“An Urgent Prayer”

Psalm 70

Wrote Jessica Tate in her commentary on today’s text: “As the community [of faith] gathers for corporate worship, we do well to ask where the urgency lies in our prayers. To be sure, not all prayer needs to be urgent; but if our prayers are never urgent, if we are never impatient for an answer, if there is no immediacy to our concerns, then perhaps we have taken the privilege of relationship with God too lightly. Perhaps we have dressed up our words in beautiful images and turns of phrase but have neglected the urgent cries of our hearts. Perhaps we have not trusted the community of faith to bear the deepest sorrows and fullest joys of our lives.”

She continues: “Ultimately refreshing is [today’s] psalmist’s example that our prayer need not be logical, beautiful, and presentable, but simply the honest, messy, even ugly cries of our deepest selves. How comforting that God chooses to hear them. How powerful a [worshiping] community that can bear them with and for one another’s sake.”

Urgent prayers. Messy prayers. Ugly cries that come from the depth of our being. Desperate petitions straight from the heart. Stark, blunt honesty in the presence of God and the worshiping community. How much more non- Presbyterian than that can we get? What about decency? What about order? What about our status as God’s frozen chosen?

What about all that? Well, any thorough reading of the psalms us going to expose us to messy, painful, ugly, impolite, and maybe even embarrassing moments of prayer – times when God’s people let it all hang out liturgically, spiritually, and emotionally; times when life-changing issues leave no time for polite, pretty, well-rehearsed prayers.

For example, Psalm 70. Reading from The Message, which I find to better catch the sense of the psalmist’s urgency: “God! Please hurry to my rescue! God, come quickly to my side! Those who are out to get me – let them fall all over themselves. Those who relish my downfall – send them down a blind alley. Give them a taste of their own medicine, those gossips off clucking their tongues. Let those on the hunt for you sing and celebrate. Let all who love your saving way say over and over, ‘God is mighty!’ But I’ve lost it. I’m wasted. God – quickly, quickly! Quick to my side, quick to my rescue! God, don’t lose a minute.”

There are no less than six exclamation marks in Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase – six! That, my friends, is urgency – and impatience – and passion. It borders on impolite. Doesn’t this guy understand that it’s God he’s talking to, being impatient with? Yes, he understands fully well that he is speaking to God in an impatient, semi-impolite tone. Doesn’t matter. He’s in terrible spiritual and emotional pain. He needs help – God’s help – and he needs it now.

Furthermore, he doesn’t just want God to help him; he wants God to punish his enemies, to put them to shame. He wants God to turn the tables on them, putting him in the honorable position and them in the shameful. He wants these nasty, gossipy folks to be put in their place by way of a good dose of their own medicine. He wants to see them falling all over themselves and chasing rainbows down dead end alleys. He’s more than impatient or impolite; he’s flat out angry and vindictive.

The message and example of Christ is one of patient forgiveness and reconciliation. The way of Jesus is one of self-sacrifice and humility. To use the words of the Apostle Paul to the Romans, the Christian way is: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them… Do not repay anyone evil for evil… never avenge yourselves.” That’s quite a contrast to the words and wishes of today’s psalmist. If I may be as bold to say so, Psalm 70 is lousy theology.

But let’s be honest. How many of us think theologically when we’re in pain? How many of us take time to carefully think through all the biblical and doctrinal implications of our most urgent prayers of supplication? We know that vengeance is the Lord’s. We know what Jesus taught and lived. We know what the epistle writers have told us. But there are times when what we know is totally overshadowed by what we feel.

God doesn’t want us to seek revenge. God also doesn’t want us to be dishonest, especially with him. If it hurts, God wants us to say so. If we’re frustrated, angry, or impatient God wants is to be honest about that. When our darkest and ugliest thoughts and desires arise God wants us to speak them, acknowledge them, get them out in the open. God knows what we’re feeling. God knows that we can’t always express ourselves in polite, pretty, or even rational terms. He expects us to vent, cry, curse, and even scream.

He doesn’t want us to mouth politely pious words, when what we feel is rage. God wants us to be like Major Charles Emerson Winchester III, a character in the old M*A*S*H television series, who in response to one more practical joke being played on him by Hawkeye and B.J., screams into the microphone of his tape recorder as he’s taping a message for his parents, “Get me the hell out of here!” If that’s what we’re feeling, that’s what God wants to hear, not a load of pietistic pabulum.

The God who hears our prayers is the God who answers them: in his own time, in his own way, and always in accordance with his will. By the power of his Spirit and through the love of Christ Jesus he will calm our inner storms and gently douse the fires that rage within. But he’s willing to let us throw our tantrum, let it all hang out, get it out of our systems. He’s willing to listen as we rant and rave, as we scream, cry, and curse. He doesn’t always respond immediately to our prayers, even the urgent ones. He will not do anything for us that is counter to his will, as in helping us at the expense of someone else. Just because we think someone should hurt, it doesn’t mean that God wants them to hurt.

I doubt that I’ll ever throw a tantrum during the pastoral prayer. I know that I’d be real unhappy if one of you did such a thing during a worship service. That decency and order thing is in the Bible for a reason. But within the context of our life together in this worshiping community called Grace Presbyterian Church, we should all find a time and place to voice our most urgent payers in each other’s company. Often it’s a one-on-one kind of thing. Sometimes it’s a small group kind of thing.

But some way, somehow we need to feel safe enough with one another to honestly, and if necessary emotionally, share our hearts and minds with one another even as we’re sharing them with God. We need a confidential space in which there is no judgment or condemnation. We need occasions when we can listen to one another without criticizing. As John Prine portrays the words of Jesus in a song, “Oh everybody needs somebody that they can talk to/someone to open up their ears and let those troubles through/now we don’t have to sympathize or care for what they do/but everybody needs somebody they that can talk to.”

Everybody needs somebody with whom they can express themselves in the same way that they can address God. We don’t have to agree or even sympathize with what we’re hearing. We most definitely should not condone or encourage ungodly behavior. On the other hand we shouldn’t critique their theology or dismiss their feelings. But we can listen – hear them out – let them vent, and then gently, lovingly respond as Jesus would. Amen.