Foundry United
Rev.
“Is Hope Hopeless”
Sunday, October 30,
2011
Rev.
Hope that Saves
Psalm 131
We selected Psalm 131 for today's teaching because we are thinking about hope right now, and Psalm 131 ends with the words "O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forever more." Psalm 131 is about hope.
Remember the Book of Psalms is ancient Israel's hymnal. The psalms are the lyrics to songs. Psalm 131 is a "psalm of ascents" which means it is a processional psalm. The great choir of the temple in Jerusalem in ancient Israel sang it as they processed into worship.
It is a short psalm, only three verses, so they must have sung it over and over like a baby- boomer praise chorus or 1960s rock and roll. .
It is a psalm with a clear viewpoint about hope, a view point I am frankly not sure I agree with. Or maybe I recognize its truth but just don't like it. It is, at the very least, a provocative viewpoint.
It says, first of all, that hope does not come from comprehension. Hope does not come from understanding. Hope does not come from having an intellectual perspective that gives meaning to life and makes sense of existence and being.
Listen:
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up.
Stop here. The Hebrew word translated 'heart" here is a very difficult word to translate. The ancient Israelites really didn't think about internal organs the way we do. They used one word to describe heart, mind, personality, and large intestines. They thought the heart was where we thought and the large intestines were where we felt. Or the word here probably refers to our thinking function rather than our feeling function.
It would be better translated
O Lord, my intellect is not lifted up.
Then we continue with the Psalm:
My eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous [a better word would be profound] for me.
So the first thing the Psalm writer is saying is that hope does not come from intellectual understanding. Hope does not come from convincing theories about the meaning of life. Hope does not come from comprehension.
This runs very counter to my grain, personally. It really does.
Whenever I get stuck in my life, whenever I have a serious failure, whenever I need to make a change in my life, my lifelong habit has been to read books. If I have a personal struggle in my life I'll read at least three or four books about the topic.
I figure if I can comprehend it, I can work my way through it. Books are my source of hope. Intellectual comprehension and philosophical theories are often my grounding for hope. I do occupy myself with things that are great and profound.
Now to understand what Psalm 131 is arguing, we have to think a little about why comprehension and understanding are so important to some of us.
Information, theories, making sense of things gives us a sense of mastery. And mastery gives a sense of control. And control gives me hope. I have some power and therefore I have hope.
I am not sure this is entirely wrong, but Psalm 131 does.
Twenty-some years ago I was mugged. (I've talked about this before.) Someone held a gun to my head. I did not react well or wisely and he ended up hitting me with the butt of the gun.
After it was all over, I could not describe him or his partner to the police. I had no memory whatsoever of what they looked like.
Because I am a minister, the police thought I was being a softhearted liberal who was trying to protect them. So they kept telling me over and over how lucky I was that the man hit me over the head with the gun instead of pulling the trigger. They kept telling me that the next person they held-up, they might pull the trigger. They told me about cases they'd seen where somebody had pulled the trigger. They were trying to scare me and they succeeded.
So in my late-30s I realized in a new way that I was going to die…that I had limited control over my existence. So I started reading books about longevity. And a lot of the books I eventually drifted toward had to do with diet. I tried one diet after another, and ended up a vegan for about 20 years.
My doctor tells me maybe I'll live a little longer because I was a vegan for so many years. And he says maybe I won't.
I think I was a vegan for so long because I knew that there are many things in life over which I can have no control, but I could at least control what I put into my mouth. The illusion of mastery.
I read theories in books about longevity and developed a comprehension and understanding of what leads to long life in order to have a certain degree of mastery over my own existence.
Psalm 131 says mastery does not work. Mastery is not a source of hope. I am not sure the psalm is totally right. Or maybe it is pretty much right and I just don't like it.
Here's where psalm 131 says hope comes from.
Verse 2 begins:
But I have calmed and quieted my soul …
The Hebrew word translated soul here is interesting. This particular Hebrew word is translated many different ways. It is sometimes actually translated as blood. When the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy in the Old Testament have laws prohibiting the eating or drinking of the blood of animals, the word they use for blood is the same word Psalm 131 uses for soul. Most often it seems to mean "life force." Whatever is it that makes us alive. Whatever leaves our bodies when we die.
So I actually think that one pretty good translation for this line "I have calmed and quieted my soul" would be "I have calmed and quieted my blood pressure."
Have you ever been to the doctor and your blood pressure has been high and the nurse has told you to relax and take some deep breaths and calm yourself and then taken your blood pressure again and it has gone back to normal?
I think that this is exactly what Psalm 131 is talking about. Interestingly, this is the very opposite of mastery. This is about letting go. This is not about trying harder. This is about relaxing. This is not about understanding or grasping but surrendering.
So the psalm says hope comes not from mastery but from surrender. Lowering our blood pressure.
Then Psalm 131 continues
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother, my soul is like a weaned child that is with me.
So Psalm 131 claims hope comes not from mastery but relationship…a relationship like that of a child and a mother. The relationship is between our soul and the Lord, Yahweh, the God of the universe.
Here is the argument of the psalm – if we quiet and calm ourselves, we can have a sense of a relationship between ourselves and the God of the universe that will be like the relationship of trust between a young child and his or her mother and it is in this relationship that we find hope. It is this sense of relationship that gives us hope.
Why a weaned child?
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother, my soul is like a weaned child that is with me.
Why a weaned child?
Because in ancient Israel, a child pretty much had physical contact with his or her mother 24 hours a day until they were weaned. The child was carried on a sling on the mother's body all day long and slept with the mother at night until they were weaned at two or three years of age.
The common practice was that when the child was weaned from breast feeding, the mother would begin to separate physically, the child would be expected to be able to give the mother some space during the day, and at night, and the parents might begin to work at having another child. And the child would learn to eat meals when everybody else ate meals. The weaned child was still very close to the mother, but it was beginning to trust that the mother would take care of him or her even if the mother was not in constant physical contact.
John Bowlby's attachment theory says that children growing up are constantly experimenting with separating from their mothers but, in order to do it, they need a sense of trust that their mother will be there when she is needed. Watch a young child in the park with his or her mother. The child will cling to the mother until they feel safe. Then they may wonder a distance away to explore but if they stumble and fall, they will run back to their mother who will rub the booboo and reassure them, and then after a while the child will begin to explore and wander away until someone comes along with a dog and the child will be scared and run back to their mother, until the mother assures them that the dog is a friendly dog.
Psalm 131 says this is what our relationship is like with God. We wander out into the world, testing our wings, and when we fall and get a booboo, we calm ourselves and quiet our blood pressure and become aware again that we are children of the God of the universe until we are reassured and have hope again.
This is where hope comes from, Psalm 131 says.
Psalm 131 argues that our hope comes not from our own determination or competence or control. I am not sure Psalm 131 is totally right about that.
I once heard Johnny Rae Youngblood talk about a relative of his. At family gatherings, he said, when someone would ask this particular relative was up to these days, he would always answer, "I am waiting for my ship to come in."
The only problem with this answer, Johnny Rae said, was that the man had never sent any ships out.
I think sometimes we can do things that add hope to our lives. The way we live and what we do makes a difference.
But Psalm 131 is probably mostly right. There is so much in life over which we do not and can not have control that we'd do well to lower our blood pressure and be aware of the God of the universe is our mother so that when difficult times come, we can hope in her.
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