“Down and Up"
February 28, 2010
Rev. Dr. Deryl Fleming

In a narthex conversation last Sunday I asked one of our unemployed members, “How have you been?” “Down and up. You know how people say up and down? Lately, I’ve been down and up.”

Our psalm for today is so up and down and down and up that some scholars believe that verses 7–14 could not have been written by the same person who wrote verses 1-6. On the other hand, most of the psalms that are laments also include an upside of praise and thanks, even Psalm 22 which begins with the complaint Jesus uttered from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Only Psalm 88 is so steeped in despondency that it is utterly without resolution, though it looks in the right direction: “O Lord, God of my salvation,” then goes on to say where are you when I need you?

Once I had a poster which read, “A prayer to be said when the world has gotten you down and you feel rotten, and you’re too doggone tired for words, and you’re in a hurry, and besides, you’re mad at everybody, and you feel like only a miracle can save you… “HELP!”

The second stanza of Psalm 27 is a poignant plea for help. “Hear when I cry aloud … Your face, Lord, do I seek, Do not hide your face from me … Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries…” As is usually the case we do not know the psalmist’s plight.  We do not even know who the psalmist was. If it was David, as the superscription says, David had plenty plights in his checkered and amazing career as “the man after God’s own heart.”

Many of the psalms, including this one, could have been written from prison. Beth occasionally receives one from prison from one of our members. The laments in the Psalms could have been written from the unemployment office, from a marriage therapist’s office, from a nursing home, from an ER, an OR, an ICU, or a family waiting room, from the White House, from the living rooms of some of the people in this room, from the bedroom of the person who couldn’t get out of bed this morning because of SADD. Many laments have been written from psychiatric hospitals. In a new book written by a veteran of mental illness the author says he is writing “for those whose maps have given out as mine did along the way.” Have you ever wandered off your map? Fallen off? Been yanked off? “I never thought I would be in this place,” psychiatric patients frequently say. One of our members said that last Sunday about being unemployed.

“People don’t understand” is another common complaint from out of the depths. Usually that is spot on. Most people only understand what they have experienced or what they have been trained to understand. In Jesus Wept: When Faith and Depression Meet, Episcopal priest Barbara Crafton is refreshingly candid. She says “there is abundant devotional writing about the teaching purpose of suffering and I can’t stand any of it.” In the comic strip Frank & Ernest, one says to the other, “I’m tired of building character.”   Enough pain already.

Whom shall I fear?” The psalmist asks. From my file I pulled a list of 60 phobias, take your choice. Most of us know about claustrophobia, acrophobia and agoraphobia. Then there’s ergophobia, the fear of work. Maybe an update on the list should include the fear of having no work. One that caught my eye is one that I can’t pronounce: arachibutyrophobia, the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth, which may be the reason for adding jelly to your sandwich. Some studies after indicate that the most common fear in America is the fear of public speaking. One of our midlife males recently acknowledged finding himself for the first time fearing death. Some of you are with Woody Allen on that one: “I’m not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” The wish to die in one’s sleep or with a massive heart attack is not wanting to be there when it happens.

The psalmist’s greatest fear maybe the fear of being abandoned by God. To be sure, the presence of God is affirmed, but the psalm is aware of the absence of God, as are many of the other psalms. A monumental work by a major scholar in 500 pages traces The Elusive Presence of God through the Bible.

Have you ever had someone in anger turn and walk away from you? I hope not. But if you have, you know the psalmist’s sense of “Do not turn away in anger.” Have you had the experience of someone trying to avoid you or refuse to look you in the eye? If so, you can resonate with the psalmist’s plea to God, “Do not hide your face from me.”

David Hilfiker, a medical doctor who is a Christian and a veteran of chronic depression writes about the usually gray tone of his life and says he feels an almost constant emotional distance from others, including his wife, children, friends and God. He writes:

“I need my community not to require that my spirituality bring me any particular joy––for if joy is some measure of spirituality, I’m a long way from home. If a relationship with God brings one peace and a sense of harmony with the world, then I have little relationship with God.    My spirituality needs to be understood as different from others’ –– at least when I’m in the throes of my depression.”

People who are naturally upbeat, perennially positive and consistently lucky sometimes find it hard to be around people who are down on their luck or more despondent than not. Abandoned by their community of faith, people who are down may feel abandoned by God. “Do not cast me (when I am down.) O God of my salvation. Help me to wait for the Lord” (till I am up).

The 27th Psalm is a psalm of trust, for even lamenting, it brims with confidence in God. “The Lord is my light and my salvation.”

On Dec. 28, 2009 USA Today ran a cartoon featuring Uncle Sam with newspaper in hand reading “A decade of fear,” ( then wringing his hands)  “fear of terrorists, tyrants, layoffs and foreclosures,” (waving his arms) “of immigrants, debt, corruption, greed, ecological and economic ruin,” (pointing to a map of red and blue states) “and worst of all, fear of ourselves.”   Then with cautious relief, “I’m glad it’s over,” and finally, “But I fear it’s not.”  You and I know it’s not over.  Ours is a scary world.

It’s okay to be afraid. Normal anxiety is okay. Sacred anxiety, that which prompts your turning again to God is better than okay. Toxic anxiety is to be avoided by faith, medication, denial or all of the above.

Our Psalm calls to mind Paul’s affirmation in Romans 8, “If God be for us, who can be against us … Neither hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness or sword or anything else is all creation shall be able to separate us from the love of God.” “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

From another memoir of mental illness: “The voices of my illness are frightening,. They say, “kill yourself … you are bad.” But then there is a voice that says “to hang on … I am here. I won’t abandon you.” “If my mother and father forsake me, the Lord will take me up.”

Bela Bartok’s “Concerto for Orchestra” was written in the last years of his life when he was suffering with leukemia and acute poverty. He was commissioned to write an orchestral work and that in itself buoyed his spirits. The third movement of the symphony may be the most excruciating, enormously crushing, tragic death song in all symphonic literature. The fifth movement may be the most vibrant, vital exuberant, assertive piece in symphonic literature. Both from the same man in the same time of his life, a season of extreme suffering. Life as most of us experience it is a symphony of movements: down and up, up and down.

The spiritual says, “Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down, sometimes I’m almost on the ground.” “Wait for the Lord … Let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!”  In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.