there is one to address
hope in the midst of loss and darkness
Much Christian piety and spirituality is romantic and unreal in its positiveness. As children of the Enlightenment, we have censored and selected around the voice of darkness and disorientation, seeking to go from strength to strength, from victory to victory. But such a way not only ignores the Psalms; it is a lie in terms of our experience.
Brevard S. Childs is no doubt right in seeing that the Psalms as a canonical book is finally an act of hope.
But the hope is rooted precisely in the midst of loss and darkness, where God is surprisingly present. The Jewish reality of exile, the Christian confession of crucifixion and cross, the honest recognition that there is an untamed darkness in our life that must be embraced — all of that is fundamental to the gift of new life.
The Psalms are profoundly subversive of the dominant culture, which wants to deny and cover over the darkness we are called to enter.
Personally we shun negativity.
Publicly we deny the failure of our attempts to exercise control.
The last desperate effort at control through nuclear weapons is a stark admission of our failure to control. But through its propaganda and the ideology of consumerism, our society goes its way in pretense. Against all of this the Psalms issue a mighty protest and invite us into a more honest facing of the darkness. The reason the darkness may be faced and lived in is that even in the darkness, there is One to address. The One to address is in the darkness but is not simply a part of the darkness (John 1:1-5).
Because this One has promised to be in the darkness with us, we find the darkness strangely transformed, not by the power of easy light, but by the power of relentless solidarity.
Out of the “fear not” of that One spoken in the darkness, we are marvelously given new life, we know not how. The Psalms are a boundary (Jeremiah 5:22) thrown up against self-deception. They do not permit us to ignore and deny the darkness, personally or publicly, for that is where new life is given, whether on the third day or by some other uncontrolled schedule at work among us.
Spirituality of the Psalms, Walter Brueggemann, p xii-xiii.
Reading Brueggemann has increased my eagerness to begin our new sermon series this Sunday called “Summer in the Psalms.” We’ll begin in Psalm 32, with a sermon entitled “Hope of Pardon for Serial Sinners.” If you’re in the area, we’d love for you to join us at Grace Church.
