Psalm Meditation 732
Third Sunday of Ordinary Time
June 29, 2014

Psalm 42
1 As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God.
2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?
3 My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
4 These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng,
 and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.
5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help
6 and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have gone over me.
8 By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.
9 I say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?”
10 As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, “Where is your God?”
11 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.
(NRSV)

“Where is your God?” is an easy question to ask and a hard one to answer, especially in a time of trial. Those who ask the question as a taunting challenge are waiting for God to come down and fix the situation in which they find us. Because God is not active in the way they would anticipate, they assume that God is not present. God is supposed to come down in a fiery chariot, and with the wave of a hand save us from any and all calamities. Especially, in the time of the psalmist, the power of the nation was in direct correlation to the power of the God or gods of that nation. As a nation defeated Israel they would certainly ask the question of this psalm with companion question, “Why could your God not save you from us?”

It is a hard to answer because a part of us is asking the question as well. We too want to see God coming to our rescue at the head of an angel army all with weapons drawn swarming down on our foe. Whether the enemy is a person, group, nation or situation we want the whole host of heaven to come down and put things right, that is, the way we want them to be. When things don’t turn out that way, we find ourselves asking where God is in our lives. If God is present, certainly things would happen my way. It may be a fleeting feeling or one that lasts awhile, however we do wonder where God is in all of this.

Gratefully, our view of God has changed because of our experience throughout salvation history. From a view that God will rescue us from every calamity we have moved to a view that God is with us in all times and places. Yes, we still wish that God would swoop down and rescue us, even as we know that the presence of God through the good and bad is more of a gift than deliverance from bad stuff could ever be. Folks still challenge our faith by asking, “Where is your God?” and we still find ourselves wondering the same thing. Eventually we join the psalmist in the refrain of this psalm, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.”

June 23, 2014
LCM