September 7thPsalm 44
God has let us down
This is the first ‘communal lament’ in Psalms. It is the prayer of a scattered people who have lost their moorings?
The prayer begins with a robust expression of praise but turns to a serious question: Why has the God who delivered/saved our people in the past abandoned us? Why are things going so badly? In their present experience things are not working out the way they did for the ancestors.
There are four movements in this prayer:
v.1-8 ‘You helped us in the past.’ Here is a profession of faith motivated by historical memories.
- God was a faithful deliverer in the Exodus.
- God is a warrior who delivers salvation.
- Israel’s past is evidence of God’s love.
The people’s trust, boasting, and gratitude are properly directed toward God.
v.9-16 ‘You are not helping us now.’ A surprising turn in the prayer. Now delight has become rejection, and victory defeat. This is bitter complaint: the people are slaughtered, scattered, and sold. If God gets the credit when things go well, God also gets asked the hard questions when things go badly.
v.17-22 ‘You have covered us with darkness and death.’
In the preface to his great work on the OT prophets, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel dedicates his book to ‘the martyrs of 1940-45’ (the Jews slain in the Holocaust) and quotes these words from Psalm 44:
All this has come upon us,
though we have not forgotten You,
or been false to Your covenant.
Our heart has not turned back,
nor have our steps departed from Your way…
for Your sake we are slain…
Why do You hide your face?
This psalm declines to assume that the present distress is the people’s fault (though other psalms do admit such failure). It is not that Israel cannot imagine being at fault. It is that it can imagine situations when suffering comes to them through no fault of their own.
v.23-26 ‘You should help us.’ A desperate prayer for God to wake up and hear their questions: ‘Why does God sleep?’; ‘Why does God hide his face?’; ‘Why does God forget our affliction?’
John B. Toews was a leader in the Mennonite Brethren church, first in Russia and then in North America. In 1926 the Russian government swore out a warrant for his arrest so JB hid out, in Moscow, until his passport could be changed. He escaped and became a leader in the MB church for the next 60 years.
In 1989 he returned to Russia for a visit taking with him, his three sons and their wives. They visited the house where he had hidden out for several weeks in 1926 while his passport was being prepared. But perhaps the most moving part of the visit was their time in Karaganda. This is an area known for its rich coal mines and it is where many Mennonites were resettled by the communist government after being forced off their farms. They suffered for years as laborers in the mines.
In an evening meeting at the local MB church, JB met a number of women who had been part of his youth group in the early 1920s. Now old and feeble, reflecting their hard life and their grief over husbands and sons lost to the firing squads or Siberian work camps, they sat before him in the audience as he preached. JB was deeply moved by this experience and he writes, ‘I wondered why had I been spared the horrors that they experienced?’ [JB: A Twentieth-Century Mennonite Pilgrim].
These are deep questions that allow no easy answers. The final vs pleads:
26 Rise up! Help us!
Ransom us because of your unfailing love.
While God is the problem, God is also the solution. ‘The last hope of a faithful people is the faithfulness of God.’ [James Mays].