Come to my aid, O Beloved! For my fears threaten to drown me.
I sink in the mire of confusion, where there is no foothold;
I have entered deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.
Psalm 69 Nan C. Merrill
Reflection:
Some of us would rather drown than tell anyone what was hurting us or what we are angry about. Our hidden secrets are anchors weighing us down. Eventually, we won’t be able to keep our heads above water. Fear washes over like a riptide and we are scraped along the mire of confusion while fighting against our own best interests.
But some things cannot and should not be hidden. The psalmist has cried so hard that the truth burns her throat as she vomits all of the shame she has swallowed. The acidity makes her mean. She spews her hatred at the only one who can withstand knowing the secrets within her without despising her. God loves her and her siblings whom have hurt her; whom she confesses her hatred for. And when the all of the green bile has surfaced, there is relief; sudden relief. Because once the secret is out it can be let go. And that is where healing and forgiveness can begin.
All that is left is praise for the beloved compassionate God, so the psalmist sings (Psalm 69: 30 – 36 Nan C. Merrill’s Psalms for Praying):
I will praise your Name with song; I will magnify You with thanksgiving.
For I know this pleases You more than complaints, or false promises made under duress.
Let the oppressed see and be glad; you who seek the Beloved, let your hearts be renewed.
For the Heart of all hearts hears those in need, and pours out Compassion to those in bondage.
Let heaven and earth praise the Creator, the seas and all that dwell therein.
For in the Most High lies our salvation, the healing of the nations;
And we, the people of the Eternal One, are invited, we are called,
to co-creation, to co-operation;
thus will future generations inherit the planet renewed,
and those who live the way of Love shall dwell with Love forever. Amen.
Prayer:
Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen. (The 2015 Divine Worship Missal)
I began writing Psalm reflections during Lent of 2020 shortly after we decided to close the church building, work from home, and worship via zoom. It is a practice I have continued since. Many churches use the Revised Common Lectionary (RLC) that rotates scripture on a three-year cycle (A, B, and C). Starting in Advent 2019, Third Church decided to worship with the texts from Year D, which is still not circulated as are years A, B, and C. Year D was created with the goal of including scriptures that were left out or not used as frequently as others. While we were using Psalms in year D, most other lectionary followers were using Year A. In Advent of 2020 we rejoined those who use the lectionary in year B. Advent of 2021 year C. Advent of 2022 year A.
I use the Vanderbilt Divinity Library’s resource for lectionary readings to make text selections.
Year A Psalms
1st Sunday in Advent Psalm 122, 2nd Sunday in Advent Psalm 72, 3rd Sunday in Advent Psalm 146, 4th Sunday in Advent Psalm 80, Christmas Psalm 96, Psalm 97, Psalm 98, 1st Sunday after Christmas Psalm 148, New Year Psalm 8, Epiphany Psalm 72, 1st Sunday after Epiphany Psalm 29, 2nd Sunday after Epiphany Psalm 40, 3rd Sunday after Epiphany Psalm 27, 4th Sunday after Epiphany Psalm 15, 5th Sunday after Epiphany Psalm 112, 6th Sunday after Epiphany Psalm 119, Transfiguration Sunday Psalm 2 or Psalm 99.
Ash Wednesday Psalm 51, 1st Sunday in Lent Psalm 32, 2nd Sunday in Lent Psalm 121, 3rdSunday in Lent Psalm 95, 4th Sunday in Lent Psalm 23, 5th Sunday in Lent Psalm 130, 6th Sunday in Lent Psalm 118 or Psalm 31.
Holy Week: Monday Psalm 36, Tuesday Psalm 71, Wednesday Psalm 70, Thursday Psalm 116, Friday Psalm 22, Saturday Psalm 31.
Easter Psalm 118 or Psalm 114, 2nd Sunday of Easter Psalm 16, 3rd Sunday of Easter Psalm 116, 4th Sunday of Easter Psalm 23, 5th Sunday of Easter Psalm 31, 6th Sunday of Easter Psalm 66, Ascension of the Lord Psalm 47 or Psalm 93, 7th Sunday of Easter Psalm 68, Pentecost Psalm 104.
1st Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 8, 2nd Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 33 or Psalm 50, 3rd Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 116 or Psalm 100, 4th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 86 or Psalm 69, 5thSunday after Pentecost Psalm 13 or Psalm 89, 6th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 45 or Psalm 145, 7th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 119 or Psalm 65, 8th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 139 or Psalm 86, 9th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 105 or Psalm 119, 10th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 17 or Psalm 145, 11th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 105 or Psalm 85, 12th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 133 or Psalm 67, 13th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 124 or Psalm 138, 14thSunday after Pentecost Psalm 105 or Psalm 26, 15th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 149 or Psalm 119, 16th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 114 or Psalm 103, 17th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 105 or Psalm 145, 18th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 78 or Psalm 25, 19th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 19 or Psalm 80, 20th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 106 or Psalm 23, 21stSunday after Pentecost Psalm 99 or Psalm 96, 22nd Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 90 or Psalm 1, 23rd Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 107 or Psalm 43, 24th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 78 or Psalm 70, 25th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 123 or Psalm 90, 26th Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 100 or Psalm 95.
Sources and notes:
“The psalm has two parts. The fist part (vv. 1-29) is opened and concluded by please for salvation (vv. 1 and 29) and is composed of alternating petitions (vv. 1a, 6, 13-18, 22-28) and descriptions of trouble that serve as motivations for the petitions to be answered (vv. 1b-5, 7-12, 19-21, 26). The trouble is twofold. The psalmist is helplessly in the grip of a trouble depicted only in metaphors for the power and sphere of death (vv. 1-2, 14-15), and in his trouble he is derided and insulted by those who shame him without cause (vv. 4, 6-12, 19-21). The petitions seek deliverance from both forms of trouble; verses 22-28 are a particularly vehement invocation of God’s wrath on those who shame him. The theme of reproach (shame, insult, dishonor) is strikingly prominent (vv. 6, 7, 9, 10-12, 19-21). The second part of the psalm is quite like the second part of Psalm 22. There is the promise of praise to be offered in response to salvation, a praise that will encourage the oppressed because it will be a witness that the LORD hears the needy (vv. 30-33). Then there is a prophetic hymn in praise of the LORD who will restore Zion and Judah as an inheritance for the servants of the LORD (vv. 34-36).” Mays pp. 229-230
Mays notes that Psalm 69 is like Psalm 22 in its form and in its use by Christians. ”Psalm 69 cannot be read directly as the prayer of Jesus or as an international prophecy of his suffering. But it does provide a context for reflection on the passion of one who bore reproach for the sake of his God and by the way he bore it and by the vindication of his resurrection gave hope to the lowly and promise that God’s saving will for his servants will be completed. Jesus is the consummate and correcting example of the kind of person for whom the psalm was composed.” Mays p. 233
“Like Psalm 42:1-3, Psalm 69 plunges us immediately into water and tears. …. The psalmist’s tears extend the water imagery (v. 3a; cp. Ps 22:14-15). These tears function positively and negatively. Positively, they anticipated God’s hoped-for empathetic response. Too often in many societies, however, tears are seen as a sign of weakness and are associated with women. Yet prominent men in the Hebrew Bible weep. Jacob and Esau weep when they meet in Genesis 33:4; Joseph weeps three times when reunited with his brothers in Egypt (Gen 42:24; 43:30; 45:2); David weeps over his dead son Absalom (2 Sam 18:33). …. Negatively, tears signify a diminished body that has been worn out by weeping (v. 3a); the psalmist’s tears mingle with the flood waters to threaten her life. …. Ironically, in the midst of all of these waters the psalmist’s throat is “parched” (v3b), perhaps from calling out repeatedly to God.” W pp. 199 -202
“As William P. Brown notes, “The psalmist is drowning in shame”; she is “sunk” by slander and insults that are swallowing her up. To reinforce the petitions, the psalmist uses “self-abasement language” such as “needy” (v. 33), “lowly” (v. 29), “oppressed” and “servant” (v. 17). The psalmist’s acceptance of her dependence on God by using these terms “reinforces God’s power, but also God’s obligation” in the patron/client relationship.” W p. 204 citing William P. Brown, Seeing the Psalms: A Theology of Metaphor and Amy C. Cottrill, Language, Power, and Identity in the Lament Psalms of the Individual.
“In addition, relational “loyalty language” reinforces “mutual interdependence” between God and the psalmist. She calls on God’ “covenant loyalty” vv. 13, 16 as grounds for granting her petition and for reminding God of their binding connection. Other loyalty language includes “mercy” (v. 16), and “love” (v. 36). Especially powerful from a feminist viewpoint is God’s attribute of mercy, from the Hebrew, which means “womb”. The plural in v. 16 forms the abstract idea of compassion. The NRSV translates “mercy”, which obscures this feminine image of God; a better translation would be “womb love” (cp. Gen 43:30; 1 Kgs 3:16-28; Exod 33:19; 34: 6; Pss 25:6; 103:13; Jer 31:20; Isa 49:13). The psalmist names God’s womb-love as a warrant for forgiveness, which prompts the surfacing of other God images that challenge the dominant violent Warrior-Deliverer God metaphor found in vv. 22- 28.” W p. 204 citing Cottrill, Language, Power, and Identity, and Denise Dombkowski and Michael S. Koppel, Grounded in the Living Word:The Old Testament and Pastoral Care Practices.
“The psalmist demands that God “pour out your indignation” (v. 24) on the enemies in retribution; God’s anger must “drown” the enemies, reversing the psalmist’s drowning in shame. The enemies will be “blotted out of the book of living” (v. 28a, a later rabbinical reference to the ledger opened on Rosh Hashanah). While the psalmist was given “poison for food” and “vinegar to drink” (v. 21; cp. Matt 27:34, 38; Mark 15:23; Jer 8:14; 9:15; 23:15) by the enemies, God must now “let their table be a trap for them” (v. 22a). The violent tit-for-tat rhetoric of reversal provides a psychological release for anger and frustration for the psalmist and Israel; it comes from a time when Israel “was not actually capable” of carrying out these actions (exile). The “disjunctive metaphor” of womb-love joins those of God as Mother in Labor and Nurturing Mother (Isa 42:13-14; 45:13-15; 66:10-13) and embodies hope for the future of traumatized, exiled Israel in Isaiah and for the less-than-perfect psalmist and her community in exile (v. 5).” W pp. 204-205 citing Daniel Smith-Christopher, Jonah, Jesus, and Other Good Coyotes and L. Julian M. Classes, Mourner, Mother, Midwife.
“Suffering for God’s sake appears in Jeremiah’s laments (11:18-20; 15:15-18; 17:14-18; 18:23); Lamentations; Psalm 44:22, 24; Isaiah 53; and Job. These texts are all shaped by the experience of exile, as in Psalm 69, which asserts that God “will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah” (vv. 35-36, probably a later addition).” W p. 205
“Most interpreters point to male figures in the Bible who suffer for God’s sake as embodiments of the rhetoric of Psalm 69. Do any female biblical characters qualify?” W p. 205 Suggests Job’s unnamed wife. Wisdom Commentary also mentions Rizpah from 2 Samuel 21:1-14
“The most familiar prayer in the Anglican tradition address God as the one “from whom no secrets are hid.” The prayer suggests that we spend a lot of our time, in every part of our lives, hiding secrets. But being in the presence of God, at prayer, is the one place where such secrets cannot and must not be hidden. What are these secrets that cannot be hidden? In the tradition of the church, that phrase has mostly referred to sins–“secret sins,” specifically–ones that we do not wish to acknowledge but can and must before God. The book of Psalms, for one, is not overly concerned about human sin and guilt. Thus without denying “secret sins” that cannot be kept hidden, the Psalms more likely suggest that it is our propensity to violence that cannot be hidden, and so that is the matter brought to speech before God. Of course it is not unlikely that our propensity to violence is a sin, at least some of the time.” Brueggemann p. 94
“…the Psalms give evidence that an alternative to denial in the service of “better angels” is the act of bringing the violence to speech in a context of trustful attentiveness, hearing, and responsiveness. In ancient Israel, such a practice features violent rhetoric in the presence of God and perhaps others in the context of a “rehabilitative local liturgy.” Erhard Gerstenberger has proposed that the Psalms give evidence that these compositions may have been used amid families and clans in local rehabilitative rituals in which elders or priests conducted protocols that would have enacted social transformation and restoration after a period of deathliness.” Brueggemann p. 95
“…the only way to emancipation from a propensity to violence and a thirst for vengeance is out-loud utterance, whereby the propensity and thirst can be readily entrusted to a trustworthy conversation partner . Only in this way can one move past the mobilizing urges that savage our will to measure up to cultural expectation. This practice, anciently in the Psalter and contemporarily in therapeutic practice, knows that denial does not finally and fully work. So, not only can secrets not be hidden from god; they must not be hidden from the self in the presence of God. Consequently, while we bourgeois readers of the Psalms may often find ourselves offended by the rhetoric of violence that they feature, we would do better to recognize them as scripts for emancipation and health, because this kind of utterance, when honestly entrusted to another, persists u, as the Anglican say, to “perfectly love God” and “worthily magnify” God’s holy name. Derivatively, such honest also permits love of self and love of neighbor as we love ourselves. Two palms that give voice to the rhetoric of violence before the presence of God are useful examples of this dynamic.” Brueggemann p. 95 The two psalms he is referencing are 69 and 137.
“Thus after petition, description, and statements of piety and trust, the psalm presents to God an extravagant and fierce “wish list” concerning what God should do to the psalmist’s abusers. …. Having given full vent to his rage, this speaker is suddenly able, in an abrupt turn, to anticipate, giving praise and thanks to God (v. 30), who hears and does not despise (v.33). This turn is especially important, because it evidences that when the secret of hate is fully aired, it can be relinquish. The psalmist can now redirect his passion from the enemy to ponder God’s goodness, once he has been heard and had his venom honored.” Brueggemann p. 96
Altar, Robert. 2007. The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary New York: W. W. Norton & Company
WBC Allen, Leslie C. 1983. Word Biblical Commentary: Psalms 101-150. Vol. 21. Waco, TX: Word Books, Publisher.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. 1974. Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible. 8th ed. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Press.
Bourgeault, C. (2006). Chanting the psalms: A practical guide Audio Book. New Seeds.
Brueggemann, Walter. 2007. Praying the Psalms: Engaging Scripture and the Life of the Spirit. 2nd ed. Eugene, OR: Cascade.
Brueggemann Brueggemann, Walter. 2014. From Whom No Secrets Are Hid: Introducing the Psalms. Edited by Brent A. Strawn. 1st ed. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
Brueggemann, Walter. Davis Hanskins, Editor. 2022. Our Hearts Wait: Worshiping Through Praise and Lament in the Psalms Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville KY.
Brueggemann, Walter. (2002). Spirituality of the psalms. Augsburg Pub. House.
Brueggemann, Walter. (1984). The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary. Minneapolis: Augsburg.
Chilson, Richard, ed. You Shall Not Want: A Spiritual Journey Based on the Psalms. Ave Maria Press, 2009.
Chittister Chittister, Joan. (2011). Songs of the heart: reflections on the psalms. John Garratt Publishing.
Cudjoe-Wilkes, G., Wilkes, A. J., & Moss, O. (2022). Psalms for black lives: Reflections for the work of Liberation. Upper Room Books.
WBC Craigie, Peter C. 1983. Psalms 1-50–Word Biblical Commentary. Vol. 19. Waco, TX: Word Books.
Creach Creach, Jerome Frederick Davis. 1998. Psalms: Interpretation Bible Studies. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.
DAFLER, J. (2021). PSOBRIETY: A journey of recovery through the psalms. Louisville, KY: WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX.
W de Claisse-Walford, Nancy L. WISDOM COMMENTARY: Psalms Bks. 4-5. Edited by Barbara E. Reid. Vol. 22. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2020.
Green, Barbara. 1997. Like a Tree Planted: An Exploration of Psalms and Parables Through Metaphor. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.
W Hopkins, Denise Dombkowski. WISDOM COMMENTARY: Psalms Bks. 2-3. Edited by Barbara E. Reid. Vol. 21. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2016.
NIB Keck, Leander E. 2015. The New Interpreters Bible Commentary. Vol. 3. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.
Lewis, C. S. (2017). Reflections on the Psalms. Harper One, an imprint of Harper Collins Publishers.
Mays Mays, James Luther. 1994. Psalms. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press.
McCann McCann, J. C. (1993). A theological introduction to the book of Psalms: The Psalms as Torah. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.
McCann, J. C., & Howell, J. C. 2001. Preaching the Psalms. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.
Merrill, N. C. (2020). Psalms for praying an invitation to wholeness (10th Anniversary Edition ed.). London, England: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Miller Miller, Patrick D. 1986. Interpreting the Psalms. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press.
Morgan, Michael. 2010. The Psalter for Christian Worship Revised Edition. Westminster John Knox Press.
Schlimm Schlimm, Matthew Richard. 2018. 70 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know.Nashville, TN: Abington Press.
Spong Spong, M. (Ed.). (2020). The words of her mouth: Psalms for the struggle. Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press.
WBC Tate, Marvin E. 1990. Word Biblical Commentary: Psalms 51-100. Edited by David Allan. Hubbard and Glenn W. Barker. Vol. 20. Waco, TX: Word.
Weems, Ann. 1995. Psalm of Lament. Westminster John Knox Pres
OTL Weiser, Artur. 1998. Old Testament Library: Psalms. Translated by Herbert Hartwell. 3rd ed. New York, NY: Manchester University Press.
Period Pastor Pad 