Photo: Claudio Schwarz, used with permission via Unsplash
It was a Super Bowl Sunday, and at about 6:15am, I said to Jeff, as calmly as I could: “In about 5 minutes, I’m going to need you to drive me to the Emergency Room.” And that... is about all I remember of that day.
You see, I woke up that morning, and as I stood up and tried to walk across the room, I was hit with a ferocious experience of vertigo. Before this experience, I thought vertigo meant that you were dizzy – but this! I had no sense of balance whatsoever. I had no way of telling which direction was up or down or left or right. The world kept turning and turning and turning. It felt like my body was being hurled against one wall and then another. I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t walk. I could only crouch on the floor and crawl. And that, just barely.
Jeff drove me to the ER – thank goodness we live close to Kaiser. The doctor diagnosed me as having vertigo. Something had gone wrong with the little bits in my ear. (The doctor also said I also might have something called labyrinthitis (now, you just gotta love that)). They sent me home with meds and a walker, and taught me how to do a very strange maneuver to try to get the little bits in my ear to fall back in place. Well, that’s what Jeff tells me happened that day. The next thing about that Super Bowl Sunday that I remember was... well, Monday.
It took me a couple of days before I could get around with that walker. The world kept turning and turning. Jeff stayed home to watch out for me, to do the basic things I could not. By Week 2, I was walking, holding onto walls, friends had to help drive me around.
After two weeks or so, things in my ear fell back into place, I guess, and the world mostly balanced out. (You can judge for yourself how well-balanced you think I am.)
Nowadays, when someone now says that they have vertigo, I feel it in my body – like I did that day – those weeks. The world turning and turning, and my body with it – no steady place to ground myself – no place where I could stop the spinning. There was too much turning. It was an utterly disorienting experience.
This morning’s psalm is what Walter Brueggemann calls “a psalm of disorientation.”[1] The psalmist’s world is spinning – turning and turning, out of control – enemies and wild beasts on every side – a mocking mob – a body melted like wax, poured out like water – no steady place to stand – and the psalmist cries out: “Where are you God?”
Walter Brueggemann looks at the psalms and how they track the fullness of what it is to be human – and h esorts them into three groupings (1) psalms of orientation (where the world is in order – Praise God!); (2) psalms of disorientation (where the world spins out of control, and nothing makes sense anymore); and (3) psalms of re-orientation or new orientation, as we find our footing, and the world finds a new equilibrium.[2]
Here, we’ve called the Psalms “The Songbook of Life.”[3] (Do you remember a couple years ago we spent a whole summer with the Psalms?) The psalms are songs written out from a community as they experienced the whole of life together. The Psalms span the full range of human experience and emotion.[4] They sing of lament and liberation – comfort, fear, bewilderment, anger, gratitude, wisdom, longing, celebration, desperation, loneliness, community, deep calm, and vibrant praise. Brueggemann puts it this way: The Psalms follow “the moves and seasons of life” – singing out experiences that are common across humanity. “What goes on in the Psalms is what goes on in life.”[5]
“Psalms of Orientation” describe those seasons of life that are confident and settled.[6]The world makes sense. There is an order to it that we can understand. We can look at it and see it. Those Psalms sing of a tree planted beside still water that bears its fruit in season. “God leads me beside still waters, and restores my soul.” Those psalms sing of the beauty of creation. They sing of seasons of well-being.[7]
“Psalms of Disorientation” sing of seasons of alienation, hurt, bewilderment, suffering, and even death – psalms of lament and those angry psalms. The world is spinning out of control, and so the psalmist cries out to God. The psalmist cries out from their present pain and tells it like it is – what it feels like to them, and maybe sometimes... to us. One of the most powerful things about the psalms is that nothing is off limits.[8]
Now these are categories to help us make sense of things – but we know that seasons of orientation and disorientation aren’t neat and tidy. We can be experiencing both orientation and disorientation at the same time – some balance, some wobble. At any given point in our shared life, some of us can be experiencing more of one, and others more of the other – we help each other find balance. In the psalms, we sing it all together, we sing the fullness of life.
This morning’s psalm is a song of disorientation, sung out of the disorientation of the world. It’s so rich -- I thought what we’d do is spend time in the psalm – time to walk through this psalm together.[9]
The psalm begins with that poignant cry from the depths: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Translated even more simply though, that psalm opens with the plain and simple cry: “God, why have you left?[10] Why have you left me? Left us.” It is a heartbreaking cry.
The psalmist goes on – and makes it plain: Why have you left me? I cry out by day – you do not answer – I cry out by night – I find no rest.
But then the psalmist turns – verse 3. But... you are God. Our ancestors put their trust in you. They cried out – You answered. They cried out, and they were saved.
Which is it God? The psalmist turns again – verse 6 – because I feel like a worm, barely even human – scorned and despised – mocked by everyone I meet.
But...turning again..
you’ve always been there. From the moment I was born.
Back and forth, the Psalmist goes, turning this way, and that:
God, why have you left me?
You’ve always been there.
But it doesn’t feel like it now.
But I know you are here.
This whipsaw – turning back and forth – crying out and trusting and crying out and trusting.
Notice the intensity of what the psalmist is experiencing – the vivid imagery. Verse 12. There are external threats – all around – strong bulls and roaring lions with gaping mouths –a pack of dogs and villains.
It is a full-body experience – I am poured out like water. My body is out of joint. You can see my bones. My heart turned to wax. My mouth dried up like broken shards of clay in the desert – so much so that my tongue sticks to the roof of my bone-dry mouth, and all that is left is silence.
And, in the midst of all that, there is this plaintive plea: God, please don’t be far from me, for trouble is near, and there is no one to help.
Turning this way and that, the psalmist cries out from their utterly disorienting world. And, I think about folks who might be crying out like that in ours. In our world. In our day.
I think of those living in the midst of war – waiting for the next bomb to drop – doing what they can, but with so much of their lives out of their control – watching as powers and superpowers battle on and betray and belittle. I think of the growing instability in the world – as alliances that have held an imperfect truce are tested and stretched – seemingly for no reason but the chaotic whims of a would-be despot. We all feel a little less secure in these days – as nations become convinced that now is the time to ramp up military production in case of war.
In our nation, I think of the thousands of public servants who have been fired – their professional calling to serve the common good – once steady – now pulled out from under them. Utterly disorienting. I think of marginalized folks – under active threat – as our own government tries to erase our histories, and us.
I don’t need to go on. We know this is a disorienting world.
And, this is also so – in season and out – not only in the world writ large – but in our own very personal lives. There is truth in this Psalm for our own seasons of disorientation and distress – when the world is far from friendly; when nothing makes sense; when the structures and supports upon which we have always relied tremble and quake and crumble; when we face illness and death.
One of the miracles of the Psalms – I think – is that they let us sit here with the Psalmist – across distance and culture – down through the generations – they let us sit with the Psalmist and say to each other, “I have felt like that too.” God, don’t leave. Don’t be far off. For trouble is near, and it seems like there is no one to help.
What goes on in the Psalms is what goes on in life.
And then. Somehow. The Psalmist makes a turn. In the midst of the crying out, the psalmist makes one more turn. It’s not clear what happens. But all of the sudden – in verse 22 -- the psalmist says: “ God, I will declare your name to the people. I will praise you.” The Psalmist starts to praise and doesn’t turn back.
Now we don’t know what happened in between verse 21 and 22. This Psalm is too real to promise an easy fix. And it doesn’t appear that the suffering has gone away. In verse 21 (on your handout), I put what I think is a better translation of the Hebrew: “From the horns of the wild oxen, God, you have answered me.”[11] Answered me – from right there in the midst. God is not far off. God answers “from the horns of the wild oxen” just as the beasts are about to strike. God answers from the depths. God is there.
Maybe it’s that God has heard. Maybe that is the turning. The Psalmist cries out – we cry out – and we wait for an answer. The cry of this psalm isn’t rhetorical. It demands an answer. Maybe it’s that someone has heard. Someone has seen. Someone has noticed. The pain, the anguish, the bewilderment. Maybe it’s that someone has done something – we have no idea what – maybe an act of tender mercy, or healing, or liberation something that answers the cry – someone who comes alongside – someone who helps.
In those culminating verses, the Psalmist finds themselves not alone, but in community. In the midst of what is better translated – a great congregation. And whatever has happened, they now declare: Look at that. God has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one. The suffering is there, and God is too. God has not hidden God’s face. God has listened. And I will praise, the Psalmist sings. And the poor will eat. The hungry will be satisfied.
From that moment, look what happens. From the hungry being fed, from one cry being heard and answered – this new good news goes out to the ends of the earth – every family, every tribe, every nation – to everyone living and dead – and we will shout it out – to generations yet unborn – for those moments when we know they will cry out too. God is near. God is not far off. God has done it.
The psalmist turns to steady ground, even as the world keeps spinning – the psalmist finds that steady ground in God, in the community of the great congregation – everyone everywhere – in the hungry being fed.
That’s the turning of this Psalm... but what are we to do with all that?
Well, first, the Psalm invites us to lament. And not hold back. Loudly. Cry out the pain in this world. Name the hurt. Because you see, the powers want us to be silent. They don’t want us to name the hurt – because it might call them out – and we and others might see. All these efforts to silence students – and protestors – and institutions. That is how power works – Silence the hurting, so the world will not see the harm we are inflicting. All these efforts to erase any mention of the long and tortured history of racism and sexism and xenophobia in this country – that silencing and erasure is so that no one will call for reform – or revolt. Lament. Cry out. Do not hold back.
Second, the Psalm invites us to draw near. The psalmist points us toward community. To ground ourselves in places like this – in the company of loving, kindred spirits like this – in a community that reaches out to neighbors, and strangers, all the way to the ends of the earth – to ground ourselves as often as we can – in community like this – where we can say true things – and be changed and strengthened and empowered for good.
And third, this psalm invites us to listen for lament... and answer. It invites us to feed the hungry. It’s right there. God is near. The poor, the hungry will eat and be satisfied. We don’t know what happens in the midst of this psalm to turn the psalmist’s lament into praise. But imagine someone who is hungry crying out – seeing someone or someones coming with food. Remember sometime when you have cried out, and someone has listened and done something like that for you. We are not alone. God is near.
Lament. Listen for lament. And draw near.
Now, I’ve waited to the end of the sermon to say this. But we know those first lines of this Psalm – the cry of all cries – “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Those are the words that Jesus cries out from the cross – the words with which Jesus laments.
We are saying this Lent that we are Turning Toward the Way – toward the way of Jesus. This psalm – what we see in this psalm IS the way of Jesus – as God enters into the suffering of God’s people – of all humanity – and then cries out from the cross – what we cry out. Jesus listens to our lament. And draws near. And joins the lament, from the depths of the world’s suffering, saying to us: Come, out of all the world’s twisting and turning: Turn with me toward steady ground. This is the way. This is the way... of Resurrection. Come, turn with me toward life.
© 2025 Scott Clark
[1] See Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing, 1984.
[2] See id.
[3] See https://www.togetherweserve.org/post/the-songs-we-know-by-heart-psalms-121-23-pride-sunday-4th-sunday-after-pentecost, and the sermons that follow in that series.
[4] Nathaniel Samuel Murrell, David T. Shannon & David T. Adamo, “Psalms” in The Africana Bible: Reading Israel’s Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010), pp. 220-234.
[5] Brueggemann, p.10.
[6] See Brueggemann, p.15.
[7] Id., pp.19-20.
[8] Id., p.52.
[9] For background on this Psalm and the Book of Psalms, see J. Clinton McCann, Jr., “The Book of Psalms,” New Interpreters’ Bible Commentary, vol. iv (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), pp.759-66; Walter Brueggemann and William Bellinger, Psalms (New York, NY; Cambridge University Press, 2014); Ellen Davis, Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament (Lanham, MD; Roman Littlefield Publishers, 2001).
[10] See McCann, p.762.
[11] See McCann, pp.762-64.
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