January 6thPsalm 130
Out of the Depths
On a day in May, 1738, John Wesley went to an afternoon service at Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London. There he heard Psalm 130 sung as an anthem. That same evening brought him to a Bible study on Aldersgate Street where, as he described it, he found his heart "strangely warmed." The prayer of Psalm 130 helped prepare him for the transforming experience of the grace of God that changed his life and ultimately the lives of hundreds and thousands of others.
Psalm 130 is one of the seven penitential psalms. These psalms help us to recognize our brokenness, express our sorrow and ask for God’s forgiveness.
Psalm 130’s opening words translated into Latin as De Profundis (Out of the depths) have become a title for the Psalm, not simply because they are the initial words but because they express a universal experience of despair and lostness. They evoke images and situations that lead the one who reads the Psalm to cry out, "I have been there, too!" And so it becomes the reader's own prayer. The "depths" from which the psalmist cries are the deep, dark waters, an image that is capable of referring to various experiences: the nearness and threat of death, a spiritual abyss into which the mind and heart have fallen, a terrible overwhelming fear, the hostility and danger of enemies and foes, the captivity of sin. The language of "the depths" is as evocative in 2025 it was expressive to the ancient Israelite 3,000 years ago. Deep waters and murky depths continue to frighten us. Most of us pull back immediately when we come upon a deep pit for fear that we might find our selves falling in it and lost forever. There is even a contemporary slang expression, "that's the pits," meaning the worst sort of situation one can imagine.
The poet who speaks in and through and with this psalm is lamenting which leads him to two key insights: He is in the depths but he also is one who prays. The way out of the depths begins in the possibility of prayer and in the awareness that only the One who hears that prayer can draw us out of the depths.
with you there is forgiveness (v. 4)
with the Lord there is steadfast love (v. 7)
with him there is great redemption (v. 7)
To encounter this God is also to meet with grace and
forgiveness, abundant redemption, and to transformation!
That transformation is beautifully expressed in Isaiah 40:31 …
They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Note how our poet falls entirely upon the grace of God. “If you, YHWH, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness.” And rather than seeking to earn this forgiveness, the writer takes a posture of hope and surrender. “I wait for YHWH, my whole being waits…’ And he ends by calling all of God’s people to put their hope in YHWH and his perfect love because “He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.”
The psalmist’s cry from the depths to God articulates the conviction that led Israel to cry out from bondage in Egypt and from exile in Babylon, and that led Jesus to cry out to God from the cross – no place or circumstance is beyond the reach of God’s forgiving, loving, redeeming presence and power.
Augustine wrote the words of vs. 4 on the wall of the room where he lay dying. Like that great saint, we who pray this psalm also ought never again to be afraid of the depths. They’re where God does God’s best saving work.
Good words for a new year?