Year B Pentecost 3
Psalm 130A cry from the depths
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD.
2 Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!3 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
4 But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.5 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.7 O Israel, hope in the LORD!
For with the LORD there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.
8 It is he who will redeem Israel
from all its iniquities.Mark 4: 26-34
© The New Revised Standard Version,
(Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989In the name of God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today we will open ourselves to the book of Psalms, Psalm 130, and ponder the song and poetry of each of the four stanzas. This Psalm was given the title in Latin, De Profundis, which means to ‘pour forth’, which it does as the writer reflects upon the essence of our human life and our total dependence on divine grace; the human lot, and how we can only hope and rely on God and God’s grace towards us.
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD.
2 Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!
The Jerusalem Bible interprets this passage as… “Like a drowning man I call to the Lord, Lord, hear my cry for help. Listen compassionately to my pleading.”
It is hard to describe those times in life when we are in the depths, the drowning, when we feel as if we are being swallowed up to death by everything around us, like the image of Jonah in the depths of the sea being swallowed up by the fish. How can we survive the depths of life’s struggles? That time when we cannot imagine another day, let alone the fullness of life again. The time when we have no answer to what is taking place, no strength to change the situation, and we are in the depths of life drowning.
These depths are not just something to be survived, but they are depths that can scar us, change us, and remain with us. I watched a documentary on the Buchenwald Boys, a group of surviving men from the German Concentration Camp in Buchenwald during the second world war. It showed one man returning to the camp recently with his son; the first time since the war ended. The son says to himself as much as anyone, “some people wonder where God was in all this, but God was here, you survived dad.” And his father just turned to him and said, “yes, but what about all the others?” The depths, whatever they are for us in life, do not just swamp up around us and then retreat, but they can scar us, change us, remain with us, and even cost some their lives.
1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD.
2 Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!
3 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
4 But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.
Lord, if you never forgave our sins, Lord, who could survive? But you do forgive us…? Remember this Psalm was written long before the life of Jesus Christ. For a time when God was seen to be very much demonstrated and bound by law, these few verses a true revelation of faith. Lord, if you never forgave our sins, Lord, who could survive? But you do forgive us…? Imagine if every one of our actions was the deciding and engraved mark of our lives and our beings. Imagine if the sin of the world was the summation of who we are. Imagine if the depths that engulf us were inescapable, even the depths of death; in particular the depths that swallow us up as a result of brokenness or sinfulness or the darkness of life. But with the Lord, our life is not bound or swallowed up, but given life, because of Grace and forgiveness. This is the Psalm about the essence of our human life and our total dependence on divine grace and forgiveness.
3 If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
4 But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.
5 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,
more than those who watch for the morning.
The times our family travelled to Mexico to build a house, we camped in a gravel field, and each night, just around dusk, a couple of men would ride their bikes in, and set up about 200 meters from us, where they would build a fire and just sit; all night. At night you could hear them talking or walking a bit. They were the watchmen and their job in the freezing night was to watch and guard. Imagine the waiting for the dawn, the lighting of the sky, the expectation of warmth and going home to sleep. “I wait for the Lord to come, I wait for him,… I rely on the Lord with more certainty than a watchman on the coming of dawn…” This is a statement of faith, a word of hope and expectation. That even in the depths of life, where I cry out, there is more to life, and I, we, are bound by the God of love and grace, and in this knowledge, we hope, we wait, like the one in the coldness of night, looking to the outline of the hills over which the light, the warmth, the sun will rise. This is the time of listening to word and Spirit, of finding the voice of prayer that will not be discouraged. It is like the expectation and hope expressed in Lamentations 3., a time when the writers in Israelite history were in the depths of the destruction by the Babylonians, when they said…
22 The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24 “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
To conclude, Psalm 130 calls the people to put their hope in the Lord, affirming God’s steadfast love and power to save.
7 O Israel, hope in the LORD!
For with the LORD there is steadfast love,
and with him is great power to redeem.
8 It is he who will redeem Israel
from all its iniquities.
This is not a power of might. This is not a power to simply pluck from the depths. This is not a power of self-righteous victory. With the Lord there is steadfast love, ongoing enduring grace, and the power is to redeem, to save, to ransom from sin. In ways a prophetic announcement of the birth of Christ, through whom the love of God is demonstrated, and through whom we are saved, not by our own doing or work, but in faith, by grace.
Let me read you this Psalm again from the New Jerusalem Bible.
1 [Song of Ascents] From the depths I call to you, Yahweh:
2 Lord, hear my cry. Listen attentively to the sound of my pleading!
3 If you kept a record of our sins, Lord, who could stand their ground?
4 But with you is forgiveness, that you may be revered.
5 I rely, my whole being relies, Yahweh, on your promise.
6 My whole being hopes in the Lord, more than watchmen for daybreak; more than watchmen for daybreak
7 let Israel hope in Yahweh. For with Yahweh is faithful love, with him generous ransom;
8 and he will ransom Israel from all its sins.Psalm 130
© New Jerusalem Bible,
(Darton, Longman & Todd and Les Editions du Cerf) 1985
Amen.