“Prayer Out of the Depths”
Psalm 130
March 8-9, 2008
Pr. Tom Schoenherr

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.” Eugene Peterson rephrases this saying, “Help, God, the bottom has fallen out of my life.” We met last Monday night for Bible study, and the people there suggested that the psalmist could have been someone like Job, or a person who is depressed, someone with alcoholism, or someone who has a chronic illness, or has lost a loved one.

I suspect that each of us could relate to being in the depths. We know the psalmist or we can relate to the psalmist’s fervent, heart-felt prayer that cries out from the depths. The depths could be a situation or a place where our worth as human beings is questioned because our situation seems so dire that we wonder if there is any hope for us. We may have a loved one who is having trouble seeing any hope right now. Just because our bodies are breaking down, or our minds are getting slower or more confused, or we feel so isolated and alone, does this mean that we are rejected by God?

We live in a time when people are more isolated from one another, even though we have more communication tools than ever before. The goal of people is to be perpetually healthy and happy. When others fail to live up to that standard, we label them a problem that needs to be solved. Our society tends to deny suffering and avoid those who suffer in the depths. Left in denial of reality we are isolated and alone, separated from people who are hurting and also from God who suffers. As the psalmist cries to God from the depths, we cry out to God in prayer as people who are broken and hurting. In Exodus 2: 23-25, the Israelites cried out to God from their slavery. God heard their groaning, and God remembered the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That covenant promise is founded on God’s forgiving love.

“But there is forgiveness with you that you may be revered.” Forgiveness is God’s first act of the new life for the Psalmist. Forgiveness is the center of this entire prayer. We can begin again because we are God’s forgiven and loved children. We are not alone in the depths.

The Psalmist can count on God’s forgiving love, just as surely as those who watch through the night for the promised sunrise. Those who watch know that the dawn is coming and anticipate the sun’s rising. In the same way we can anticipate the promised forgiving love of the Lord for all who suffer. This promised relationship holds on to us and we hold on to the Lord in the depths, to renew us and refresh us with his promise. This is the ground of our hope.

That hope that is confident in the coming of daybreak, according to Walter Brueggeman, Old Testament scholar, is to the confidence that things as they are for us in the depths, are not as they will be. Life is transformed in the Lord and we are set free to hope in the Lord, reaching out with all that we have to the Lord. It is the Lord Jesus Christ who comes into the darkness, the depths of death with us and for us. He hears our cry out of depression and fear, loneliness and death, and Jesus Christ comes to take our depth of death on himself. He is nailed to the cross and dies our death for our sin. Through faith in Christ we can say with the Psalmist, “there is forgiveness with you that you may be revered.” That reverent fear is wrapped up in hope that things as they are in the depths, are not as they will be. In Christ our lives are made whole and healed.

We are set free to live with suffering and still be healthy. We do not have to think that we are not healthy until we are free of cancer, or heart disease, or depression or any other situation. We are living in the presence and forgiving love of Jesus Christ in the midst of the depths.

We are set free to be mindful of and enter into our suffering. We don’t need to deny it or try to run away from it. We can face the depths in hope for there is nothing; neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The Psalmist says that God’s love is “steadfast” love, never giving up, continually reaching out.

Paul Tillich talks about God as the ground oond our understanding. As we dig more deeply we grow in faith, grasping more fully through the power of the Holy Spirit, the depth of God’s love for us and the joy of being in God’s Kingdom now and forever.

The last two verses of the Psalm give us an opportunity to put our own names in the psalm as recipients of God’s redeeming love. Like a father or mother for their children, God can’t help but redeem and embrace his children. Let’s read those two verses, and put your own name in the place of “Israel.” Let’s read it a second time and replace “Israel” with the name of a family member or friend who may be in the depths right now.

“Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. O people of God, hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem.” In Jesus’ name. Amen.