Kicking the Darkness

A sermon for Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church

25 July 2021

Psalm 88
Matthew 27.45-50 

Michel de Montaigne, the great philosopher of the French Renaissance,
            famously said that
‘The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.’
 
And in our Psalm for today, as part of our summer series with the Psalms,
            we find ourselves hearing the words of someone
            who is themselves face-to-face with the reality of death.
 
Psalm 88 confronts us with the unremitting reality of mortality,
            and it reminds us that we are all on a journey that can only end in one way,
            which is, of course, the ending of our own lives.
 
Unusually amongst the Psalms,
            Psalm 88 offers no glimmer of light,
            there is no sudden ‘turn to praise’,
            no remission from its bleak and angry cry of pain.
 
These are the unadorned words of someone for whom life is simply intolerable,
            someone whose daily experience is no better than death.
 
We don’t get any clear answers from the Psalm itself
            as to what the cause of the writer’s distress might be,
but I’m sure we all recognise the symptoms they are describing.
 
This is someone haunted by those night demons
            that steal our sleep
            and in its place plant seeds of doubt and anxiety.
 
This is someone living with depression,
            facing anxious thoughts, and feelings of dread.
 
This is someone whose body is failing and fading,
            as their energy saps and their faculties wane.
 
This is someone facing social isolation,
            someone distanced from their family, friends, and support structures.
 
In fact, this is someone who describes their life
            as like being already dead,
            beyond hope, cut off from life.
 
And the despairing writer of this psalm uses two images
            to describe their experience of lifeless futility.
 
In v.3 they say that their life draws near to Sheol,
            and in v.4 and 6 they say they have been put into the depths of the Pit.
 
Both these words, Sheol and the Pit, are found elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible,
            and they describe the darkness and loneliness of the grave.
 
This isn’t some vision of a purgatorial afterlife,
            where fiery suffering is experienced as a punishment for sins committed,
            or as an atonement for transgression.
 
Rather, the language of Sheol and the Pit
            is used to capture the writer’s sense of being cut off:
                        cut off from the land of the living,
                        cut off from God,
                        cut off from all that makes for life.
 
And as we start to enter into this language
            that comes down to us from the ancient Hebrew tradition,
I wonder what the ‘Pit’ might be in your life?
            I wonder what the language of ‘Sheol’ might mean for you?
 
Maybe it’s mental or physical ill health?
            Maybe it’s relationship breakdown, or bereavement?
            Maybe it’s debilitating feelings, perhaps of shame or guilt?
 
If you can dare to answer this question,
            what, I wonder, is the Pit that you fear?
 
Maybe you’ve already been there,
            and have plumbed the deep depths of despair?
 
Maybe you’ve already experienced the darkness closing in on you,
            and found yourself powerless to resist it?
 
Or it might be that you’re in the Pit today,
            desperate for release,
and angry and hurt and confused that other people seem able to carry on living
            while you are cut off, consigned, and condemned
            to a very different kind of existence.
 
If you see yourself in this language,
            then maybe this is a Psalm for you?
 
And something I want to draw our attention to
            is that the writer is abundantly clear,
            that the cause of their lifeless experience is none other than God.
 
The accusatory language of the Psalm builds as it goes through,
            as the Psalmist directs their litany of complaint towards God:
 
·       you remember [me] no more,
·       [I am] cut off from your hand.
·       You have put me in the depths of the Pit
·       Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
·       you overwhelm me with all your waves.
·       You have caused my companions to shun me;
·       you have made me a thing of horror to them
·       LORD, why do you cast me off?
·       Why do you hide your face from me?
·       I suffer your terrors; I am desperate.
·       Your wrath has swept over me;
·       your dread assaults destroy me.
·       You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me.
 
The blame here, if there is blame to be apportioned,
            is fair and square with God.
 
This is the cry of a believer whose life has gone terribly wrong,
            and who has come to the firm conclusion,
            that the cause of their distress lies unambiguously in God’s court.
 
Do you remember a couple of weeks ago,
            when I was preaching on Psalm 1
            and I introduced us to the idea of the Deuteronomic perspective?
 
This is the idea, that we find in the book of Deuteronomy and some other biblical texts,
            that a person’s suffering is the result of their actions in some way,
            a consequence of their sin or lack of faithfulness?
 
I said at the time that there were alternative perspectives on suffering,
            such as the book of Job,
where a person’s suffering is absolutely NOT presented
            as the consequence of the sufferer’s actions.
 
Well, Psalm 88 is another one of those counter-testimonies
            that argues against the Deuteronomic perspective.
 
This writer is not suffering because of something they’ve done:
            there is nothing in their life
            that means they deserve what’s happening to them.
 
And so the only conclusion they can come to,
            is that God is the cause of their pain, the source of their darkness;
            that God has driven them into the Pit, and left them there.
 
And so in this Psalm we meet a barrage of pure anger
            addressed at God for God’s actions.
Or, more properly, anger at God for God’s lack of action.
 
Because God is silent in this Psalm.
 
There is no word from the Lord to offer reassurance or sustenance.
 
Unlike Psalm 23, where the writer journeys through the valley of the shadow of death,
            there is no rod and staff to comfort,
            there is no table being prepared in the presence of the writer’s enemies.
 
God is silent, God is inactive,
            and so, the writer of Psalm 88 concludes, God is culpable.
 
This Psalm makes no attempt to put words into God’s mouth;
            there are no speculative answers to the question of theodicy,
            of how a good God can permit the righteous to suffer.
 
Unlike Psalm 46,
            there is no promise that God is a strength and a refuge,
God is not spoken of as an ever present help in times of trouble.
 
Rather, Psalm 88 uncompromisingly confronts us the harsh reality
            of an experience of God’s absence in the face of life’s difficulties.
 
What is fascinating, though, is that despite the writer’s suffering,
            and despite their rage against God, for God’s inaction and inactivity,
            and despite their accusation that God is liable for their plight,
the writer of Psalm 88 continues to address God.
 
Surely, it would have been so easy to see in their suffering,
            the final clinching proof of the nonexistence of God.
Atheism is only a step away.
 
One of the main reasons people give for walking away from faith,
            or for rejecting religion altogether,
is the problem of suffering.
 
As Stephen Fry memorably put it:
 
“You can't just say there is a god because the world is beautiful.
You have to account for bone cancer in children.”
 
But just as Job refused to curse God from the depths of his misery,
            so also the writer of Psalm 88
            refuses to deny God’s existence on the basis of his wretchedness.
 
God may be silent, God may be inactive, God may be guilty,
            but God is not let off the hook.
 
As many who have tried to walk away from God
            in the midst of their pain have discovered,
sometimes the only place to direct anger at God,
            is at God.
 
And so the Psalmist keeps speaking, crying, and shouting at God,
            railing against the injustice of their life.
 
Just as the Israelite slaves in Egypt kept praying to God for deliverance,
            generation after generation,
so the Psalmist of Psalm 88 refuses to give up
            crying out to an absent God
            the truth of their experience of injustice.
 
But, by the end of the Psalm, there is no answer.
            God remains silent and distant in this Psalm.
If you want a happy ending, read a different Psalm.
 
And we might well wonder what a Psalm like this is doing in our Bible,
            and the answer is surely that it absolutely has to be there,
            because for some of us, this is exactly our experience of life.
 
This Psalm matters so much,
            because it is faith facing the life of suffering.
 
Where does the believer go when they feel abandoned, betrayed,
            and cut off from all that previously made life worthwhile?
 
Where does the believer go when they find God utterly distant?
 
Where does the believer go when they can speak little other than anger
            at the God who allows, no, who causes, their pain?
 
Well, this is why Psalm 88 is here.
            It tells us that even from the bottom of the Pit,
                        God can still be addressed;
            it shows us that even if what is said is pure unadulterated anger,
                        God can still be addressed;
            it demonstrates that even if God remains silent towards us,
                        we do not have to remain silent towards God.
 
And as Christians, this Psalm takes us to the foot of the cross,
            with Jesus uttering his cry of dereliction,
                        itself a quote from the opening of another Psalm:
            "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
 
Our Psalm for this morning challenges us in our understanding
            of God’s action in Jesus at the crucifixion,
and it gives the lie to every theology of glory,
            it exposes as inadequate every theology of easy resolution,
            and it questions every theology of ready answers.
 
Because sometimes the experience of the faithful,
            and indeed the experience of Jesus himself,
is that life is shameful rather than admirable,
            unsettled rather than resolved,
            and full of doubt rather than certainty.
 
As Matthew’s account of the crucifixion makes clear,
            the cross is the moment of divine abandonment.
 
It is God-in-Jesus entering fully, utterly, and absolutely,
            into the depths of human suffering, tragedy, and loss.
 
It is a view of the cross predicated on faithfulness
            in the face of divine desertion.
 
Ad those who follow the way of the cross,
            are called to continue speaking into the darkness,
            to continue speaking against the darkness,
to faithfully articulate our anger, our pain,
            and our rage against the overwhelming futility of life.
 
The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas understand this compulsion
            to speak the painful truth:
 
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
 
I think he would have liked Psalm 88,
            as it offers us a moment of absolute realism
            in a book of stories of faith.
 
Sometimes the human experience demands of us words to address God
            which avoid the easy, cheap talk of resolution.
 
Sometimes, for God’s people to be God’s people
            their sole task is to continue to address God
            even in the face of God’s unresponsive absence.
 
And sometimes all that there is left for them, for us, to do,
            is to speak, shout, and cry to God at the injustice of it all.
 
Not in any expectation that God will resolve our problems,
            not in any certainty that God will even hear our cry,
but because the injustice needs to be named.
 
One of my favourite musical artists
            is the Canadian singer songwriter Bruce Cockburn.
 
And I’m going to give him the last word:
 
Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight --
Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight

Prince of Egypt the Musical: A Review

Theatrically Spectacular 9/10

Theologically Suspect 4/10

First things first, I love the movie. But this isn’t the movie [spoiler alert].

The great songs from the movie are all there - and performed beautifully. The dancing is energetic, sexy, and creative: the chariot chase was a particularly clever scene, with actors playing both tumbling chariots and racing horses.

And then there are the additional songs - written by Stephen Schwartz (of Godspell fame, who also wrote the songs for the original Prince of Egypt movie). Some of these are great - ‘Footprints on the Sand’, and ‘Always on your Side’ both add to the relationship between the two princes and are worthy additions to the book. But with one exception (which I’m coming to) the rest of the new songs didn’t do it for me; they felt like they had been added to provide sing-by-numbers opportunities for different cast members to show off their impressive vocal skills, without really adding to the narrative or providing any great musical hooks.

But the most interesting addition was Moses' song, ‘For the Rest of My Life’, where he rails at God for making him the instrument of God’s vengeance against the Egyptians:

For the rest of my life 
I will have to live with this
For the rest of my life
I’ll have to face the part I played

These faces filled with grief and with despair
Every morning when I wake up they’ll be there
Seared into my memory
With a cruel burning knife
For the rest of my life

Oh, there’s a weight on my soul
Like a pyramid of stone
There’s a weight on my soul
A ransom never to be paid

The crimes I do, I do them in your name
I feel just as guilty, all the same
Like a brutal soldier
Who does anything he’s told
There’s a weight on my soul
For the rest of my life

When you know you’re in the right
It’s so easy to be wrong
You have to win the fight
So you close your mind and heart up tight
And go along
Tell yourself you’re staying strong

You ramp up your ferocity
Excuse any atrocity
But once you’ve won
You have to live with what you've done

And for the rest of my life
I will have to live with this
For the rest of my life
These questions haunting me like ghosts
Does a noble end mean any means will do?
Is your power the only reason to follow You?

And one final question I see no answer to
For the rest of my life
How will I get through?
Unlike so many of our victims
I have the rest of my life
To get through

For me, this exploration of Moses' guilt and anger is not only the high point of the musical, but also the gateway to where I think it falls down.

Because it reveals the underlying theology: The only baddies in this show are the deities.

Moses is an ‘innocent puppet’ (to quote Pontius Pilate from Jesus Christ Superstar) and we see the same thing happening with Pharaoh.

Possibly the most bizarre twist of the musical is the revisionist retelling of Rameses, who comes across as a thoroughly nice, if slightly naïve, ruler, who wants to do nothing more than give Moses everything he is asking for, but is constrained by the ghost of his father and the demands of the high priest.

Several times Rameses releases the Israelites, only for the word of the gods to countermand his decision and send in the army instead. 

This is, in the end, playing to a zeitgeist that sees all the evils of human warfare and violence as the end result of religious belief; and the subtext is clear: if only Moses and Rameses had been left to become the mature, fully-integrated humans they were longing to be, without divine interference, everyone would have lived happily ever after. 

They’d have got away with it, if it hadn’t been for those pesky gods.

And this feels like a betrayal of the story - it sanitises the complexities of the Passover, it excuses the excesses of the empire, and ultimately it silences God as a player within human drama.

So - worth watching? A qualified yes. 

It’s the West End at its musical best, but unlike some other shows which also do truly great theology (The Book of Mormon is one example), this would have done better to stick more closely to the film, or indeed the book, on which it is based.