Ps 42-43
Preparing Our Hearts and Minds for Worship:
- Worship is about connecting with God, about being written into God’s story.
- As we gather let us ponder God’s story and how we are written in.
o What do we bring to the story and how does God see that gift being used?
o What longings and thirsts do we bring as we come to worship?
o What does God do with these thirsts, these stories, these gifts? What do we expect God to do in worship?
Today is the second week of a five-week series based on United Methodist Bishop Robert Schnase’s Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. Last week we focused on Radical Hospitality and next week we’ll focus on Intentional Faith Development. But this week, as many of you have been praying and pondering for the last six days, we’re focusing on Passionate Worship as an vital practice of fruitful congregations.
Yet, even if I were to quote Bishop Schnase’ definitions of Worship, Passionate, and Passionate Worship, I think we might still be scratching our heads and wondering in our hearts, “Okay, Bishop, that sounds fine and good, but what does that mean for us, here, this day? What does Passionate Worship really mean for us normal people?” Am I right? Thankfully, today we have before us a wonderful passage of scripture, Psalms 42-43, that help us to truly see what Passionate Worship is all about. Vera read just Psalm 42, because that’s what I sent her, but as I studied more, I recognized the importance of reading and praying Psalms 42 and 43 together, because they are, in fact, one psalm, one prayer. Therefore, let us hear the prayer again including Psalm 43, this time from the Message paraphrase.
“1 A white-tailed deer drinks from the creek; I want to drink God, deep draughts of God. 2 I'm thirsty for God-alive. I wonder, ‘Will I ever make it - arrive and drink in God's presence?’ 3 I'm on a diet of tears - tears for breakfast, tears for supper. All day long people knock at my door, Pestering, ‘Where is this God of yours?’ 4 These are the things I go over and over, emptying out the pockets of my life. I was always at the head of the worshiping crowd, right out in front, Leading them all, eager to arrive and worship, Shouting praises, singing thanksgiving - celebrating, all of us, God's feast! 5 Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul? Why are you crying the blues? Fix my eyes on God - soon I'll be praising again. He puts a smile on my face. He's my God. 6 When my soul is in the dumps, I rehearse everything I know of you, From Jordan depths to Hermon heights, including Mount Mizar. 7 Chaos calls to chaos, to the tune of whitewater rapids. Your breaking surf, your thundering breakers crash and crush me. 8 Then God promises to love me all day, sing songs all through the night! My life is God's prayer. 9 Sometimes I ask God, my rock-solid God, ‘Why did you let me down? Why am I walking around in tears, harassed by enemies?’ 10 They're out for the kill, these tormentors with their obscenities, Taunting day after day, ‘Where is this God of yours?’ 11 Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul? Why are you crying the blues? Fix my eyes on God - soon I'll be praising again. He puts a smile on my face. He's my God.
“1 Clear my name, God; stick up for me against these loveless, immoral people. Get me out of here, away from these lying degenerates. 2 I counted on you, God. Why did you walk out on me? Why am I pacing the floor, wringing my hands over these outrageous people? 3 Give me your lantern and compass, give me a map, So I can find my way to the sacred mountain, to the place of your presence, 4 To enter the place of worship, meet my exuberant God, Sing my thanks with a harp, magnificent God, my God. 5 Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul? Why are you crying the blues? Fix my eyes on God - soon I'll be praising again. He puts a smile on my face. He's my God.”
A man in the coffee shop this week was talking to me about life and faith and his journey – strangers often do this when you tell them you’re a pastor – and he said something that stuck with me. Talking about people coming to church or not, or believing in Christ, he said, “Everybody we meet’s wrestlin’ with something.” I think there’s a lot of truth in this, and today’s psalms lend their support. Psalms 42-43 are psalms for everybody, and especially, psalms for those wrestlin’ with something. They’re lament psalms written for community worship. And what lament means is that they are prayer in which people and communities pour their broken hearts out to God in a passionate plea for help, for salvation, and for guidance, trusting that God will do it. And even as laments are filled with accusations and complaints against God, they are also immensely faithful acts of trust and praise, for God is good and works in the world for good.
It’s true: we’re all wrestlin’ with something. The psalmist definitely speaks of this wrestlin’. As we look at Psalms 42-43, we can see a basic, recurrent pattern: wrestlin’-lament followed by praise-filled refrain; lament and praise-filled refrain; lament and praise-filled refrain.
From the first lines of the psalm, we know something’s up in the lives of those who pray these words (and remember, we’ve prayed them together in our reading): “As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” This is not a “let’s go to worship,” ho-hum kind of statement. This is intense longing (telling God that our only sustenance is our tears), and this is Passionate Worship – an intense desire to be in the presence of God and to drink from the cool water Christ offers each of us to satisfy our thirst for relationship with God. We don’t know what the psalmist or the original community is wrestling with, but we know it has made them feel as though God is absent, and caused the unbelievers around them to mock them saying, “Where is your God?”
But immediately after offering this lament and complaint to God, the psalmist turns to a memory of being in the midst of the worshipping throng with glad songs of thanksgiving on their lips. For us, it would be like when in the midst of wrestling with some struggle, perhaps wondering how to make ends meet in a bad economy, we suddenly have some memory of being in the midst of the worshipping community, perhaps the church of our youth. And in the process of recalling this memory, we are filled anew with hope, for God was and is and always will be faithful and good.
In worship, one of the things we do is remember: we recall and retell the mighty acts of God read in scripture, and we give testimony to God’s continued mighty acts. Through such worship, God fills us with hope to get us through whatever it is we’re currently wrestling with, which is precisely why the next lines of the psalm are a repeated refrain. Imagine how this psalm might play out in its original worship context. The leader, praying as representative of all our concerns (like Doyle), speaks passionately about feeling overwhelmed by the struggles of life. And the response – like our “Lord in your mercy, hear our prayers” – is this refrain: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God” (v.5-6a). In this, the gathered community turns from lament to claim the hope they have in God, that God will bring them through and enable them to worship and praise. And in this very act, their hope is already fulfilled, for they are worshipping. Through their lament and promise of praise, through their worship, God transforms them, fills them with hope, heals them, and inspires them. And this pattern repeats in Psalms 42-43 three times: lament of current struggles, memory God’s goodness and past work, and praise-filled refrain.
That is precisely what Passionate worship is about. Through the experience of worship, God works in and for the world, transforming us, inspiring us, healing us, filling us, and sending us out for others. Through worship, God reminds us that God is good, and has always been and will always be about the work of redeeming the world and drawing creation to Godself. And because this is true all the time, we come to worship God with expectancy; we believe that God will show up, will work in us, will change our lives for the transformation of the world. When we gather for worship, we believe with all our being, that God will bring the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven! Don’t we?
To be characterized by passionate worship doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to wave our hands or clap or cry – though we might. To be a community characterized by Passionate Worship means that we gather weekly because we want to, fully expecting that God will be present and work powerfully in our midst through songs, prayers, preaching, and the sacraments (and finding that God is). Through Passionate, Truthful Worship, God changes people’s lives, every day. If this isn’t happening, then either we just haven’t developed the vision to see transformed lives and it really is happening, or God isn’t doing it because we’re not asking for it, not expecting it.
And of course, this is the big question when it comes to being characterized by Passionate Worship: Do we expect God to work in our lives through worship? Do we expect God to speak when the scriptures are read and proclaimed? Do we expect God to actually nourish us spiritually and physically with the bread and juice of communion? Do we expect God to call us to and empower us for Christ’s mission in the world? Do we come with prayers on our lips that God would reveal Godself to us in mighty and intimate ways? Or do we simply come to worship because we always have, desiring merely that we might be comforted and assured that we’re okay, that God’s okay with us?
Through communities of Passionate Worship, God transforms lives for the transformation of the world. God heals. God emboldens. God fills with hope. God challenges. God calls. God confirms. God equips and sends. All this is available to us in Christ through the Spirit, by simply participating in communal worship in Spirit and truth. We come, daily and weekly to worship as those always wrestling with the stuff of life, with struggles of how to be faithful in a world that constantly denies the existence and power of God. We come to hear and proclaim the refrain of the psalmist: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God” (v.5-6a). The question is: do we truly, honestly expect anything of God in our worship?
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