Fasting from Despair: Psalm 126
Fifth Sunday of Lent
When Adonai restored Tziyon’s
fortunes,
we thought we were dreaming.
2 Our mouths were full of laughter,
and our tongues shouted for joy.
Among the nations it was said,
“Adonai has done great things for them!”
3 Adonai did do great things with us;
and we are overjoyed.
4 Return our people from
exile, Adonai,
as streams fill vadis in the Negev. [NRSV: Restore our fortunes,
O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.]
5 Those who sow in tears
will reap with cries of joy.
6 He who goes out weeping
as he carries his sack of seed
will come home with cries of joy
as he carries his sheaves of grain. (CJB)
House Bill
1557, colloquially called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, passed in Florida this past
week, prohibiting discussion about sexual or gender identity in primary school
classrooms.[1] It is one of nearly 300 anti-LGBT bills
introduced across the United States in 2022 alone,[2] part of a systematic
attempt to erase the identity of people who simply want to exist, to love, to
come home from work and be entirely themselves.
There are
early reports in Russia’s war on Ukraine that Russian soldiers may be executing
unarmed civilians. The Associated Press
and Agence France-Presse have filed accounts of mass graves in the small town
of Bucha, just days after a Russian retreat from Kyiv’s ferocious and
unexpected defense.[3]
A recent
donation to a GoFundMe campaign sparked my curiosity and I found that nearly
one third of all of that site’s crowdfunding pleas are for medical expenses as
families scramble to keep up with a broken insurance infrastructure and
skyrocketing healthcare costs in the United States.[4] According to 2021 census data, 19% of American
households carry some level of medical debt—higher, once you parse out specific
communities, like 27% for Black households.[5]
“When Adonai
restored Zion’s fortunes, we thought we were dreaming.”
This psalm is
part of a cycle within the Book of Psalms that’s called the Songs of
Ascent. There are a few theories behind
the name, but the prevailing one is that these would be sung by pilgrims
climbing up to Jerusalem for high holy days.
These were used as walking meditations on God’s goodness in preparation
for the worship that would happen in Jerusalem proper.[6] “When Adonai restored Zion’s fortunes” is a
memory, a reminder, a way in which the pilgrims could tell themselves there was
indeed a time when their mouths were filled with laughter, when their tongues
shouted for joy, when all the nations knew that their God was at work in the
world. It was the reassurance of
goodness even on the days when goodness seemed incredibly hard to find as they
dragged weary feet up the steps to a Temple that may have seemed empty of anything
holy.
The world is a
mess right now. I don’t think that is
news to any of you; we humans are getting ever more creative in the ways we can
frighten and belittle and hurt each other and ourselves. It’s disheartening; I have had quite a few
people tell me they simply no longer watch the news, strung out by how much
pain there is to be heard from it. Sure,
maybe God restored fortunes back in the day; sure, maybe we had joy on our
tongues years ago, but look—just look at how much is going wrong, how much is
falling apart at a faster rate than we can even catalog it. How dare this psalm tell us of laughter when
clearly, clearly there is too much sorrow—and it is Lent, after all, a season very
rarely considered anything like cheerful.
“Adonai did do
great things with us.” Reverend James
Howell writes, “[I]t is that past that anchors us solidly enough to know what
to expect of God in the future. Hope isn’t a wishing for a better tomorrow, and
it isn’t a nostalgic longing for the return of the good old days. But if we
understand God’s habits, God’s heart as shown in years gone by, we know what to
look for, what to ask for, what realistically will come to be.”[7] With the pilgrims climbing to Jerusalem, we are
not to encounter this psalm as some nebulous thing where good may come around
again, perhaps, good like we hazily remember in the rose-colored past. This psalm is a declaration that God will act,
that the water will return to the pathways of the Negeb, that fortunes will
be reversed not because God is under contract but because that’s Who God
is. God is the God Who restored Zion’s
fortunes, Who did great things such that even the other nations knew of the
love of this deity. God is the God Who
has promised to be present for God’s people and we are the people who promise
to return, always, in offering of our whole selves to the work of building a Kingdom
that reaps harvest of joy.
We people of faith understand that
nothing is static—that God is always at work in the big and the small, in the
reversing of fortunes with the waters of the Negeb. We understand because we have seen it happen;
Adonai did great things, led us to do great things. The bill in Florida has sparked outrage and forced
response from celebrities and politicians and Disney itself, Kyiv is
withstanding the violence of Russia as the world flies the blue and yellow flag
in support, thousands of people donate millions of dollars to ensure that those
in need can have access to healing. Our
tongues have shouted for joy against the heavy weight of pain and grief.
And there is
more work to be done. This psalm is not pure
happiness that says God loves you so everything is fine. Over and over again in our Scriptures we are
reminded that the world is imperfect and the Kingdom where there will be no
more death or sorrow is not yet reality; we do not have to pretend that we are
always pleased with what is happening, that it is only laughter in our
mouths. “Those who sow in tears will
reap with cries of joy,” the psalmist says.
Alicia McClintic writes, “When heard within the context of our
liturgies, the salient themes of hope and expectation draw our attention to the
break between stanzas, the space of waiting. The deliverance or restoration
mentioned in Psalm 126 may not be immediate (suggested by the period of waiting
implied by the images of sowing and harvesting), but it is promised, and they
live hopefully waiting for its fulfillment. We too live with the promise that
our joy will be restored.”[8]
God, unfortunately, does not work on
the timetables we set, but God does work. Howell writes, “it is fascinating that the
Psalm doesn’t say the tears will be exported to some distant place, and then
joy will arrive. No, it is ‘those who sow tears will reap shouts of joy.’ The
tears become the joy. Somehow the joy grows out of the sorrow. The sadness is
what births the laughter. It is hard not to think of Paul’s vision of eternal
life as a seed falling into the ground and dying — and then the resurrected
body springs up.”[9]
Resurrection—we’re
coming up to the part of the year when we have that conversation again. As we near the end of Lent and, next week,
get swept up in the story of the Passion, we take with us the fact that the world
is a mess. Your world may be a mess with
your own sown tears. But we who are a
people of the resurrection know that the story does not end in the mess; the
life returns, has returned, is returning, and we are called into the places
where there are cries of joy. As the
pilgrims sang this psalm to themselves on the way to Jerusalem whether their
day was the worst or the most wondrous, we are reminded by the psalmist that there
is more to the story than sorrow; Adonai has done great things and we, we who
know of those things believe that God is not done yet.
In this Lenten
season, we have been talking about the fasts we choose as reflections of the
faith we claim. Choose this, today: choose to fast from despair. This is not to say “I will never be sad” or “I
will say everything is fine;” it is to refuse the hopelessness that nothing
will ever change, that the world will always be terrible, that it is not even
worth it to watch the news. That kind of
despair, that kind of despondency is not what God asks of us, is not what our
faith teaches us to hold. We are to ask
for restored fortunes, for returned joy in the faith that it is something God
will give, God Who knows what it is to sow in tears and reap shouts of joy.
Today is a day
on which we celebrate communion. It is
an odd thing, this mouthful of bread and sharp tang of grape juice, and we do
not continue to do it because we are that excited about eating this. We return to this table, to this ritual
because it is a reminder of God’s presence and because it is a masterclass of
joy amidst sorrow. Jesus sat with His
friends knowing that the time was limited, that the relationships were
breaking, that things would not be as the disciples had hoped—and He ate
anyway. He drank, anyway. He washed feet, and called His friends by
name, and gave thanks, knowing that Adonai did great things, that there had
been moments when His mouth was filled with laughter and holding onto the faith
that it would be again. We take
communion together to bind ourselves to the reality of the story not being
finished, of the shadow not being complete because there is light that is not
overcome, of there being a day when we will reap cries of joy as we carry our
sheaves of grain. What a magnificent and
marvelous gift, to come to God and say “things are not okay” and to hear “yes—but
they will be.”
Where are the
places where despair is beginning to take root in your life, church? Where are the places where you need to sit
down and remember the feeling of laughter in your mouth, to tell the stories of
the times God has reversed your fortunes?
Where are the places where you need to ask with all your heart that
there again be water in the Negeb for you because it is dry as dust? Ask; God will hear. God will weep with you, and then will walk
with you as the sorrow is transformed over the long and mysterious wonder of life
into harvests of joy, into clear rivers of hope. It is promised—and what is faith but to sink
ourselves into promise and believe ferociously that it shall be?
May we have
the courage to be sad when it is needed, the hope to be joyful when it seems
impossible, and the faith to work for the harvest, one day at a time. Amen.
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