Sunday, March 17th, 2024: "Waiting"
First United Presbyterian Church
“Waiting”
Rev. Amy Morgan
March 17, 2024
Psalm 130
1 Out of the depths have I called to you, O GOD;
GOD, hear my voice; *
let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication.
2 If you, GOD, were to note what is done amiss, *
O GOD, who could stand?
3 For there is forgiveness with you; *
therefore you shall be feared.
4 I wait for GOD; my soul waits for GOD; *
in GOD’s word is my hope.
5 My soul waits for GOD,
more than sentries for the morning, *
more than sentries for the morning.
6 O Israel, wait for GOD, *
for with GOD there is mercy;
7 With GOD there is plenteous redemption, *
and GOD shall redeem Israel from all their sins
A month before my ninth birthday, the attention of the whole world was captured by an 18-month-old toddler named Jessica McClure. “Baby Jessica,” as she was quickly dubbed by the news media, had stumbled into a 22-foot well in Midland, TX. For days, it was all we heard about. CNN provided live coverage of the whole event, detailing Baby Jessica’s position and disposition, the different rescue plans being considered and the challenges and risks of each, and the ticking clock of how long she could survive without food or water.
At one point, a microphone was lowered into the well, and her dad, Chip, was given headphones to listen. And what he heard was his baby’s cry.
Out of the depths, literally, Baby Jessica cried. And her parents cried out of the depths of their worry. And the rescue workers, many of them neighbors and friends of the McClure family, cried out of the depths of frustration when they discovered that the well was encased in rock and the equipment they had wouldn’t work.
And the world watched and waited.
I can’t imagine being a toddler, trapped in an 8-inch-wide tube with one foot wedged over my head, waiting for rescue. I can’t imagine being a parent, helplessly standing by, waiting for my child to be rescued. But I remember vividly what it was like to wait, hour after hour, for news about this event. I remember how hopeless the situation sounded at times. I remember wondering what we would all do if Baby Jessica couldn’t be rescued in time. It felt like the sort of story that was supposed to have a happy ending, but what if it didn’t? It felt like the faith of the nation hinged on the fate of this child.
We don’t know what deep well the Psalmist had fallen into when they composed Psalm 130, but they seem to understand the Baby Jessica moment. For ancient Israel, the depths, the sea, was both the most frightening of places, where sudden storms claimed lives, and a place of redemption, remembering the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea in Israel’s escape from slavery in Egypt. This Psalm expresses both the terror and anguish of being in “the depths” and also the hope and promise of God’s salvation. The Psalmist cries out to God, and expresses hope and confidence in God. The Psalm leaves us waiting in anticipation, not knowing if the Psalmist is finally rescued from the depths or not.
This Psalm begins with a cry, that cry of despair from the depths of pain and helplessness. But then it moves to confession. And then contemplation. And finally, confidence.
This structure is important.
The Psalmist’s opening cry demonstrates that to cry out in pain when we find ourselves drowning in the depths of life is absolutely appropriate. People who say they shouldn’t be sad, or complaining, or upset about their situation because someone else has it worse or because it feels like they don’t have enough faith have missed this message from the Psalms. We are encouraged to feel our feels and to yell at God to listen to us, to show up and do something.
When the Psalmist moves to confession, we’re invited to notice how our own wrong turns, or the twisted world we live in, has contributed to our suffering. The Psalmist realizes that somewhere along the way they took a wrong turn that landed them in the depths. They talk about sin and forgiveness, both individual and corporate. For the Psalmist, and in much of scripture, sin is not a matter of intentional evil. The word for sin that is found in this Psalm comes from the Hebrew root meaning to twist or turn aside. Sin is merely a wrong turn. It is unintentional. It happens to everybody. That’s why the Psalmist says that if God kept a scorecard of these missteps, we’d all be left lying in our own messes.
Then the Psalmist moves into a contemplative waiting. This waiting is not passive or resigned. The image of the sentry waiting for the morning is someone actively on guard, awake and alert and full of longing and confident hope. They know the sun will rise, their vigil will end, and they will be given rest and safety. God’s word is the Psalmist’s hope, that “word of the Lord” that encompasses the law and the prophets, the guidance and the promises God has made to Israel. Contemplating this word is how the Psalmist is able to wait in hopeful expectation.
Finally, the Psalmist expresses confidence in God’s forgiveness and mercy. Not just for their individual missteps, but for all the twisted values and backward living of God’s people. If the whole community of Israel can learn to wait and contemplate God’s word, they will experience God’s faithful love and abundant forgiveness.
Some of us are in the depths this morning, and all of us likely know someone who is crying out in deep pain. Folks are drowning in deep wells of sadness and stuck in the holes they have dug for themselves. Some of us have just turned our attention aside for a moment or wandered in the wrong direction. Others feel like they’ve fallen off the face of the earth for no reason at all. We are waiting for rescue, waiting for good news, waiting for the morning like our life, and our faith, depends on it.
It is absolutely appropriate for us to cry out, to say, “hey, God, do you see I’m drowning here?” It is faithful for us to cry out in the pain of our losses, our worry, our overwhelm. It is faithful for us to call on God to show up and do something – for us, for our loved ones, for our community, our nation, and all those who are suffering around the world. We should be crying out for the children of Gaza and the mothers of Israel, the old men fighting in Ukraine and the young people protesting in Russia. We should be crying out for everyone who finds themselves in the depths.
And, it is absolutely essential that we recognize how our own wrong turns, or the twisted values of the world we live in, have contributed to our suffering and the suffering of others. Not so we can place blame or feel guilty or ashamed. But so we can understand that we’re not able to get ourselves out of this mess. We are human, and we will get turned around and caught up in twisted schemes. But God isn’t counting that against us. Being in the depths is not a punishment for our sin, it is just the natural consequence of living a fully human life.
And if we contemplatively wait, hoping in God’s word, God’s promises to Israel and God’s Word made flesh in Jesus Christ, we can endure the dark night of the soul until the sun rises again.
But we are not people who are very good at waiting. The average response time for text messages is 90 seconds. The average wait time at most fast-food drive-thrus is less than 2 minutes. And we can order just about anything to arrive at our doorstep in two days.
Despite how much our world has sped up and reduced wait times, we still find ourselves waiting an awful lot. We wait in security lines at the airport, we wait on hold for customer service, we wait for rides to pick us up or for friends who run chronically late. We aren’t totally immune to waiting.
We know what it feels like to wait; even to wait like our faith depends on it. We have waited for college acceptance letters and job offers. We have waited for babies to be born and we have waited for loved ones to die. We have waited for someone or something to get better, for circumstances to change. We have waited for the morning through sleepless nights, and we have waited for nightfall after exhausting days. We know what it is to wait.
And we always hope our waiting has a happy ending. Sometimes it feels like our faith hinges on good news, good outcomes, new beginnings, healing and rest. Otherwise, why would we bother crying out to God from the depths and hopefully contemplating God’s word? We have confidence that God will come through and make everything all right again.
But the confidence of the Psalmist is grounded in the faithful love and abundant mercy of God, not in the happy endings we imagine. Getting out of wells, being rescued from the depths, unraveling our twisted path, can be tricky. Rescue may not come in the form we expect or on our timeline. We may not escape without wounds.
Because the opening for the well Baby Jessica fell in was so small, simply pulling her back up was not an option. The rescuers had to drill a parallel hole in the ground and drill through rock using new and untested tools. The folks trained as paramedics and first responders could not have saved Baby Jessica. It was the local residents who worked in the oil industry who had the expertise and equipment needed to devise and execute a successful rescue plan.
And it was successful. Baby Jessica was pulled from the well alive. As a paramedic wedged her through a small hole to the wider shaft, she cried, “no, no, no,” unable to understand that this painful procedure was saving her life. Her rescue took a long time, nearly 60 hours. And she was left with a scar on her forehead and a mangled left foot.
We can be confident in God’s faithful love and abundant mercy. That faithful love and mercy assure us that God is the one who can pull us up out of the deep waters and set us back on dry land. Because God is the one who pushed aside the depths of the Red Sea and led Israel to freedom. God is the one who descended into the depths of human pain and suffering in Jesus Christ to make a way for humanity to be freed from sin and death.
But that freedom may not come in the forms we expect or on our timelines. We may not escape without wounds. Our rescue might require usual and untested methods and uncommon personnel. We may not even recognize our salvation when it arrives, and we might resist it. And we might come away from our ordeals with some scars.
But God will not stop, will not give up on us. As we cry out, God hears us. When we confess our wrong turns and twisted values, God forgives us. As we wait in contemplation, God’s word will not fail us. And our confidence is not misplaced in the God who brought Israel out of the depths and who will go to any lengths to rescue us, again and again.
To God be all glory forever and ever. Amen.
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