In case of fire, do not use elevator; use stairs.”  Makes sense because your elevator could open its doors on the floor right where the fire is raging and all the occupants inside would be roasted.  But then the untruth of this particular sign struck me.  I was reading it while standing on the first floor not thirty feet away from the main doors of the hospital!  It should have read, “In case of fire, run out those doors right there!”  Two guys were getting on the elevator with me, so I pointed out the absurdity of posting such a sign on the first floor.  One of the guys said, “How silly! You can bet I would be running for those doors!”  “Not me,” smiled the other, “I obey rules; I would be looking for a stairway.”

 

And you can’t always believe what you hear.  Cingular Wireless (now AT&T) claims in those hilarious ads on TV to have the fewest dropped calls.  Of course, their “research” is dubious and they have even been sued in some places for this claim.  (But then who hasn’t been sued for something in these days?)  But the ads are some of the most entertaining on television and they bring up a theological quandary that faced our psalmist today.  If the connection between God and a community of people is dropped, was it God who hung up?

 

Psalm 77 has 10 verses of anguished questions and 10 verses of confident history.  Let’s start with the last ten.  The psalmist calls to mind the deeds of the Lord, the wonders of old.  He calls God holy, the God who works wonders, who has displayed might among the peoples, a God with a strong arm who redeems his people.  The writer pictures God at creation when there was nothing but waters and chaos.  But when the waters saw God, they trembled with fear.  God strode among the waters with thunder and lightning and whirlwind until the earth trembled and shook and pulled itself together.  God didn’t mess around.  God’s path was through the waters, not only in creation but also at the Exodus when God parted the Red Sea and led the Hebrew children across.  And yet God’s footprints have always been invisible.  God leads us unseen, says the psalmist.  Keep that in mind.

 

But the first ten verses tell us that the call has been dropped.  In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord, the psalmist says, my hand is outstretched in prayer without ceasing, but there is no comfort for my soul.  I think, meditate, search and moan but no answer.  Can’t sleep, too troubled to speak and my mind keeps asking, “Will the Lord spurn forever and never again be favorable?  Has his steadfast love ceased forever?  Are his promises at an end for all time?  Has God forgotten to be gracious?  Has he in anger shut up his compassion?”  And the psalmist concludes, “It is my grief that the right hand of the Most High has changed.”  God has hung up on us.

 

Well, has God hung up on us?  Has the connection between us been dropped?  Many pulpit-pounding doomsayers have used this idea as their staple sermon for centuries.  The military-funeral-protesting-gay-bashing Rev. Fred Phelps uses this idea now.  God hates us.  But just because a few crazies have abused the concept, it doesn’t mean that it is not a question worth asking.  Has God hung up on us?

 

One good answer is that God’s footprints are invisible.  God is at work in our world but is beyond our knowing.  When I arrived to be the Senior Minister of the Hyde Park Christian in Austin, Texas, one rowdy old deacon told me that when the former minister preached no one looked at their watch to time him; they used a calendar instead!  Well, if we are looking for the footprints of God among us, then we can’t even use a calendar; we will have to use a history book.

 

Just one example in my lifetime.  I grew up under the threat of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.  In my elementary school every few weeks we practiced getting under our desks in case of a nuclear attack.  Remember that?  Obviously atomic bombs can turn skyscrapers to dust but school desks are impervious to nuclear weapons!  We don’t need a new missile defense system in Europe.  We just need to give each of our citizens a school desk!  I remember watching horrible animated programs on TV in the evening that depicted how our bodies would melt under the blast of radiation.  I wondered why my daddy wasn’t digging a fallout shelter in the garden like they were advising on TV. 

 

In our eyes the Soviet Union was as evil as a nation can get.  They invaded several nations and threatened to take over others.  They began wars and revolutions in other hemispheres.  They tortured prisoners and refused to abide by the Geneva conventions.  They sent people away to prison camps in Siberia and allowed them no legal representation or family contact.  They were a scourge to the civilized nations of the world.  This inevitable approaching war with the Soviet Union continued at the forefront of our minds for decades until 1991 when the Soviet Union just suddenly disintegrated, fell apart like a house of cards in a puff of wind.  Many people with 20/20 hindsight now claim that they saw it coming and they give credit to President Ronald Reagan or to a Soviet economic implosion.  But the reasons for its fall were invisible.  Nobody saw it coming.  But it brought a day of sunlight and lit up the world with freedom.  I have always believed that that event had the footprints of God all over it.  I think God works, silently, invisibly, certainly against nations that exhibit the same attributes as the old Soviet Union.

 

Has the Lord hung up on us?  My answer to the psalmist is that God doesn’t drop calls.  The right hand of the Most High has not changed.  If the connection is broken, we can’t blame a changeless God and there is no celestial network to fault.  If the connection is broken, we broke it.  We dropped the call.  I think the psalmist would agree with that.  In fact, I think that was what he was trying to get across to his singers.  God redeems his people, but we don’t become God’s people by birthright.  It does not depend upon where we were born or to whom we were born.  Our connection to God comes not because we are Americans or Israelites, because we are born into a Christian family or into a Jewish family.  It comes instead from submitting ourselves to God’s will.  Who is doing the leading in our lives?  Who determines our values and sets our priorities?  If the answer isn’t God, then how can we claim to be God’s people?  And if we are not God’s people, how can we expect God to come to our rescue?  God’s promises are for God’s people.  So the question becomes not has God spurned us but have we spurned God?  Have we dropped the call?  And if this psalm can cause us to analyze our personal and national stances in the light of God’s will, then I think we ought to sing a chorus of it every day of our lives.  Because then it would call us back into our connection with God.  And it would become not a song of trouble, but a song of healing, a song of joy.