“Project Zion Part 2: The Pathway” (Psalm 130)

 

When I was on our school basketball team, in the locker room before we went out on the court, we would do what probably every other boys’ basketball team did. We would pop into a boom box a mix tape and crank up the volume of certain “hype” songs to pump us up, songs like “Eye of the Tiger” or “Thunderstruck” to get us going so that we could hopefully play with energy and passion.

And there’s a way in which you can see the Songs of Ascent as the ancient Jewish equivalent of “Eye of the Tiger.” As I said last week, the people of Israel were taught a few times a year to go on a hiking trip to Jerusalem, as a religious practice meant to train them to sense what life is about. God’s plan for the world is to make it into something beautiful again, a future captured in the vision of a great city, Zion—we called it “Project Zion.” This regular pilgrimage instilled in people the understanding that their lives were part of this, they were moving toward Zion. And the songs we have here in these 15 “Psalms of Ascent” were the playlist, the hype music, given by God to help motivate them as they trudge along. 

And I suggested that this seems to be a good time to listen to and even sing these walking songs again. Because as a society we have lost our way. We have forgotten what life is about, where we’re going. We’ve lost sight of Project Zion. And we’ve lost the passion and motivation and direction we need to live well. We need to turn up the boombox.

These 5 sets of 3 songs motivate the journeyer in three ways:

• The first song in every set of three is a song of dissatisfaction. This is not okay; we will fight! If like me you’re a child of the 80’s, think “We’re Not Going to Take It.” We saw one of those songs last week: “They’ve attacked me often from my youth, but they have not prevailed!”

• The final song in each trio identifies the goal worth fighting for: think “You’ve Got to Fight for the Right to Party”—except in these songs, of course, the goal is a greater celebration, the great gathering in Zion. We’ll look at one of those next week. 

• And in between the songs of dissatisfaction and the goal is a song about taking action in the present, about what we need to do right now: maybe think “Lose Yourself.” The middle Psalms of these sets are all about a kind of activity: Psalm 121 speaks of a journey from here to Zion. 124 speaks of escape from enemies to safety. Psalm 127 speaks of building the great city of Zion. All of them in different ways are about the process of moving from what’s wrong to what’s right. And that’s what we’re looking at this morning—a song about the action to take as we fight the problem and we pursue the goal

Except, here’s the thing. Psalm 130 does not sound like a typical hype song, does it? It’s not what you’d listen to in order to rev yourself up to run through a brick wall. If anything it feels like the opposite, right? “Out of the depths I cry to you. I wait!” And, actually that’s true about all of these middle songs that focus on what we should do. Psalm 121’s song about the journey says “I lift up my eyes, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord.” Psalm 124’s tune about escape goes: “Unless the Lord was on our side, the enemy would have swallowed us alive.” Psalm 127’s lyrics about building say: “Unless the Lord builds the house, the labors build in vain.” All of these songs are meant to help move us forward on our journey, towards life’s purpose; all are about important activity; and yet all of them say, “We can’t do this on our own. We need God’s help!” 

This morning’s Psalm in particular comes from a place of intense suffering; that’s clear from these words, though we don’t know the specifics. And what the writer has learned to do in response to the pain is to wait. This song starts in the first 4 verses with a prayer of waiting, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” And then it moves to a moment of self-reflection about waiting: “I am waiting for the Lord, like watchmen wait for the morning.” And finally it moves outward to offer counsel to the rest of God’s people—this is what you need to do also.  “O Israel, hope, which could also be translated “wait” on the Lord. 

This is near the heart of what it means to be a Christian. Do you want direction in your life and the ability to pursue what is good? Do you want to have a sense of motivation and passion? To do this, our Psalm says, you must learn to wait on God. 

To understand why waiting on God is so important, so fundamental to the Christian life, I think it’s helpful to contrast the posture of waiting on God to what we often do instead when we are dissatisfied and long for something better. We often avoid; waiting on God chooses honesty. We often take arrogant action; waiting on God chooses to ask humbly. We take a kind of refuge in cynicism; waiting on God is a posture of confident hope.  

We often avoid; waiting on God chooses honesty.

When we face the problems of this world, one of our most common ways of dealing with the pain involved in that reality is simply by avoiding. By turning our eyes away. By pretending, “Really, the problem is not that bad.”

We can try to maintain a certain “It’s all good” attitude, where we try to spin everything in cheerful optimism. We keep a smile on our face and fight to hold a positive attitude. We can only pull that off by turning our eyes away from the bad. We stay a healthy distance from hospitals or poverty or nursing homes or anything that might remind us of problems; if a friend is going through difficulty, we “set boundaries” and keep ourselves a bit removed—why should we let ourselves be dragged down? Life is easier if we don’t let ourselves feel the hard parts. 

Of course, you can’t stay in that. The difficulty of this world is just too pervasive. To avoid really wrestling with the hard stuff in life, we find ways to escape. We distract ourselves with Tik Tok, YouTube, and Instagram; we binge Netflix, we keep really busy with work, all so that we don’t have to think too much about life. And if that doesn’t work, maybe we’ll numb our senses with alcohol or something else.

Do you remember the old phone game “Temple Run?” The whole game’s idea was that you were being chased by evil monkeys through a temple. As long as you kept moving, turning, jumping, the monkeys would never catch you. And sometimes that’s how we deal with the bad stuff in life: as long as we keep running, won’t have to deal with it. But of course, if you’ve played the game, you know that always, eventually, you have to stop running. Always the monkeys will catch you. Always, eventually, you will have to stop avoiding and facing the hard realities of life. Suffering has a way of breaking into every life.

Which is what has happened to this Psalmist. And so he responds, not by avoiding, but by naming his situation with utter honesty. “Out of the depths I cry.” Depths here is an abbreviated way of saying “depths of the ocean.” In other words, “I’m drowning.” 

Have you ever felt like you are drowning?

When I was a kid, our family would on summer days go to the local lake where we could cool off in the water. I remember one time, before I knew how to swim, we were playing catch with a tennis ball in the water and my brother threw the ball in a slightly deeper part of the lake. I ran out to get it and realized when I did that I had gone too far and no longer could keep my face above the water. Now, had I kept my cool, I could have walked back a couple of steps and been fine. But I didn’t. I panicked. I felt like the water was swallowing me. I tried furiously to keep my head above the water by bouncing up and down, but I couldn’t stay up long enough. The water kept covering me so that I couldn’t catch a breath. I was terrified. 

This is where the Psalmist is at: “I am in the middle of the ocean, all alone, with no land in sight. The waves are tossing me up and down, and I cannot keep my head above the water. The depths are sucking me down; I am drowning.”

When you feel like you are drowning, two things become painfully clear. The first is that you desperately want things to change. You want out of this situation. You want safety and the ability to breathe. And the second, and this is what makes it so terrifying, is that there is not a single thing you can do to make that happen. 

And the Psalmist understands that’s the situation he is in. In verse 3 he says, “LORD, if you should mark iniquities, who could stand?” What he’s acknowledging is a complete lack of bargaining power. God is the only one who can help him, who can get him out of this, and yet he has no chips to cash, no leverage over God. He knows that the painful position he is in is his fault; he has done wrong; this is frankly what he deserves. “God, I realize, that if this is just about what I have earned, I have no standing before you. I deserve to have you let me drown.” 

This song is something we are meant to sing, because this is our situation as well. Do you realize that in this life, on your own, you are in the depths without the ability to swim to safety?  

In Alcoholics Anonymous, when a person has finally come to a place where they’re facing their problem, do you know the first step they are told to take in seeking change? It is for the person to admit that they are powerless. Only once they are able to be honest is change possible.

And this is also a starting point for Christian growth—for the journey God invites us to take. If you sense your life is not right; if you long for something better, the path of healing starts with honesty rather than avoidance. This is the first step in waiting. And the second step is asking.

We often take arrogant action; waiting on God chooses to ask humbly. 

When I was panicking in that pond, I yelled out for help, and someone came to get me. And that’s what the Psalmist does as well: “From the depths, I cry out to you Lord!”

I don’t know if this is a particularly American thing, but many of us are simply not good at asking for help. If and when we see a problem with our lives, it’s up to us to fix it. We take action. 

And to be clear, taking action is often the right thing to do when we face certain problems. When we’re overwhelmed that our room is messy, we really should make our beds. When we feel worried that someone might rob us, we lock the door at night 

The problem is that we actually believe that if we can solve the problem of a messy bedroom, we can also solve the problem of a messy life. If we can protect against petty theft, we can also protect against suffering in general. In a weird arrogance a part of us believes that we can solves life’s greatest challenges just through force of effort and hard work.

I was just reading a biography of Steve Jobs, and it described how people who worked for Steve Jobs spoke of him having a “reality distortion field,” where he regularly expected his employees to accomplish impossible goals in impossible time frames. And sometimes it seemed through sheer force of will and a lot of yelling, he was able to bring about the impossible. 

But when a tumor on his pancreas was found, the reality distortion field stopped working. No amount of will and genius on his part, no amount of money spent on doctors could take this away. In the end he could not beat death.

See, the problems in this world, the problems with our lives, with ourselves, are too great for us to fix. Do you realize this? Do you see that trying to solve all this with intelligence and strength of will—that it’s a total dead end? 

The Psalmist knows this. So he does the only thing to do when you truly understand your situation, the only thing that can make a real difference. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” He puts all of his energy, bets all of his chips, on one possibility: that God will hear him and help him. “O Lord, hear my voice. O Lord, let your ears be attentive to my please for mercy.” 

And after he calls out, asking for help, he waits. Because that’s all you can do after you ask, right? Verse 5: I wait for the Lord to fulfill his promises, he says, more than watchmen wait for the morning.

Guard duty in that day, like it is for policeman today, was shift work. This meant that whoever was lowest on the totem pole had the late watch from the middle of the night until the morning. And most of the time, if you are keeping watch on the town streets or on the edge of the town walls, absolutely nothing is happening. Which means most of the job is about waiting. Waiting in darkness without having any wristwatch to keep track of time. Waiting, looking at the sky and for the longest time seeing nothing but black. Some nights would have felt like they took forever: when is the sky going to get lighter and the sun rise so that I can go home to my family, have something to eat and then go to sleep? It’s a posture of helplessness: there’s nothing the guard, the “watchman” can do to make day come more quickly—all he could do was wait, wait with all his being. 

Do you know what that feels like to pray and just wait? It feels so powerless, because it is—it’s a relinquishing of power. It’s totally vulnerable, because it’s out of our control. And it also is the only way.

Look, within the Christian life, there is a place for working hard; there is a place for effort as we journey toward Zion, as we seek his kingdom. But we are taught to sing this song so that we can learn that the only way to do this is from the posture of dependent waiting. We strive: we listen to God and we seek to obey only after we come to accept how completely dependent we are on the love and forgiveness of God. We seek to live wisely and grow his church only as we accept that it’s the Spirit who ultimately enables us to do what is good. The paradox is that waiting and effort, rightly understood, are not opposed to each other. It’s only after we acknowledge our weakness, only as we ask, only as we wait, that we can find a different kind of strength that comes from God.

For that to begin to make sense to us, we need to consider the third contrast. We often avoid; waiting on God chooses honesty. We often take arrogant action; waiting on God chooses to ask humbly. 

We take a kind of refuge in cynicism; waiting on God is a posture of confident hope.  

When people have moved from avoidance to trying to act to fix things and eventually have come to realize they can’t, often where they end up is cynicism. There’s nothing we can do. We can’t really expect anything to be better, because this world is hopelessly broken. 

But cynicism is ultimately the refuge of cowards.

The other day I came across something written by the rock musician Nick Cave, in a blog responding to someone struggling with despair. He describes how he has come to understand the difference between cynicism and hope. He writes, “much of my early life was spent holding the world and the people in it in contempt. It was a position both seductive and indulgent.” What changed him was the devastating loss of his son—only in being brought low did he come to see the significance of hope.

And he says, “Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like, such as reading to your little boy, or showing him a thing you love, or singing him a song, or putting on his shoes, keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.

Do you hear his point? The way we find courage to take meaningful action is through hope.

Have you noticed that, as honest as this Psalm is about the difficulties of life and one’s own helplessness, he never descends into cynicism? As he is drowning, he doesn’t just surrender to the water—what can I do? No, he calls out to God, asking him to hear. When he waits, it is like a watchman waiting for the morning. Just like the guard knows the sun will rise, his posture is one of expectation. He’s not crossing his fingers and wishing for the best; his hope is one of confident expectation, the kind of hope that gives a person courage to love.

How? How is he able to find this courageous hope? Verse 5: “I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his WORD I hope.” This hope is possible because God has spoken.

All sorts of people have all sorts of ideas of what divinity might be, of what force might be at work in this world. Christianity’s difference is that it starts with God actually telling us who he is and what he is doing. And here’s what God has said: these are words spoken to Moses and recorded for us. He says, “I am the Lord, who abounds in love and faithfulness. I maintain my love to a thousand generations, and I forgive iniquity, rebellion and sin.”

These words have power. If you let them, they can utterly change you, they can free you up to be honest about your weakness and allow you to ask for help. They can give you the courage to hope. That is what they have done for the Psalmist.

“With you,” the Psalmist says in verse 3, “There is forgiveness.” You have said, O God, that when people cry out in helplessness, you forgive their iniquity. And so I will bet my life that this is true. 

And these words can do this for us. “O Israel, hope in the Lord, he says in verse 7, for with the Lord there is steadfast love and plentiful redemption. God has promised that when he sets his love upon a person, that love is immovable and unchangeable; no matter how much it costs, he will do what it takes to rescue the one who is drowning. Wait on him.

This morning we have even more than the words of God promising that he will be this way. We have the very Word of God, Jesus himself, going to the cross for us to wipe away our sin, showing beyond the shadow of a doubt that with God is indeed forgiveness. That he would choose to give up everything, laying down his life for us to rescue us who are drowning and helpless. If you can see that, then you know that waiting for God to hear us when we call, waiting for God to be good and do good is like being in the middle of the night, waiting for the sun to rise. We don’t yet see it, but we know it will come. We wait with expectant confidence.

 

Will you join with this song? Will you allow its truth to become part of you? Will you call out to God in your weakness and hopelessness and wait on his forgiveness and love? This is the way toward experiencing forgiveness and God’s kindness. And it is the only way, the only way truly to begin to set out for Zion.