We have all sometimes felt heavy, depressed, anxious, or overwhelmed. How do we tend to deal with these experiences? Psalms 42 and 43, which we heard earlier, may offer us some resources to help us.
Indeed, the whole Book of Psalms is a wonderful resource to help us articulate and pray through all kinds of emotions and experiences. There are psalms which express exuberant praise and joyful thanksgiving; those that express delight in creation; prayers of confession; cries of anger, bitterness and despair; prayers of complaint; expressions of trust and dependence and hope; cries for help. So, for all of us, we should be able to find a suitable psalm for every experience, every situation. As John Calvin said: 'The Book of Psalms is "An Anatomy of all the Parts of the Soul"... There is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror' (cf James 1:23). Or as St Athanasius put it: in the psalms 'you learn about yourself'. We learn about ourselves in the light of God's holiness and love.
So, let's turn to Psalm 42 and Psalm 43. We heard them both because these two psalms properly belong together. They are really one psalm. You may have noticed they have the same refrain which comes three times at different points; twice in Psalm 42 and once in Psalm 43:
Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul,
And why are you so disquieted within me?
O put your trust in God;
For I will yet give him thanks,
Who is the help of my countenance , and my God.
The author of the Psalm is obviously going through a difficult time. He longs for God: 'as the deer longs for the water brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God….' He uses the vivid image of thirst in the desert, in a parched land. He is desperately thirsty for God, longing for God, but God seems to be absent.
He also faces external pressures; he is taunted by his enemies, who continually say to him 'where is now your God?' It seems he is far from home, unable to worship in Jerusalem; perhaps he is literally away in the north, near Mount Hermon which is mentioned later in the Psalm. For whatever reason, he is not able to worship in the temple, and this makes him feel cut off both from God's presence; and from the worshipping community.
He is desperate, not only spiritually dry, he is also overwhelmed, and later in the Psalm (Ps 42:9) he speaks as if he is drowning under deep water and crashing waves.
We may be able to identify with both the sense of dryness and emptiness, and the experience of being overwhelmed by pressure or anxiety. Certainly, for those of us who have gone through periods of depression, these images may capture our experience very vividly. We still talk about being 'in the depths'.
What do we do when we feel barren, dry and empty, or overwhelmed with anxiety or waves of depression, 'in the depths'? Perhaps we do what the Psalmist does, and acknowledge honestly our feelings of being overwhelmed, our fears, our longings, our downcast spirit. But the he isn't just 'getting his feelings off his chest', as we say – he addresses all this to God. Even though he feels that God is absent, that God has forgotten him, he still continues to cry out to God; to address the very God he feels is absent: 'I say to God, my rock: 'Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?'(Ps 42:11, Ps 43:2). And even more strikingly: 'Why have you cast me from you?' (Ps 43:2) Why? He asks several times, why? as he pours out his soul before God.
We too can be honest expressing our fears and sufferings, our raw longings and our painful questioning, not just articulating these to ourselves, or our close friends, or our counsellor, but addressing them to God. Perhaps we may sometimes think that we can't pray when we feel God is absent. These Psalms encourage us to pour out our soul to God at such times; to learn that suffering, emptiness and depression, rather than paralysing our prayer, can indeed prompt us to pray more earnestly. Remember that even Jesus cried out in desolation to God on the cross, in the words of Psalm 22:1: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
But the author of the Psalm doesn't only express his feelings before God. He also tries to go beyond his feelings and to think, to turn his mind from his present situation. He looks back and remembers. Firstly, he remembers the happy times in the past when he has joined in worship at the temple. There are different ways we might interpret these verses. It's interesting that one person I spoke to recently saw this remembering of happy times in the past which are now lost, as potentially adding more misery to the present. And perhaps we might recognise that in our own experience. But, following the interpretation of my Theological Principal who was an Old Testament scholar, I have always interpreted this remembering as a positive thing: 'Now I think on these things…how I went with the multitude and led the procession to the house of God, with the voice of praise and thanksgiving among those who kept holy day.' (Ps 42.4-5). He remembers he is part of a community who in their worship and festivals give thanks for all that God has done for them.
As he remembers the worshipping community he belongs to, he also then secondly remembers God himself, verse 8: 'My soul is heavy within me; therefore I will remember you.' In his heaviness, his depression, his anxiety, he turns his mind to think both of the community of which he is a part, and the God he worships, and he remembers times in the past when he has worshipped with joy and thanksgiving.
Sometimes for us too, it can help to look beyond our own immediate experience and our overwhelming feelings, to recall that we are not on our own, we are part of the community of God's people, and to remember God's faithfulness, and times of joy and praise in the past.
We all know that, if we rely solely on our feelings, our life and faith can go up and down in a sometimes chaotic way. St Ignatius of Loyola used to talk about periods of 'consolation' and periods of 'desolation': it is good to remind ourselves when we are in a period of 'desolation' that this is not the whole of reality, and a period of 'consolation' will come again. And we need to remember that God is bigger than our feelings. God can be trusted and praised at all times.
This is finally what the Psalmist tries to focus on. First, he expresses his raw emotions to God, then he ponders, thinks, and remembers but now finally he speaks to himself, urging himself to trust God even while he is going through this time of desolation. He does this in the refrain which comes up three times in these two psalms (Ps 42:6-7, 14; Ps 43:5):
Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul,
And why are you so disquieted within me?
O put your trust in God;
For I will yet give him thanks,
Who is the help of my countenance , and my God.
'Why am I giving in to despair?' he asks himself. He urges himself to let his awareness of God's presence in the past determine his attitude in the present, and to look with hope to the future. Although he says, 'tears have been my bread day and night' (verse 3), he looks ahead in trust 'The Lord will grant his loving-kindness in the daytime, through the night his song will be with me.' (v10). Yes, you may feel cast down and disquieted at the moment, but God is still God. Why give in to despair; you must put your hope in God. Things will change and you will find help and strength from God and again be able to praise him in the future. 'Don't give up' he is saying to himself, 'keep hoping, keep trusting, even if the present is unbearable. Wait for God, hope in him, even praise him.' 'For I will yet give him thanks', he says. This can be translated that I will give him thanks again in the future, or I will continually give him thanks, even now.
Trusting and praising God even when things are overwhelming is a discipline; and certainly not an easy one. Notice the refrain in these Psalms is repeated three times. The Psalm is structured in a way that the process of expressing feelings, then thinking and remembering, and then urging oneself to trust God, happens three times, each section ending with the refrain. That in itself is a reminder to us that we have to continually renew our trust and get up again. When we face depression or anxiety, when we feel alone, or misjudged, or that God is absent, there may be no once-for-all resolution of our inner turmoil. More realistically, we may go down again and again, and keep needing to get up and renew our trust in God, again and again.
Perhaps some of you may be wondering, what about those times when it is impossible to talk to ourselves, or to renew our trust in God? There may be times when we are seriously depressed and we can't just talk or pray ourselves out of that. A couple of years ago we had a session after church on 'Mental Health and the Christian Faith' and several people spoke honestly about their or their relatives' struggles with depression or anxiety. Christians can suffer from poor mental health as much as anyone, and I am glad that since that session people have felt more able to talk about such things and to find a listening support within the community. Sometimes we may find it impossible to pray ourselves, but others can pray for us.
At that session, we encouraged people to find professional support when needed, to draw support from the Christian community, and to reflect on short scripture passages when they were able to. Words from the Psalms, including the words we have pondered today, can be especially helpful. (Point out sheets we produced; say hoping to have follow up session in the Autumn)
Whenever I read these Psalms, 42-43, I always think of John Goldingay, who was the Principal of my Theological College and an OT lecturer and prolific writer. His wife, Ann suffered from MS. She already had this when they married as a young couple, but she still managed to have a very successful career as a psychiatrist and have three children. However, as a woman in her 50s (which was when I met her) she had become progressively more and more disabled. John looked after her with great care and tenderness, though it was a very painful situation for him. But it did mean that his lectures and classes were always real – he didn't just talk theoretically about the suffering of the Psalmist, or the suffering of Job – he knew what suffering was all about. And yet, like them, he had a robust trust in God. He loved these Psalms, Ps 42 and 43, and took their wisdom very much to heart: when he felt cast down and overwhelmed, he reminded himself to go on hoping and trusting God. He knew that our hope is in God and not in our present circumstances or our feelings; he also knew that he would face further struggles in the future and would need to remind himself of this truth again and again.
May we be reminded today that we can pour out our souls honestly to God, and bring before him our fears, our dryness, our sense of being overwhelmed; let us also at such times remind ourselves that we are part of a Christian community and we can support one another as we worship together, and that God is faithful through our joys and our struggles. We can trust him. So we can learn to address our own hearts
Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul,
And why are you so disquieted within me?
O put your trust in God;
For I will yet give him thanks,
Who is the help of my countenance, and my God.
Revd Helen Marshall