Series: February 2025
Speaker: Rob McClellan
Today's Sermon
"Hear My Complaint: God is Holding Our Lives Series"
Survivor is a reality tv competition show that’s been around for over 20 years. Once or twice an episode, players compete in challenges—think glorified obstacle courses, stamina contests, puzzles—but they do so sleep deprived and hungry, so inevitably they break down periodically. Last season, a woman just lost it, angry at not being chosen by another contestant for a food reward. She buckles over screaming, a guttural kind of scream. Then, she stands up, brushes herself off and says, “There, that’s better.”
Sometimes it’s good for you to just cry out. They say we shouldn’t tell our children not to cry, which we do all the time, because crying releases toxins they otherwise can’t get out. Our tradition has long known crying out is good to do, yet as with our kids, we have tried to avoid it at all costs. Being faithful is about being good and happy. The Psalms know better, these songs for life we’re exploring as part of our “God is Holding Our Lives” series, recognizing that God holds all of it and us through all of it. Today’s theme: “Hear My Complaint.” Today’s psalm, number 69 is a good scream. Hear some selected verses:
Psalm 69
1Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.
2I sink in deep mire,
where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters,
and the flood sweeps over me.
3I am weary with my crying;
my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim
with waiting for my God.
4More in number than the hairs of my head
are those who hate me without cause;
many are those who would destroy me,
my enemies who accuse me falsely.
What I did not steal
must I now restore?
Even though this person is in a bad place, the fact they are praying, as we said last week, presumes a relationship with God and reveals an assumption the praying will help. It’s an honest relationship, not a “I must deserve this awful lot” kind of piety, but rather a righteous plea with a hint of indignation. Do I deserve this?! Clearly the psalmist believes God can and will deliver them, for the psalm continues:
13…With your faithful help 14rescue me
from sinking in the mire;
let me be delivered from my enemies
and from the deep waters.
15Do not let the flood sweep over me,
or the deep swallow me up,
or the Pit close its mouth over me.
16Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good;
according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.
17Do not hide your face from your servant,
for I am in distress—make haste to answer me.
18Draw near to me, redeem me,
set me free because of my enemies.
The psalmist challenges God to show up, something you find throughout the Psalms. It’s a much more human framing of the relationship. Many “good” Christians wouldn’t dare to challenge God to uphold God’s end of the bargain. Maybe we should rethink that.
Whether or how the prayer affects God, we see the psalmist is affected by praying it. After unloading their despair, the psalmist is angry, honest about what they’d like to happen to their enemy, also not the kind of prayer you learned in Sunday School:
21They gave me poison for food,
and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
22Let their table be a trap for them,
a snare for their allies.
23Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see,
and make their loins tremble continually.
24Pour out your indignation upon them,
and let your burning anger overtake them.
25May their camp be a desolation;
let no one live in their tents.
Notice that’s not the end of the transformation. Having moved through despair, voiced their anger, the psalmist ends doxology, praise, even though God has yet to do anything. The very praying heals the one offering it:
30I will praise the name of God with a song;
I will magnify God with thanksgiving.
31This will please the Lordmore than an ox
or a bull with horns and hoofs.
32Let the oppressed see it and be glad;
you who seek God, let your hearts revive.
33For the Lordhears the needy,
and does not despise his own that are in bonds.
34Let heaven and earth praise God,
the seas and everything that moves in them.
Praise and gratitude, an offering of the heart, pleases God more than animal sacrifices. That may be the point of it all, to turn the human heart. That’s what honest prayer, including uncomfortable, bent over screaming, crying, most certainly does. It transforms the heart. By the end of this miraculous song, the psalmist is confident God hears the prayer of the needy and calls upon all creation to do what it was created to do, reflect back divine glory to the one who created it. What a transformation.
Psychologist Adam Grant writes, “Emotion regulation is not about controlling what you feel. It’s about choosing how you respond. Wise people don’t suppress emotion. They find constructive ways to express it.”[1]
What do you do with your emotions? Do you suppress them? Do you drown them with food or alcohol or marijuana or pick your substance? Do you journal? Do you paint? Do you make use of a punching bag? Do you offer them to God in a prayer, prayer broadly understood? Grant affirms the legitimacy of our emotions because they’re born of our experience. There’s no use denying our feelings, but rather we should work toward doing something constructive with them, constructive for us and others. We see those who have no ability to do this and thus seem perpetually stuck at the tantrum phase and how corrosive that is. They never get around to working for change because they haven’t worked through their complaint, which is really just grief. Grant goes on to say, “Intense feelings don’t always demand immediate reactions. They often benefit from deep reflection.”[2] Once you do the spiritual work of coming to terms of what’s hurting you are freed up to get to work making a difference, affecting change, getting involved in a constructive manner. Or, conversely, some people best work through their emotions by taking constructive action. Hand-wringing does nothing for you and nothing for the world.
In a moment, we celebrate communion and celebrate is the right word. Remember, however, even after that Jesus was courageous enough to go to the garden and pray to he wished things were different. When he was on the cross, bold enough to cry God had forsaken him. These were not in digressions from faith, but expressions of it, and the God who heard them raised him to new life.
In Christ, we are all ultimately survivors.
Amen.