On a recent retreat day, I found myself led to Psalm 86. Here’s a piece of The Message version of this Psalm. As you read these words, and especially the plea at the end, I’d like you to read it on two levels.
First, are there times when you’ve needed to know someone was on your side? Maybe a “gang of thugs” wasn’t literally coming for you, but circumstances had piled up to the point you weren’t sure where to turn.
And, imagine being someone who lives with an all-too-present threat. Some of us are those people, I’m sorry to say. Many of us have not faced this daily fear of, say, an abusive family member. Or of someone who would take one look at their appearance and decide they should be deported, or belittle their value as “a DEI hire.” As we come toward PRIDE Sunday this weekend, I’m thinking of our queer kin who have known this kind of opposition and challenge. Whether we live this heaviness or only imagine it, do pause for a moment to notice this is thing for too many in our world.
Now read these words with your own experiences and that range of people in mind. Notice that these words are said by the person who has lived this distress.
Psalm 86.11-17, The Message (emphasis mine):
“From the bottom of my heart I thank you, dear Lord; I’ve never kept secret what you’re up to. You’ve always been great toward me—what love! You snatched me from the brink of disaster!… A gang of thugs is after me— and they don’t care a thing about you. But you, O God, are both tender and kind, not easily angered, immense in love, and you never, never quit. So look me in the eye and show kindness, give your servant the strength to go on, save your dear, dear child! Make a show of how much you love me so the bullies who hate me will stand there slack-jawed, As you, God, gently and powerfully put me back on my feet.”
Can you hear these words in your own self, remembering God has been there in those threatening times? I can! The day I came to this I luxuriated in those words at the end, picturing God reaching down, picking me up, and “gently and powerfully” putting me back on my feet. Have you ever needed that? Aaah.
When I think of the people I’ve known and the ones I read about in the news that need to know these words every day, part of me is really glad our holy book says this so clearly. I believe those words about God’s tenderness and kindness; I love that God is always coming after us, lifting us back up. I love thinking about these words bringing comfort, and endurance, to persons on a path that is rough, every day.
And I wonder how many have never known the God these words describe, have long since given up on believing God stands with them against that threat to their life and happiness.
Some years ago I memorized Psalm 118, which contains these words:
“Out of my distress I called upon the Lord;
the Lord answered me and set me in a broad place.
With the Lord on my side I do not fear.
What can mortals do to me?” Psalm 118.5-6 (NRSV) (emphasis mine)
I remember thinking with gladness of God setting hurting people into “broad places” like the churches I’ve known and loved. Places of healing and community, of love and forgiveness. And immediately that thought was replaced with the awareness that our churches haven’t always been those kinds of places! We’ve sometimes been places of judgment and distance, of not making room, seeing, caring enough to be a solace to a sibling in distress.
We aren’t gathered into churches just for our own healing and connection, as important as those things are. We’re also here to create that space for one another, and for others who haven’t considered the church a place where can even happen. Have you seen that? How are you living that? How are we doing that together at Collegiate/Wesley?
One tiny expression of us being that “broad place” of safety and rescue is what we’ll do THIS Sunday when we move our worship to the ISU Memorial Union and join in the Sunday PRIDE service. We’ll be saying to our LGBTQIA+ kin, with our whole selves, we are with you; we are for you. I’m imagining that morning as a time when we see God, gently and powerfully, put them, and all of us, back on our feet.
I look forward to seeing you there.
