(Posted mostly to see if Kas will delete it)
Kathleen Norris is one of my favorite authors. She writes very personally and honestly about life, which means that she writes very personally and honestly about the Christian faith. A few years ago, she wrote a book called The Cloister Walk. It was even near the top of the "New York Times" best seller list, in spite of a very powerful religious Christian message. It's a wonderful book about a year she spent as a novice at a Benedictine Monastery.
Kathleen Norris had no plans to become a nun or anything like that, but she spent time at this Benedictine Monastery simply to get her life back together. She was just spent, just drained. Since she was spent from her work as a poet, from her life as a wife, from her struggle with depression, she was just spent from living.
She didn't go to the monastery to escape life. Rather, she went to battle with the truth about life. She had an inkling that that truth was to be found in the faith she had left behind many years earlier.
As a poet, she had delved deeply into the stuff of life: joy, pain, alienation, depression, love. But she had left the Church exactly because, as a teenager, she just couldn't be good anymore, when good was defined as being pleasant and doubt-free and moralistic. In her twenties, she found out that you were more likely to have honest reflections about suffering, love, alienation and anger simply by walking into a coffee shop or a poetry reading or even a rock concert inNew York City, than by walking into most churches.
She writes in The Cloister Walk, "I have lately realized that what went wrong for me in my Christian upbringing is centered in the belief that one had to be dressed up, both outwardly and inwardly, to meet God, the insidious notion that I needed to be a firm and even cheerful believer before I dare show my face in His Church. Such a God was of little use to me in adolescence. Like many women of my generation, I simply stopped going to church when I could no longer be good, which, for girls especially, meant no breaking rules, not to give voice to anger or resentment, and no complaining."
I don't think it matters which gender you are, but it seems that all too often churches are houses of small talk and polite chatter, rather than vibrant centers of honest struggling with the real parts of life.
Do you want to know why so many young people are not part of the Church today? I think it has something to do with this dishonest separation of faith from the real stuff of life that they deal with on a daily basis. It makes them believe this separation, that Church really just isn't worth it. Kathleen Norris was one of them. She was like that.
But then twenty years later in the Benedictine Monastery, she began, out of her desperation, to give the Church another chance. She discovered the Psalm. She discovered the ancient, honest struggle of God's people. The people of God, who she discovered in the Psalms, didn't need to be dressed up outwardly or inwardly in order to meet God. In the Psalms, she discovered fear, doubt, depression, resentment, anger, yes, anger, anger at injustice, anger at oppression, anger at unfaithfulness, anger that rises beyond raised voices and high blood pressure, even goes beyond bitterness and broken relationships, anger that becomes an abiding fury, an all-consuming hunger for retaliation. It's there in our nice little "B-I-B-L-E, yes, that's the book for me." It's there in the Psalms, this fury and bitterness, because it's part of real life.
As I said before I read this passage, I suspect that some of you have never heard this Psalm before. Everyone who writes about it, starts off their book or their article by saying that it is one of the most disturbing parts of scripture. The hateful fury of the last lines of this Psalm hardly seem worthy of being in a book whose purpose is to reveal to us the nature of a loving God.
Listen again to those last lines: "Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem's fall, how they said, ?Tear it down. Tear it down to its foundations.' O daughter of Babylon, you devastate us. Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us. Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rocks."
Look at those words. Open your worship order. Look at those words on the page. Read them to yourself again, the last lines of that Psalm. How can they be there? How can God's word put forth such sentences? Raw sadness, bitter suffering, undiluted fury and, worst of all, this unquenchable lust for murderous, baby-killing revenge. How can they be there in our Bible?
I doubt that it actually makes much difference to you, sort of historically, why it's there, but I think it does help. You should know what brought about these awful words. Israel had practically ceased to exist because of the Babylonians and their partners, the Edomites.
These two enemies came to Israel's Promised Land, the land that God had given them, and utterly destroyed it, fields, cities, homes and fortress. Among the people they slaughtered were the poor and powerful, man, woman and child. Although Israel thought it could never happen, that the world would cease to exist should it ever come about, the Babylonians brought down the Temple in Jerusalem. They obliterated God's very dwelling place on earth. Those they didn't slaughter were either left to work as slaves of the Babylonians in the fields or were forced to be wandering refugees, impoverished and defeated aliens in distant lands, or they were taken to Babylon where their tormentors could keep a close eye on them.
Whoever wrote this Psalm was one of those taken off to Babylon, a thousand miles away from anything familiar or comforting, being mocked and abused, feeling lost and abandoned by God, aching for something resembling normal life, praying for justice, praying that God had not completely abandoned them.
The Psalm goes on lamenting one's own suffering. It goes beyond a painful longing to worship God again in Jerusalem in the Temple, as it's supposed to be. It goes where we would rather have it not go, in a frightening crescendo from bitter memories to a mushroom cloud of fury. It ends with a sickening, ravenous call for revenge.
In other, more peaceful days, I think we might have a hard time understanding these words. But in these days, what will sadly go down in American history as days dominated by terror, we have to admit just how easy it is for us to feel the fury of this Psalm. Terror now fills our world as it filled the lives of God's suffering people in Babylon. Where there is terror and humans together, there is a ravenous call for revenge.
The night after September 11, 2001, our U. S. Congressman, spoke on a local news broadcast. The anchor asked him what we should do to those responsible. He coldly said, "We should find out who did it, and we should kill them." He didn't quote the Psalm, but he certainly echoed its tone and the tone of so many people in this country since those days. "Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us." Why not? It's right there in God's holy word.
I do not believe that Christians can ever support the use of violence, but even I feel the draw of meting out sweet revenge on a heartless enemy. Maybe that's the only way to maintain order and security in this world. Maybe God does approve of our lust for revenge and retribution. Maybe the Psalmist agrees, and that's why it's there. I don't think so. I can't live in a world like that.
The Psalm, you see, is a prayer. It's spoken to God. There is no doubt that the writer of this Psalm is consumed with fury and lust for revenge on his enemies. But the Psalmist knows that he doesn't have to get all dressed up inside in order to address God.
God can take his fury. God can take his rage. God can listen to his longing for retribution. God can take it. And in being so frighteningly honest with God, the Psalmist has opened himself up to be healed by God.
His words, his prayer, for it is a prayer, make it obvious that this fury is a consuming fire. It's destroying him. He will rejoice when the Babylonian babies are smashed against the rock. Such a desire is simply a surrender to what is most base, what is most inhuman in us. I believe the Psalmist knows that he has become inhuman in his desire to see his inhuman enemies destroyed. Through hate he has become his enemy.
Thus he needs God to know. He needs God to know this wrath that is inside him. He needs God to know this death that is inside him, for if it isn't expressed to God, it will spread like gangrene. So, he has the faith, yes, the faith I tell you, the trust, to be honest with God about his fury.
Such honesty with God is the first step to being healed. Through this prayer, retribution is left in the hands of God, and with God, retribution is left at the foot of the cross.
"FAITH AND FURY"
Kathleen Norris is one of my favorite authors. She writes very personally and honestly about life, which means that she writes very personally and honestly about the Christian faith. A few years ago, she wrote a book called The Cloister Walk. It was even near the top of the "New York Times" best seller list, in spite of a very powerful religious Christian message. It's a wonderful book about a year she spent as a novice at a Benedictine Monastery.
Kathleen Norris had no plans to become a nun or anything like that, but she spent time at this Benedictine Monastery simply to get her life back together. She was just spent, just drained. Since she was spent from her work as a poet, from her life as a wife, from her struggle with depression, she was just spent from living.
She didn't go to the monastery to escape life. Rather, she went to battle with the truth about life. She had an inkling that that truth was to be found in the faith she had left behind many years earlier.
As a poet, she had delved deeply into the stuff of life: joy, pain, alienation, depression, love. But she had left the Church exactly because, as a teenager, she just couldn't be good anymore, when good was defined as being pleasant and doubt-free and moralistic. In her twenties, she found out that you were more likely to have honest reflections about suffering, love, alienation and anger simply by walking into a coffee shop or a poetry reading or even a rock concert inNew York City, than by walking into most churches.
She writes in The Cloister Walk, "I have lately realized that what went wrong for me in my Christian upbringing is centered in the belief that one had to be dressed up, both outwardly and inwardly, to meet God, the insidious notion that I needed to be a firm and even cheerful believer before I dare show my face in His Church. Such a God was of little use to me in adolescence. Like many women of my generation, I simply stopped going to church when I could no longer be good, which, for girls especially, meant no breaking rules, not to give voice to anger or resentment, and no complaining."
I don't think it matters which gender you are, but it seems that all too often churches are houses of small talk and polite chatter, rather than vibrant centers of honest struggling with the real parts of life.
Do you want to know why so many young people are not part of the Church today? I think it has something to do with this dishonest separation of faith from the real stuff of life that they deal with on a daily basis. It makes them believe this separation, that Church really just isn't worth it. Kathleen Norris was one of them. She was like that.
But then twenty years later in the Benedictine Monastery, she began, out of her desperation, to give the Church another chance. She discovered the Psalm. She discovered the ancient, honest struggle of God's people. The people of God, who she discovered in the Psalms, didn't need to be dressed up outwardly or inwardly in order to meet God. In the Psalms, she discovered fear, doubt, depression, resentment, anger, yes, anger, anger at injustice, anger at oppression, anger at unfaithfulness, anger that rises beyond raised voices and high blood pressure, even goes beyond bitterness and broken relationships, anger that becomes an abiding fury, an all-consuming hunger for retaliation. It's there in our nice little "B-I-B-L-E, yes, that's the book for me." It's there in the Psalms, this fury and bitterness, because it's part of real life.
As I said before I read this passage, I suspect that some of you have never heard this Psalm before. Everyone who writes about it, starts off their book or their article by saying that it is one of the most disturbing parts of scripture. The hateful fury of the last lines of this Psalm hardly seem worthy of being in a book whose purpose is to reveal to us the nature of a loving God.
Listen again to those last lines: "Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day of Jerusalem's fall, how they said, ?Tear it down. Tear it down to its foundations.' O daughter of Babylon, you devastate us. Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us. Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rocks."
Look at those words. Open your worship order. Look at those words on the page. Read them to yourself again, the last lines of that Psalm. How can they be there? How can God's word put forth such sentences? Raw sadness, bitter suffering, undiluted fury and, worst of all, this unquenchable lust for murderous, baby-killing revenge. How can they be there in our Bible?
I doubt that it actually makes much difference to you, sort of historically, why it's there, but I think it does help. You should know what brought about these awful words. Israel had practically ceased to exist because of the Babylonians and their partners, the Edomites.
These two enemies came to Israel's Promised Land, the land that God had given them, and utterly destroyed it, fields, cities, homes and fortress. Among the people they slaughtered were the poor and powerful, man, woman and child. Although Israel thought it could never happen, that the world would cease to exist should it ever come about, the Babylonians brought down the Temple in Jerusalem. They obliterated God's very dwelling place on earth. Those they didn't slaughter were either left to work as slaves of the Babylonians in the fields or were forced to be wandering refugees, impoverished and defeated aliens in distant lands, or they were taken to Babylon where their tormentors could keep a close eye on them.
Whoever wrote this Psalm was one of those taken off to Babylon, a thousand miles away from anything familiar or comforting, being mocked and abused, feeling lost and abandoned by God, aching for something resembling normal life, praying for justice, praying that God had not completely abandoned them.
The Psalm goes on lamenting one's own suffering. It goes beyond a painful longing to worship God again in Jerusalem in the Temple, as it's supposed to be. It goes where we would rather have it not go, in a frightening crescendo from bitter memories to a mushroom cloud of fury. It ends with a sickening, ravenous call for revenge.
In other, more peaceful days, I think we might have a hard time understanding these words. But in these days, what will sadly go down in American history as days dominated by terror, we have to admit just how easy it is for us to feel the fury of this Psalm. Terror now fills our world as it filled the lives of God's suffering people in Babylon. Where there is terror and humans together, there is a ravenous call for revenge.
The night after September 11, 2001, our U. S. Congressman, spoke on a local news broadcast. The anchor asked him what we should do to those responsible. He coldly said, "We should find out who did it, and we should kill them." He didn't quote the Psalm, but he certainly echoed its tone and the tone of so many people in this country since those days. "Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us." Why not? It's right there in God's holy word.
I do not believe that Christians can ever support the use of violence, but even I feel the draw of meting out sweet revenge on a heartless enemy. Maybe that's the only way to maintain order and security in this world. Maybe God does approve of our lust for revenge and retribution. Maybe the Psalmist agrees, and that's why it's there. I don't think so. I can't live in a world like that.
The Psalm, you see, is a prayer. It's spoken to God. There is no doubt that the writer of this Psalm is consumed with fury and lust for revenge on his enemies. But the Psalmist knows that he doesn't have to get all dressed up inside in order to address God.
God can take his fury. God can take his rage. God can listen to his longing for retribution. God can take it. And in being so frighteningly honest with God, the Psalmist has opened himself up to be healed by God.
His words, his prayer, for it is a prayer, make it obvious that this fury is a consuming fire. It's destroying him. He will rejoice when the Babylonian babies are smashed against the rock. Such a desire is simply a surrender to what is most base, what is most inhuman in us. I believe the Psalmist knows that he has become inhuman in his desire to see his inhuman enemies destroyed. Through hate he has become his enemy.
Thus he needs God to know. He needs God to know this wrath that is inside him. He needs God to know this death that is inside him, for if it isn't expressed to God, it will spread like gangrene. So, he has the faith, yes, the faith I tell you, the trust, to be honest with God about his fury.
Such honesty with God is the first step to being healed. Through this prayer, retribution is left in the hands of God, and with God, retribution is left at the foot of the cross.
