Psalm 30--A Sermon

Grace and peace be with you this day!
Take a moment right now to remember a time when you found yourself drawn up out of the Pit, perhaps when you thought you were about to meet your end and yet you lived, or when you felt surrounded by foes then were vindicated, or when fear was replaced by joy…
Hold this memory in your heart this morning.

All summer long we have been looking at the Psalms, the songs and prayers of God’s people. We have found psalms that teach us about wisdom, psalms that help us cry out in lament, psalms that remind us of creation, psalms that lead us in praise. Our Psalm today is one of personal thanksgiving, a todah psalm.

It might have been written by David, but it just as easily could have been written by anyone who experienced healing, or redemption from the Pit.

For the Hebrew people, the Pit and Sheol are synonymous. Dennis Brachter reminds us that "in Hebrew thought, Sheol was the abode of the dead, the underworld where people went when they died. Israelites did not have a well-developed concept of an afterlife until after the Babylonian exile. Instead, they adopted metaphors for death from the cultures of surrounding people. Most of these cultures had a mythology that explained death in terms of a story about a journey that the person made underground after death. In these cultures, with the exception of Egypt, there was no concept of a "soul" that survived after death to live in another place. It was merely a way to conceptualize in story form the reality of death and burial.

The mythical stories told of an underworld ruled by gods whose task it was to find rest for the one who died. Of course, the Israelites did not accept the idea of domains of other gods. Yet, they did adopt the language and the metaphor of the underworld to speak of death. In reality, the idea of Sheol or the Pit, simply became a poetic metaphor for the grave and burial. To "go down to Sheol" was simply to die and be buried. The term "soul" that appears in some translations of verse 3 is the Hebrew word nephesh, which in this context simply means person or life.

But even this picture is not quite as straightforward as it sounds. In our more scientific way of thinking, death is a biological function that can be marked at a certain point in time. Yet, in the Israelite thought world, death was a much more extensive concept than biology. Of course, they knew enough to know that when a person stopped breathing, they died. Yet, their conception of death and life extended much more broadly.

Life, far more than simply a biological function, encompassed well-being, happiness, vitality, all the activities that define human existence. Death, then, was any diminishment of that vitality. Sickness, for example, was a form of death, because it diminished the vitality of life, and in a very real sense, was a beginning of death. That was far closer to reality in the ancient world with little medical knowledge and fewer cures than it is in ours." (http://www.cresourcei.org/lectionary/)

Hannah found herself in the Pit. She was one of the two wives of Elkanah. Peninnah, the other wife, had sons and daughters, but Hannah, even though Elkanah loved her best, had none. In Hannah’s day, a woman’s worth was in the children that she bore. Peninnah never let an opportunity go by when she derided Hannah. In her barrenness, Hannah found herself in the Pit.

David, once a shepherd who slew a lion, once a young giant killer, now a king, but a king who took something that wasn’t his. David had taken Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, for his own and had Uriah positioned to be killed in battle. Now the son that Bathsheba bore him was dying. David was in the Pit.

There was a man who had been ill for 35 years. He kept trying to find healing in the pool of Bethsda when the waters were stirred up, but someone else always got to the water first. This man was in the Pit.

There was a woman of Nain who was a widow. Her only son died. Who was going to care for her? She had no one. This woman was in the Pit.

Sometimes we find ourselves in the Pit for no fault of our own. Life’s circumstances, it seems, have conspired against us. We become ill, enemies surround us, we lose all that is important to us. And yet, there are times we land ourselves in the Pit because of our own actions, like David.

Charles Colson seemed to have it all—special counsel to President Nixon, responsible for bringing special interest groups into the White House policy-making process. Known as Nixon’s hatchet man, Colson was willing to be ruthless in getting things done. But then came the Watergate burglary, and all the cover-up that followed, and Colson’s world came crashing down as he awaited arrest. Colson was in the Pit.

Most of us have been in the Pit at one time in our life or another. Perhaps it was illness, perhaps it was losing a job, perhaps it was the failure of a marriage, perhaps it was the loss of someone we love, perhaps it was because of what we ourselves had done.

The Pit is anything that takes us away from God, from life. And yet our God is one who refuses to bow to the power of the Pit. Our God is the One who is life and who, having created us, seeks to bring us to life.

God heard the cries of Hannah in the depths of her Pit, reached down to her and drew her up. Hannah conceived and bore Samuel who became a prophet for the Lord. After Samuel, Hannah had three more sons and two daughters.
God heard the anguish of David, king and grieving father, and sent to him the prophet Nathan who helped David to see his own sin. Even in the midst of death, God drew David up out of the Pit.

Jesus saw the man who had been ill for 35 years, lying by the Pool of Bethesda for a long time, hoping to touch the healing waters. Jesus reached out to this man in the Pit and drew him, saying, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” And at once he was made well, took up his mat and began to walk.

Jesus saw the funeral procession of the only son of a widow in Nain. He had compassion on her. He came forward, touched the bier, and said, “Young man, I say to you rise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Jesus reached into the Pit and drew them up into life.

God saw the morass that Chuck Colson had created for himself, the Pit which he had dug. God sent him a friend and a book, Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. Even though arrested and in prison, the Pit had no hold on Colson because God had already drawn him up into life.

In the todah tradition, when we have experienced the Pit and been drawn up, we give thanks but giving testimony to what God has done.

Hear the psalmist’s testimony again, this time from The Message by Eugene Peterson:
1 I give you all the credit, God—
you got me out of that mess,
you didn't let my foes gloat.

2-3 God, my God, I yelled for help
and you put me together.
God, you pulled me out of the grave,
gave me another chance at life
when I was down-and-out.

4-5 All you saints! Sing your hearts out to God!
Thank him to his face!
He gets angry once in a while, but across
a lifetime there is only love.
The nights of crying your eyes out
give way to days of laughter.

6-7 When things were going great
I crowed, "I've got it made.
I'm God's favorite.
He made me king of the mountain."
Then you looked the other way
and I fell to pieces.

8-10 I called out to you, God;
I laid my case before you:
"Can you sell me for a profit when I'm dead?
auction me off at a cemetery yard sale?
When I'm 'dust to dust' my songs
and stories of you won't sell.
So listen! and be kind!
Help me out of this!"

11-12 You did it: you changed wild lament
into whirling dance;
You ripped off my black mourning band
and decked me with wildflowers.
I'm about to burst with song;
I can't keep quiet about you.
God, my God,
I can't thank you enough.

God draws us up. Do we have a testimony of thanksgiving to offer before God’s people?
My testimony: barrenness and now two sons
Do you have a testimony to share?

Dance, then, wherever you may be.
I am the Lord of the dance, said he.
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you maybe
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he! (by Sidney Carter)