Psalms: Afflicted

Psalm 119:105–112 NRSV

105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. 106 I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to observe your righteous ordinances. 107 I am severely afflicted; give me life, O Lord, according to your word. 108 Accept my offerings of praise, O Lord, and teach me your ordinances. 109 I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law. 110 The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts. 111 Your decrees are my heritage forever; they are the joy of my heart. 112 I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever, to the end.

Friends, I’m gonna be really honest with you this morning: I get really discouraged. Defeated. Wounded. Frustrated. Things aren’t how I’d like them to be most of the time. I don’t expect them to be, but sometimes it really does wear me down. I wouldn’t use the word, but it’s this kind of state that we find with our Psalm today, affliction.

I suppose there are many days I feel afflicted. I don’t say that in a “woe is me” kind of way, but rather I say this to acknowledge that there are many days where we feel discouraged, defeated, beaten down or worn so thin.

When we are afflicted, we need strategies for returning back to wholeness, strategies and practices that will lead us back to where we need to be and set us back on that illuminated path.

The Psalmist repeats their intention to be directed back towards God’s ordinances, God’s laws. We hear in vs. 106 that vows have been spoken, oaths to uphold these laws of God. The vow is made, but also the Psalmist acknowledges the need for God’s help to uphold and live out this law. Following God’s way cannot rely on our own strength or commitment alone, but rather must be a partnership of our earnest reliance on God and God’s abundant gifts of sustaining and lifting us up along the way.

What vows have you made? Perhaps you’ve made vows here in the church, commitments as an ordained, called person in church leadership. In our tradition, we hold our vows of ordination with high regard. Elders, deacons, and pastors all stand before their community to speak impossible promises and to seek our community’s help in upholding these promises.

What other vows? Well, of course, we might think of marriage vows as we hear of this promise to uphold a commitment, even when we are discouraged or defeated. Whenever I perform a marriage ceremony, I like to highlight the deep commitment a couple makes by drawing attention to the impossibility of the promises they are making: Impossible because we are human, we make mistakes, we slip up, and we need to acknowledge, even in our most giddy and hopeful places, like at the budding of a new marriage, that we will wrestle with this commitment to another person as we grow and mature through life. We make impossible promises in the presence of our loved ones and friends in order to ask for help — will you support us as we step out into this crazy endeavor?

Our vows pull us back into focus.

One of the ways I am blessed in marriage to Stacy is that she, in commitment to her vows to me, reminds me when I need to get back on track. We’ve recently been talking about the rules or laws we hold ourselves to, the regular practices and commitments we make through our days to keep it ordered and focused on who we want to be. She is wise: she knows that I often benefit from rules, even when I say I resist them. Rules/vows/laws/ordinances — they can actually set me back on a right path and sometimes, I just need that. I need to let go of all my attempts to do it my way, and, instead, rest on the rules of life we have set together in order to return to who I am and who we’ve said we will be together.

One of my favorite musicians, Derek Webb, wrote a song about making vows, that highlights their impossible nature, as well as how they can form us and instruct us along an unknown path ahead.

The Vow:

Oh, I don't wanna hide, I want some witnesses

To see the thing that I'm about to do

I'm gonna make some promises I cannot keep

But I will be held to, oh my god

I have a habit of getting in over my head

I just can't resist the locks and chains

It bounds me up to something that I can't control

That's bound itself to me and you

Oh, I can't see the day after tomorrow

I don't know the future, even still

I don't promise cause I know I'll always love you

I make my vow to guarantee I will

I want to be a honest: the way of faith is not always easy, not always smooth. The path that we are praying that God would illuminate is, as the prayer portrays, often darkened, obscured, foggy. There’s often more in the way of the path or shrouding our direction than there are bright lights and signs pointing us in the right direction.

Psalm 119 reminds us that our source, our direction, our hope — it comes to us as we take steps along the path. I find we are less likely to get a bolt of lightening that directs us than a

How do we break free of our affliction, our feeling defeated and discouraged, poor and miserable?

Isn’t that a question we’re all asking, at some level? We all get discouraged, lose heart, lack faith, and struggle to believe. I want to just acknowledge that reality. Maybe we’re ashamed to admit it. To say: yeah, I struggle to keep this up; I’m broken down and burned out; I’m out here looking for life, even just a taste of it, and yet my enemies seem to keep winning, the ways of the wicked keep prevailing. How long, again we ask?

Sadly, the church has far too often been a place where this kind of honesty is not welcomed. Questions that rustle around in our uncertainties or our fears are often dismissed or pushed aside. The church has often been a place where we feel like we’re supposed to have it all together, when really, the church MUST be a place where we can come WITH our doubts, questions, struggles. We need this, I need this, you need this to be true, right? Where else can we go to bring these afflictions, these struggles? If not to the table of God and the family of Christ, bound up together by the Holy Spirit; if not here, then where?

And that is what the Psalmist seems to have found. In his affliction, he continues to turn to God for support and rest. He finds that his heart is filled when he returns to the laws of God, when he reorders his life around the rhythms of God’s way.

We cannot get to this place of rest by trying to believe harder or pushing down our struggles. We cannot find our home in Christ by just doubling down on what we hold to be certainties, all the while ignoring the festering wounds of injustice or the felt absence of God.

The good news for us today is there is a light that will guide us back along the path. And we CAN find it, can see it, once we let go of all our striving for certainty and, instead, embrace the beauty of God’s ordering of our lives.

I don’t always like following the rules. I don’t always like that laws are imposed upon me without my consent. I don’t like the idea that I need to reorder my life, thank you very much. I may be struggling, but at least I can own my struggle and can claim my independence, so help me God.

I need to learn from the wisdom of the Psalmist, who by God’s help and grace has found a way to see the road ahead BY engaging with these laws and ordinances.

English writer, philosopher, and Christian apologist beautifully reminds us that our sense of our selves must, admittedly, be tempered by the reality that we resist following the rules and that we, more often than not, forget what it means to even be ourselves as we feel this weight of discouragement and affliction. He says,

“We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.”

We are a people who need to, oftentimes, remember that we forget. Remember that in our affliction, we have lost sight of who we are and who God has made us to be.

And it’s not just through behaviors and rule following and law abiding that we can get back to that true self. Rather, it is admitting the impossibility of believing all the right things, saying all the right words, acting all the right ways. Instead of trying to do the impossible, we turn to God and say - “help me remember.”

So, how do we remember ourselves?

Vows

As I’ve already highlighted, the vows we make are meant to help realign us to our purpose and focus our energies back where they are rightly meant to be. Vows help us with this.

I don't promise cause I know I'll always love you

I make my vow to guarantee I will

There’s a bit of ironic energy to these song lyrics — vows cannot guarentee they are honored by themselves. Rather, vows are spoken in community, before a group of people that we trust, in order that that community will help us uphold them. A vow made privately can be helpful to keep us on track, but it is the public nature of our vows of faith that truly helps us remember who we are.

Our Presbyterian Book of Order, 1/2 of our church’s constitution, has a significant section on Church Discipline. Sadly, this is one section that is least utilized in our governance. Sure, we are thankful that we’re not always dealing with disciplinary issues. But what Church Discipline is really about is helping us keep our vows. I think about this part of our church’s laws less as a vehicle for disciplining an individual in the case of wrongdoing and MORE about another variation of that word: Discipleship.

We have rules for discipline so that we might grow into our being disciples of Jesus. Followers, acolytes, learners, co-laborers, friends — disciples.

And our vows are meant to help discipline us in this way. We honor the laws of God by faithfully maintaining the commitments we make.

I’ll be the first to admit, I often need to be reminded of the vows I’ve taken. I get discouraged, disheartened, tired, and it’s easy to let this disciplined way of life slip out of focus. I am quick to lose sight of the path God sets before me. And so, I must remember my vows.

Two of the vows I’ve taken often come to mind:

First, in the ordination of all church officers, we each vow to “pray for and seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love.” I often remember this vow when I’m feeling worn down. Not remembering it in the sense of trying to find some sort of latent energy in me to pull myself up by the bootstraps and get it together, but rather knowing that as I have made that vow, saying “I will” that God has also vowed in response to me to help — to grant me energy and imagination when I have none, to uphold me when I’m struggling. It is a mutual vow, shared commitment.

The other vow is specific to Ministers. We are asked to be “faithful ministers of Word and Sacrament, proclaiming the good news, teaching faith and caring for people.” I remember this commitment when I am afflicted because it reminds me that at the heart of my calling, I am meant to share good news, life and hope. I am committed to bearing my struggles honestly and naming my doubts because I know this can help teach others and support the body of Christ. It is not a vow to be perfect, but rather a vow to keep looking for the good and telling about it, with my whole heart.

When we are afflicted, run down, hurt or afraid, where do we go to remember who we are and find the light for the path again?

Let’s close with this reminder found in Psalm 119:105

Psalm 119:105 NRSV

105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

God’s word — the Scriptures and the promises God has made to us through them, these can light our way. I’m not saying that if you just read your Bible more, everything is going to be smooth sailing from here on out. No. That’s not how this works.

But, rather, what the Psalmist is getting at is that when we are untethered, unmoored and afflicted, tossed about, we can find comfort and direction by reminding ourselves of the ways God has called us beloved, chosen, set apart for a purpose. It is in this word that God makes Godself known to us. And we remember who we are.

I read a Psalm like this and I find comfort that I am not alone in my afflicted wandering. I’m comforted that others have felt this longing for a light on their path. I’m sustained by remembering God’s laws and how they are meant for the good ordering of our world and that I can trust them to remind me of my place in it.

I’ll close again with our Isaiah texts, as it, alongside the Psalm this morning, speak of how God’s promises are not in vain, but that when God promises to sustain us, that word will return with purpose in our lives. That our vows are met by God’s faithfulness to us, that it is God’s faith to us that shines a light on our path and leads us home.

Let these words be our prayer today:

The New Revised Standard Version An Invitation to Abundant Life

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.