Graceful Anger--January 29, 2020

Graceful Anger--January 29, 2020

"O LORD, you God of vengeance, you God of vengeance, shine forth!

 Rise up, O judge of the earth;

    give to the proud what they deserve!

 O LORD, how long shall the wicked,

    how long shall the wicked exult?

 They pour out their arrogant words;

    all the evildoers boast.

 They crush your people, O LORD,

    and afflict your heritage.

 They kill the widow and the stranger,

    they murder the orphan,

 and they say, 'The LORD does not see;

    the God of Jacob does not perceive'." [Psalm 94:1-7]

Do you ever watch the news and just get mad at the rottenness and suffering around us on this little blue planet?

Do you ever read the headlines of the day and feel something in you clench up, like a fist, or like a charley-horse in your soul?  Do you ever find yourself aching, like with a pain you can feel inside, over the frustration and helplessness and sadness of the suffering in the world... and in our own neighborhoods?  And do you find yourself ever sighing the words, "Doesn't anybody care about this?"

If you've ever been there, or if you are there on a regular basis, then there is a strange kind of hope in this psalm of lament and justice.  I will admit this is an odd choice for a devotional reflection.  I doubt these verses are anybody's specially chosen confirmation verses, or cross-stitched with hearts and angel wing designs on a wall-hanging or decorative pillow at your house.  In fact, when I was paging through the psalms earlier and happened upon these verses, I almost blushed at them. These are the sort of things we sometimes want to pretend aren't in the Bible... but here they are.  These are the sort of verses that make us uncomfortable, and so we don't want to think about what leads somebody to pray them.

Even more embarrassing for me, perhaps, is that I happened up on these verses just a short while after being steeped in Paul's words of abundant and overflowing grace from back in Romans from yesterday's devotion... and coming across these words at first feels like spiritual whiplash.  I have to admit, I almost wanted to keep on turning through the Bible to find something cheerier to write about.  But these words wouldn't let go of me.

And now, after they have wrestled with me, I am glad of it.  There is an unexpected and life-giving grace here that I did not see at first.

This is what caught my attention:  the voice praying believes deeply that God cares about the rottenness and suffering of the world.  The psalmist calls for God's help, not for self-interest, and not in order to get things on his own wish list, but for the sake those who are most vulnerable.  This is a prayer of someone who deeply believes that God is angered by injustice, and who promises to act in order to restore life for those who are the most endangered.  The poet longs for God to be angry--he expects that God will be angry--but not randomly or capriciously or irrationally.  He prays trusting that God will be at work to show grace to the ones "with their backs against the wall," as Howard Thurman used to put it, and to deflate the puffed-up proud.

In other words, the psalmist has lived through days like we have lived through, where it is almost too much to read the day's news or watch the talking heads on television for all the rottenness and hurt around.  And maybe this praying poet has seen so much crookedness and callousness in the face of others' suffering that he feels like nobody else is paying attention, or maybe they just don't care.  And yet--there is God.  And yet--there is this hope that God has not fallen asleep or gone away, this hope that God is not on the side of the crooks and the schemers or the arrogant proud.  There is this hope that God will yet lift up the lowly and help the ones most threatened by the powerful--the ones referenced by the familiar set of "the widow, the stranger, and the orphan."

This is what I have come to love about this prayer I have been overlooking all my life: the psalmist is upset at how the vulnerable are endangered, and he assumes--he trusts!--that God will be upset over this, too.  These words come from a place of outrage, but not a selfish or cruel sort of outrage.  It is outrage that longs for justice in a time when it sure looks like powerful crooks are getting away with their crookedness ("pouring out arrogant words," as he puts it).  This prayer comes from a place of deep compassion for those who have been stepped on, and anger that everybody else around seems to just accept it as normal. 

So the poet calls on God, as if to say, "This isn't OK!  The vulnerable shouldn't be treated this way!  Those who have no safety net should not be put at risk!  Foreigners and children without parents and those who are trying to make a life on their own, they should all be treated with special regard and protection, but they are being treated like they are disposable!"  And the prayer calls on God to act so that those whose lives are most endangered are restored.  It is a prayer for justice to be done, and for tender care for those most at risk.

Prayers like this remind me that the world around us--and the loud voices in it--may not see the importance of caring for those most in need or most endangered.  But God does.  The God who heard the cries of enslaved Hebrews in Egypt hears the cries of the widow, the foreigner, and the orphan and raises them up. The God who put pompous old Pharaoh in his place will humble the arrogant and give the crooked their comeuppance.  Even if it feels like everyone else around is OK with things as they are, the living God promises to put things right...to raise up those who have been stepped on... and to restore life for those under the boot of death-dealing powers.

There is an anger here, to be sure, but it is a graceful anger--a passion for things to be put right, a yearning for justice to be done, and a cry for those most threatened to be cared for tenderly.  This is a prayer for God to be a Mama Bear, fiercely defending her cubs.  On the days when it seems like no one else is upset by the rottenness around, I need an urgent prayer like this, which takes as its starting point the trust that the living God cares about the ones with their backs against the wall.

That sort of God won't be co-opted by the proud who think they have "won" the game, but insists on standing beside the people on the margins: children without the protection of their parents, foreigners away from their homelands, single moms trying to make it in the world, and everybody else who has been told they were disposable.

I need to know that such a God yet lives, and that such a God can be called on to act.

Rise up, O God, and work your justice to lift up those who have been stepped on, and to deflate the arrogant and the crooked.  Rise up in your Mama Bear graceful anger for the sake of the ones with their backs against the wall.