Cross Roads: Where We Wait

Psalm 130 

This is the third Sunday on which we have done things like this, as we begin the third week of what is becoming our new normal; a new normal in which we work hard to stay at home, which includes a daily address from our president, at least a weekly address from our governor; a new normal in which we hardly go outside, and in which we are careful to not come too close to anyone we may meet on the street, where there are marks on the floor telling us how to stand in the grocery line and we try not to touch anything we do not need to touch.

We have come to accept; the numbers of those infected by the illness will go up. We accept, the numbers of people who have lost their jobs, whose lives have been turned upside, the number of those who are hurting and in need will go up.  We accept this just as we accept the numbers which show us the strength of our economy will go down. Yesterday, as we were walking across a field on an evening walk, I expressed to Mike how important I thought it was that we continued to go for walks. We need to go for a walk every day, just in case a day came, in the near future, where we were encouraged to no longer go outside at all. We should make sure we take advantage of our ability to enjoy each and every beautiful day, just in case, just like so many other things, walking freely about our neighborhood becomes a luxury we no longer have. This is where we are right now.

It is from this strange reality in which we now live, the words of this Psalm comes to us, “Out of the depths, I cry to you Oh Lord.” And it is from the depths in which our society currently finds itself, we all cry out to God. We ask God to hear our voice, to be attentive to our supplications, to our requests for relief, for healing, for the complete irradiation of this virus which currently plagues so many the world over. We ask the Lord to look not at our sins, at our failings, at all the ways we have turned aside from the ways God and instead turn to us in compassion, mercy, forgiveness but most importantly healing and restoration.

“Out of our depths we cry to you, Oh Lord, hear our voices, listen to our pleas.”

The psalmist cries out in pain, in desperation, from whatever depths he was experiencing at the time, he does not tell us why he is crying out to God, which allows us, alongside believers throughout the centuries, to co-op his plea and allow his words to give voice to the cries of our own hearts. His words also express a turning to God, something we too find ourselves doing. The Psalmist cries out to God, not because he fears God cannot or will not hear him. He does not cry out to a deaf and dumb god, who like the gods of the countries around him were nothing but metal and wood, without ears to hear, or a will which can be moved on his behalf. The psalmist calls out to the One and only living God of the universe, who has the power to speak all things in to existence; has the ability to hear his voice and can move to give him aid, comfort, healing and mending to his brokenness.

The Psalmist calls out in faith. Some might think, crying out like this would be a sign of a lack of faith. But it is the exact opposite. When we cry out to God, in our pain, from the places of our hurt, in fear, and in desperation, this is a cry is a cry of faith not of unbelief. When we say to God, “Where are you in this,” “Why can I not see you,” “Can you even hear me,” “Do you see what is going on,” we are calling out to God and even though the words we say my seems to question God, the fact that we continue to cry out to God, is a statement of our faith none-the-less. As we lay our hurts, our cares, our fears, our own desperation upon the ancient words of this psalm, can do so from the same place of faith from which the psalmist originally penned them.

Each week this Lent, I have reminded you that Lent is a road down which we are traveling and as we travel, the psalms are the cross roads we encounter along the way, this week we come to this new cross road. As we come to this new road which crosses our path, carrying the burdens of our hurts, of our fears, of our concerns, of the losses we have already experienced and the losses we may soon experience, we stop. We look this way and that. The road no longer seems familiar, we are unsure which way we are supposed to go. The way forward is uncertain and we cry out to God hoping for a response, hoping for guidance, knowing God can hear us, but unable to know if we have heard a response. Unsure of the way to go, we set down our burdens and wait. And this is the hardest part.

If there is one thing these last two week have told us, if we did not already realize this, is that we are horrible at waiting. When the best thing we can do for ourselves is to stop for a while, to slow down just a bit and wait it out, we find excuses to go to the store more often than we should, we try to come up with reasons we need to go visit our friends, and we become tempted to join others in the park, when we know we really shouldn’t.

 We live in a time and a place in which what we do is our identity. We tell people, I am a pastor, a doctor, an electrician. It is the second question we ask others, following right on the heels of asking their name. The subtext of this culture of, “you are what you do,” is that you are nobody; you are nothing, if you are not doing something.  So we are a people who are unable to sit still, to do nothing, because we are afraid that means we are nothing.

The absolute worst thing for anyone to tell us is that in order to accomplish something, or anything is for us to wait, to be still, to do nothing. It makes no sense it goes against our training, against our inherent beliefs. It goes against everything we have been told all of our lives. Our cry in the face of any hardship, any obstacle, any hurt or pain, is, “There’s gotta be something I can do!”

Yet, here we are in a place where we must wait; a place where we need to be still, to find our way, by not going anywhere. And even here in our waiting, we join the words of this psalm as the psalmist say, “I wait for the Lord.” We wait, and we do so faithfully, expectantly, because we know we are not alone. We are not waiting for that which will never come. We are waiting for God. But we can’t make it happen; there is nothing we can do right now to bring about the working of God in this situation. We can do nothing but be still, stay at home and wait; wait knowing God redeems all things; wait knowing God hears us, knowing God will respond. We wait knowing God will bring redemption even to this.