Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. - Psalm 137.9
Abbot Philip Lawrence of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert in New Mexico, noting that the monks of his community pray their way through 270 psalms per week, admits that, "It takes a lot of inner work to come to appreciate the Psalms." Contrary to the modernizing trend, the abbot and his brothers still pray the entire Psalter, even though "the images of the Psalms can be graphic, violent, and even a bit ugly at times."
He's right, of course: It isn't all green pastures and uplifted gates. These ancient Hebrew poets call their enemies horrible names and ask God to do horrible things to them. Sometimes, they call God some pretty horrible names because they think God has done horrible things to them. Various commentators have offered various bread-crumb trails through this perilous territory. C. S. Lewis offered the creative approach of reading these passages as a caution against provoking those feelings in others by treating them unjustly. Dietrich Bonhoeffer advised readers to see, on the cross, God's ultimate answer to these pleas. C. H. Spurgeon, that rugged old Baptist, warned the comfortable reader against false spirituality: "Let those find fault with it who have never seen their temple burned, their city ruined, their wives ravished, and their children slain; they might not, perhaps, be quite so velvet-mouthed."
But for my money, Walter Brueggemann who, while he includes and affirms the foregoing views, sums up this way: "My hunch is that there is a way beyond the Psalms of vengeance, but is a way through them and not around them." The wily abbot is right: pray them; pray them all without once refusing to set a dainty spiritual foot into the muddied waters of our souls. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, his own life raped by the injustice of Stalin's Gulag, cries out, "The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" The cursing Psalms are God's scalpel to lay bare the diseased portions that yet cling to our converted hearts, and to cut them away mercilessly which, in the end, means mercifully.
He's right, of course: It isn't all green pastures and uplifted gates. These ancient Hebrew poets call their enemies horrible names and ask God to do horrible things to them. Sometimes, they call God some pretty horrible names because they think God has done horrible things to them. Various commentators have offered various bread-crumb trails through this perilous territory. C. S. Lewis offered the creative approach of reading these passages as a caution against provoking those feelings in others by treating them unjustly. Dietrich Bonhoeffer advised readers to see, on the cross, God's ultimate answer to these pleas. C. H. Spurgeon, that rugged old Baptist, warned the comfortable reader against false spirituality: "Let those find fault with it who have never seen their temple burned, their city ruined, their wives ravished, and their children slain; they might not, perhaps, be quite so velvet-mouthed."
But for my money, Walter Brueggemann who, while he includes and affirms the foregoing views, sums up this way: "My hunch is that there is a way beyond the Psalms of vengeance, but is a way through them and not around them." The wily abbot is right: pray them; pray them all without once refusing to set a dainty spiritual foot into the muddied waters of our souls. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, his own life raped by the injustice of Stalin's Gulag, cries out, "The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" The cursing Psalms are God's scalpel to lay bare the diseased portions that yet cling to our converted hearts, and to cut them away mercilessly which, in the end, means mercifully.
Incredibly paradoxical, perhaps the Psalter reflects images of light and darkness inhabited by every living soul. Accepting an invitation to dance with either partner simply reveals both the human condition and the grace of our God.-KJM
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