“CURSES!”
Psalm 55 and Psalm 109
July 24, 2011 - Rev. Janet Duggins
Jesus said, “Love your enemies. Pray for the people who persecute you.” That sounds like something Jesus would say, doesn’t it? It might even be a principle we can agree with, at least sometimes. It does sound like it might the best way to be, the way of “rising above” way. I think we can appreciate that it might be the way to de-escalate conflict and move toward peace in the world.
The problem is we aren’t Jesus. And a lot of the time “love your enemies” is not an
attitude we really feel like embracing.
Sometimes we don’t even have any interest in trying. “Love your enemies” can seem as remote and
impossible an idea as building a spaceship and flying to Mars, as ridiculous as
a suggestion that you might try turning scrap metal into gold or digging a hole
to get to
Of course we tent to not actually use the word “enemies” very often (except perhaps to refer to terrorists or soldiers from a country our country is at war with). But nobody gets through life without other people doing some bad things to you or to those you love. Nobody can help but see that there are folks whose greed and violence – or mere carelessness and selfishness – causes ripples of destruction that hurt others.
It might be a co-worker who took credit for your efforts, the company who let you go after years on the job, the spouse who left, the friend who broke a promise or lied to you, a person who spread an untrue rumor, neglectful parents, or manipulative siblings. It might be someone you counted on who let you down or someone who perpetrated a crime against you. It might be people who look down their noses at you (or actively practice discrimination) because of who you are, how you look, where you live, what you have, or your race, age, gender, sexual orientation. It might be groups who promote values that seem wrong to you or whose actions disrupt your peace of mind.
You know what I’m talking about: there are times when “love your enemies” sounds nice in theory but unrelated to real life. I don’t mean to sound like I’m arguing with Jesus here. It’s not that I don’t think he’s right in what he asks of us. I’m just pointing out that “love your enemies” can be a pretty long way from where we are sometimes.
One way of dealing with that is to pretend that we’re on board with Jesus’ agenda: put on a smile, smother your anger, act like you love everyone, even say a couple of prayers for those who’ve hurt you. Sometimes “fake it ‘til you make it” works, and some genuine love, forgiveness, compassion and prayer will emerge. At other times, though, this way isn’t any more than a pretense, or at best, denial.
At those times, the Psalms come to our rescue. If you thought last week that the lament Psalms were not really very reverent or religious, the Psalms we read this morning – examples of what are sometimes called “cursing Psalms” - probably were even more startling. We don’t read stuff like this in church very often, and possibly some of you are a little shocked that these words are in prayers, let alone in prayers that are found in the Bible!
What on earth are they doing here? What are we supposed to think about them? What are we supposed to do with them? Can it really be ok to feel this much anger or wish this much harm to someone else (never mind saying so to God!)?
Some people read these Psalms and want to say that they really don’t belong in the Bible – somebody must have made a mistake in including them. Others may see them as reason to dismiss much or all of the Old Testament as being too full of a kind wrath and negativity we just don’t need anymore. I encourage you not be too quick to go there, because these Psalms are a resource for us when “love your enemies” is an attitude too incomprehensible to even pretend at.
These Psalms help us to name the evil we face in the world.
Surely just about everybody can relate to this story of betrayal from Psalm 55:
“My companion laid hands on a friend and violated a covenant with me with speech smoother than butter, but with a heart set on war; with words that were softer than oil, but in fact were drawn swords.” (vv. 20-21)
And who hasn’t thought something like this, from Psalm 70?
“… let those who seek to hurt me be covered with scorn and disgrace.” (v. 13b)
Some of the cursing Psalms are quite… creative:
“… like grass let them be trodden down and wither. Let them be like the snail that dissolves into slime.” (Psalm 58:7b, 8a)
And occasionally they express desires that are so shockingly awful and even hateful that we know they are wrong, even while we recognize the helpless and irrational rage behind them. Psalm 109 (you probably noticed!) is full of this:
“Let his prayer be counted as sin. May his days be few; may another seize his position. May his children be orphans, and his wife a widow…. May there be no one to do him a kindness, nor anyone to pity his orphaned children.” (vv. 7b-9, 12)
If you find this sort of thing disturbing, you wouldn’t be the only one. Psalm 109 provides an interesting illustration of how troubling these psalms have been to religious folks: You might have noticed as we read that in the New Revised Standard version of the Bible the “worst” parts of this Psalm (verses 6 through 19) are presented in quotation marks, as if the person praying the prayer is simply quoting all the bad things his enemy has said about him. That softens the edges of the Psalm considerably, but in fact this is an interpretation which doesn’t have much of a basis in the text. In our translation, all those curses are preceded by the words “they say” … but those words are in fact not in the original Hebrew, which of course doesn’t have quotation marks either. It’s far more likely that the pray-er here is pouring out an uncensored version of his own irrational rage and ill wishes toward someone who has harmed him.
These psalms aren’t in the Bible to recommend or justify holding on to attitudes of anger, despair, outrage, hate and so forth. They are here because they are prayers of people of faith who at a given moment happened to be in pain – so much pain that they hardly realize and can’t censor what they are saying. These psalms are about what IS, not necessarily about what “should” be. These prayers tell the truth about how we feel sometimes, and they wrestle with what is one of the biggest struggles of faith.
It takes some courage (or maybe “guts” would be a better word!) to pray these Psalms.
These prayers give expression to the anger and pain and outrage we feel when we’ve been betrayed, rejected, hurt, lied to, cheated, disappointed, ganged up on or treated unjustly. They can sort of “keep us company” in the turmoil of our feelings (Davis, p. 26). They can help us to stop pretending that we aren’t angry and tell the truth about how we feel. They are the antidote to every kind of religious sentimentality.
The cursing psalms help us know – really know, in a much-more-than-intellectual sense – that even our anger can be a means of drawing near to God... engaging with God, if you will.
The very fact that the psalmists can see anger as appropriate in prayer tells us something about their understanding of God. Their whole worldview rests on the belief in God’s justice, love and faithfulness. That doesn’t mean “niceness.” It does mean that (because God loves God’s people and cares about justice) God is outraged and angry sometimes, just as we are, about things human beings do to other human beings. Anger is NOT always (as we are sometimes told) the opposite of love; sometimes it’s evidence of love. The psalmists understand this, so they believe that God will be able to accept and even relate to the anger they feel.
This freedom to express anger and outrage in prayer can give us a chance to examine our anger and can give God a chance to work in it, in us.
Ellen Davis tells a story of a time when she prayed these psalms – shouted them at God, in fact. A friend had betrayed her trust in a painful way, and she was devastated. A teacher suggested that she go into the chapel at her school when no one was around and read some of the cursing psalms at the top of her lungs. It turned out to be excellent advice. It was a way to express how she felt, and a way to express it to God. But after a bit, she says, she started to sense something else. She could hear that her anger was a just a little bit self-righteous, and she started to see that God’s perspective might not be exactly identical to her own, and then it occurred to her that her enemy might not be an “enemy” in God’s eyes. Even though she was still angry, she was starting to gain a different perspective and move in a new direction.
Part of what this kind of prayer does is give us a way to hand our anger to God. In the cursing psalms, the pray-er always asks God to act. The pray-er always asks GOD to act. The cry for justice or vengeance isn’t for the strength or ability to “get even.” Angry and even hateful as they sound, the Psalms don’t provide a rationale for revenge. It’s for God to take care of those people or groups who have treated us so badly. While our hope might be that God would punish them, teach them a lesson, give them a taste of their own medicine, or something along those lines (and undoubtedly that’s what the psalmists often had in mind, too!) … we know, and the psalmists knew, deep down, that God is God. When you hand something over to God, God does with it what God chooses. God may be angry at someone who hurts another, destroys the bonds of a community, or refuses to do what’s right … but God is also merciful. Thank God for that!
But the thing is: God’s
mercy just might be a little bigger than ours; it might extend to people we
wouldn’t extend mercy to. The cursing psalms guide us toward realizing that
that decision is in God’s hands. And God’s
agenda will likely always be bigger than ours.
The healing and justice God seeks isn’t just for me, or for you, but for
our families and our faith community, and the larger community we are a part of
and the world we all live in. (
Does this heal or dissipate our anger and make us ready to “love our enemies”? Not always and not usually right away. But it might put our feelings in a bigger perspective. It might help us know that we don’t have to pretend not to feel them and that we aren’t alone in what we are struggling with. And it might make a place where we can struggle with our most difficult feelings within – rather than separated from - the circle of our faith.
And what about when we are not struggling with anger, outrage, hate or a desire for revenge? The cursing psalms remind us that even when things are good for us, there are always other people who could be shouting these angry prayers, because their lives are filled with pain and betrayal and unfairness. We can make room for others to pray these prayers. We can pray these prayers on behalf of others. We can hear these prayers as reminders to have compassion, to be patient, and to try to understand. We can hear the call in these prayers to stand up for justice, especially for those who are vulnerable.
We can also (IF we have the courage, Ellen Davis says!) ask whether anybody else might have reason to pray an angry vengeful prayer because of something we have done. Oh my, that really turns things upside down, doesn’t it?!!
I hope nobody is begging God to bring my wicked deeds back to haunt me, but you never know. Davis suggests that the poor and hungry of the world might have cause to curse those of us who live in this materially wealthy consumer culture for consuming so much and caring so little about the cost of our lifestyle to others and to those who will come after. (p. 28) That’s something to think about.
No matter where you are or how you’re feeling, these are Psalms that challenge us. Why did we ever think that faith might be just about cozy comfort or escape from reality? This kind of honest engagement with God and with ourselves takes some courage. May God enable us to have it! Amen
Resources:
Getting Involved with God:
Rediscovering the Old Testament by
Ellen F. Davis, 2001.
Psalms by James L. Mays, 1994 Interpretation Commentary series