Levavi oculos (Psalm 121)

My 2020 Lenten journey continues with The Church of the Reconciliation in Webster, with Psalm 121. 

Writer Anne Lamott has written a little, but very powerful book on prayer that is entitled: Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Survival Prayers. If you don’t know Lamott, I commend her writing to you. And in particular I commend that little book of essential prayers. Help. Thanks. Wow.

If you think about it, pretty much every prayer falls into one of those three categories. Help is a big one, especially when we feel like the world is closing in or we are drowning or in the pit.

And every new day gives us a chance to say thanks, even the hardest ones: thanks for waking up, for the sunrise, for loved ones, for friendships, for food on the table, for health, even for challenges. Meister Eckhardt once said that if the only prayer you ever said was “thankyou” it would be enough.

Lamott’s book is Help, Thanks, and Wow. That last one is about being amazed, about being in awe. About being awake to the majesty and mystery and wonder of the world around us. It’s about noticing sunsets, and signs of spring, and a beautiful snowy day.

In this Lenten season we are paying close attention to the psalms, and the one we prayed today, Psalm 121, is a “help” prayer. Or more accurately, it is prayed by a person who knows where to turn when help is needed.

From where will my help come? My help is from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.

The question is filled with pathos and perhaps you have been there yourself. Even if you’ve grown up in the Church. Even if you know the Bible. When you feel like you are in trouble, when you aren’t sure where to turn, you may have asked yourself: from where will my help come?

In the psalms there is something called “selah” which is hard to translate, but essentially it’s a musical direction and it means: stop. Wait. Hold on. It’s a little like a rest. Now let me be clear: there is no selah after this question. But I imagine one. Where is my help coming from?

Selah….

My help is from the Lord. The maker of heaven and earth.

That can lead to thanksgiving because God is faithful and merciful and is glad to help. It can lead to a wow prayer, too, as we consider our awesome God who is the maker of heaven and earth. But for today – for this reflection – I want to keep us focused on help.

Many of you may know about twelve-step programs and some of you may use those steps to stay alive, one day at a time. The first three steps go like this:

• We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
• Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
• Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Psalm 121 is prayed in that very same spirit. To be able to even ask the question, “from where will my help come?” is to know that we are not our own helper. That our own bootstraps are not strong enough. That sometimes we need outside assistance. In some really big ways, we are all powerless. Even the most macho among us.

But there is a place to look for help. That power that is greater than ourselves, in this community, gathered around this Table, is the One we insist made the heavens and the earth, the One who sent Jesus, our friend, our teacher, our brother, our savior – into the world. Why? Because of love. Because God so loved the world. Because God so loves the world. Because God so loves you. And me.

To pray Psalm 121 with the psalmist is to say amen to the psalmist’s claim. It is to make a decision to put our trust in God. It is to affirm that God is our helper and is worthy of our trust.

Now there are twelve steps, not just three. From this place it becomes possible to be honest with ourselves, to make a moral inventory, to make amends. To be light to others. It is the same pattern for Christian living. But the order matters – in both. We cannot help others or even help ourselves if we aren’t willing to open ourselves up to the help we need from God. And from other people.

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main…” So wrote John Donne, who was not only a poet but an Anglican priest. In fact he was the dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London for the last decade of his life. I’m sure if he wrote those words today rather than in the early part of the seventeenth century, he’d be sure women were included.

None of us are islands unto ourselves. Everyone, male and female, young and old, rich and poor, L or G or B or T or Q and every other letter: we are a piece of the continent, a part of the main. Or as St. Paul put it, we are members of one body – the Body of Christ.

When we ask for help, when we turn to God for help, we are acknowledging this truth about reality. It runs counter to the false narrative of rugged individualism – that if we work hard enough we won’t need any help. We won’t need anyone. But that is a lie. It’s a lie that leads to death.

A colleague of mine told me recently that one Lent she decided that instead of giving something up, what she would do – as a spiritual practice – was to accept all help when it was offered. That she would not go to her normal default and say, “no thanks, I’m fine.” Throughout the forty days she discovered that there was help being offered to her all the time. At the time she didn’t have a car and she was walking through the rain and a friend said, “let me give you a ride.” And while her normal response would have been, “oh no, I’m fine” she instead chose to say: “yes, thanks. I appreciate that.”

The psalmist, is, I realize, focused on God as the helper. But God’s people are helpers too. There is an old joke that perhaps some of you know that conveys a profound theological truth. It goes like this:

A man was stuck on his rooftop in a flood. He was praying to God for help.

Soon a man in a rowboat came by and the fellow shouted to the man on the roof, "Jump in, I can save you." The stranded fellow shouted back, "No, it's OK, I'm praying to God and he is going to save me." So the rowboat went on.

Then a motorboat came by. "The fellow in the motorboat shouted, "Jump in, I can save you." To this the stranded man said, "No thanks, I'm praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith." So the motorboat went on.

Then a helicopter came by and the pilot shouted down, "Grab this rope and I will lift you to safety." To this the stranded man again replied, "No thanks, I'm praying to God and he is going to save me. I have faith." So the helicopter reluctantly flew away.

Soon the water rose above the rooftop and the man drowned. He went to Heaven. He finally got his chance to discuss this whole situation with God, at which point he exclaimed, "I had faith in you but you didn't save me, you let me drown. I don't understand why!"

To this God replied, "I sent you a rowboat and a motorboat and a helicopter, what more did you expect?"

When we cry out to God for help, we need to keep our eyes and ears open to the many different ways that God might respond. But very often that response comes in the form of a neighbor. When that guy was lying in a ditch on the side of a dangerous stretch of road between Jerusalem and Jericho, I’m sure he prayed to God for help. That help came in the form not of a priest or a Levite, but a Samaritan who showed him compassion.

A Samaritan! I’m sure his first thought probably was, “Oh God, I’m surely dead now!” But what he needed was eyes to see how this was an answer to his prayer, even if an unexpected and surprising one.

So I invite you, in the name of the Church, as this holy Lent continues to unfold, to try something this week. Try offering help to someone at least once. If you want to be an overachiever go for two or three. But make it real and be conscious of it and not because you need to be needed but because someone else needs help and even if the timing is terrible (especially then) be aware that you might be the answer to their prayer. Be a helper.

But also, try saying yes at least once to an offer of help that comes your way this week. And if it’s two or three times, even better.

And then just pay attention to what you notice. What you learn from those two experiences. I bet it may very well lead you to say thanks. And even wow.