De profundis (Psalm 130): Reflections for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

The readings for this coming Sunday can be found here. Even though we are not using church buildings during this time of trying to "flatten the curve" of COVID-19, the Word can still be engaged and knit us together as One Body - with many members. I offer these thoughts on Psalm 130 toward that end. 

In the psalms, “the depths” is an extended metaphor for the depths of the sea, which is an image of death. In other words, the pray-er of Psalm 130 is not on the shore on a calm day watching the waves gently come in upon the shore as the sun rises. She is drowning and in a deep and dark place, or at least was there and has lived to tell about it. This is the wild, tempestuous dark night of the soul with thunder and lightning and waves crashing onto the boat.

Out of the depths, have I called: God help me!

Notice also that the pray-er does not feel completely innocent. If this is the end, there are some regrets. If God were to note what is done amiss, O Lord who could stand? Unlike Frank Sinatra in "My Way," it sounds like there may be more than a few regrets and some amount of shame or guilt.

And yet, this person knows who God is: God is forgiver. That is who God is. That is what God does. God is compassionate. God is steadfast. God is merciful. Whatever else the whole canon of the psalms knows about God it is this.

And therefore, the pray-er eagerly waits. How eagerly? More than watchmen for the morning. More than watchmen for the morning. 

How eagerly? Robert Alter translates it like this: more than dawn watchers watch for the dawn.

We wait in hope. Whatever this day may feel like we trust that the sun will come out tomorrow. (Bet your bottom dollar on it!) Or as Julian of Norwich put it in the midst of the Black Death: all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. We cry out from the depths. We confess our sins. We wait and we wait and we wait...

But we wait in hope. We wait trusting that with God there is mercy. We trust that God is full of steadfast kindness. The Hebrew word is hesed. It occurs 248 times in the Hebrew Bible. There is a heresy of the Church that is alive and well and I hear it (sometimes even from clergy) that the God of the Old Testament is a judging wrathful God and the God of the New Testament is a loving abba who forgives. That is fake news, however. It’s heresy.

And we have to turn ourselves inside out to hold onto that belief; so if you still hold it, allow this Lenten season to be the time to let it go. Give that up this Lent! God is full of mercy, steadfastly kind and faithful. The one God – the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the God who forgives and forgives and forgives from the very beginning is the very same God that Jesus calls “Abba.” God doesn’t change God’s nature because of Jesus. The depth and truth of God’s nature is revealed in the Incarnation; God so loved the world, that God sent Jesus. Not to condemn the world, but to save it. Jesus is the embodiment of what God has been up to since creation. The Incarnation shows the lengths to which God will go so that we are not abandoned to the pit. God loves us like a mother loves her child, and can also give us a look like only a mother who loves her child can give.

God’s judgement is the flip-side of God’s mercy. But it’s not divided between the Old and New Testaments. End of lecture on this, but I invite you to pay attention to this even as the year unfolds, week after week. There are many weeks where we see grace in the Old Testament readings and judgment in the New. Although we also need to pay attention to the systemic reading of the Old Testament that can reinforce this belief, so better still is to read the Bible, on a daily basis, than the lectionary. When you do this, notice those 240 times when hesed is used to describe God’s nature in the Old Testament. Steadfast love. Steadfast love. Steadfast love. No matter how far we stray. Steadfast love.

This is why the poet can wait for the Lord even in the depths, even in the darkest hours. Because morning will come. Morning will come. Because weeping may endure the night, but joy cometh in the morning. Bet your bottom dollar on it.

And so we eagerly wait. More than watchmen for the morning. More than watchmen for the morning. More than dawn watchers watch for the dawn. Because God is faithful and merciful and slow to anger and abounding in hesed.

With God, there is plenteous redemption. Isn’t that a great phrase? Maybe I’ll steal that for my memoirs some day: plenteous redemption. God is so faithful and merciful and slow to anger and abounding in hesed that there is enough love for everyone. Plenty enough to redeem Israel. Plenty enough to redeem the Palestinians. Plenty enough to redeem the Church. Plenty enough to redeem those hurt by the Church. Plenty enough to redeem the ‘nones.”  Plenty enough to redeem all the little children of the world, precious in God’s sight.

Plenteous redemption. That is good news when the waves are crashing over us, when we feel lost and afraid and it feels like somebody turned out the lights. We wait. We wait in hope. We wait in hope for the God who is steadfast. We wait in hope for the God who is steadfast because in that God there is plenteous redemption.

This is not an Episcopal idea. It’s not a progressive idea or a conservative idea. It’s not a Protestant idea nor a Catholic idea nor an Orthodox idea. It’s not even an exclusively Christian idea, rooted as it is in the call of Abraham and the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through Torah and the prophets. It’s just true. God so loved the world. God has the whole world in Her hands: the little tiny baby, and you and me. All of us. There is plenteous redemption.

Wait for the Lord.