Open the Word: From the depths
Ideas for sermon preparation
True faith is hard won.
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Here we have another psalm that utters one of the most primeval cries of the human heart. ‘The depths’ (v. 1) are literally those of the sea, and metaphorically an image of despair: it stands for all those ‘depths’ that most, if not all, of us experience at some time in our lives.
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The Jewish people have experienced many such times, and the question has always been the same: how can the God who promises loving care and protection allow such things to happen to his people? Certainly for some Holocaust survivors, such as the writer Primo Levi, their experiences made faith in God an absurd impossibility; and who are we, in our relative comfort, to say that they were wrong? In biblical times, atheism in the modern sense was not a live option; but much of the Hebrew Bible might be described as a running argument with God (an over-simplification, but one that makes its point). Biblical faith, from Moses to Jesus, was never easy or cheap, neither was it a spiritual plaster or a holy duvet; rather it searches beneath the cosy music for something deeper and more hard won — a faith that can only come ex profundis.
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Christians may be reminded of the parable of the girls waiting for the bridegroom (Matthew 25.1-12). The nocturnal vigil is rewarded, but only for those who took the precaution of bringing sufficient oil for their lamps. The gospel-writer appends the stern warning: ‘Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour’ (v. 13; cf. Psalm 95.11).
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Robert Alter suggests that ‘The force of the image is evident. The watchmen sitting through the last three watches of the night, peering into the darkness for the first sign of dawn, cannot equal [our] intense expectancy for God’s redeeming word to come to [us] in the dark night of the soul’ (p. 456).
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If the psalm ends on a note of hope, this is no conventional resolution. In Lent particularly, we are reminded that there can be no resurrection without death, no promise of redemption without the dark night of the soul.