Psalm 551 Give ear to my prayer, O God;
do not hide yourself from my supplication.
2 Attend to me, and answer me;
I am troubled in my complaint.
I am distraught 3by the noise of the enemy,
because of the clamour of the wicked.
For they bring trouble upon me,
and in anger they cherish enmity against me.
4 My heart is in anguish within me,
the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
5 Fear and trembling come upon me,
and horror overwhelms me.
6 And I say, ‘O that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest;
7 truly, I would flee far away;
I would lodge in the wilderness;
Selah
8 I would hurry to find a shelter for myself
from the raging wind and tempest.’
9 Confuse, O Lord, confound their speech;
for I see violence and strife in the city.
10 Day and night they go around it
on its walls,
and iniquity and trouble are within it;
11 ruin is in its midst;
oppression and fraud
do not depart from its market-place.
12 It is not enemies who taunt me—
I could bear that;
it is not adversaries who deal insolently with me—
I could hide from them.
13 But it is you, my equal,
my companion, my familiar friend,
14 with whom I kept pleasant company;
we walked in the house of God with the throng.
15 Let death come upon them;
let them go down alive to Sheol;
for evil is in their homes and in their hearts.
16 But I call upon God,
and the Lord will save me.
17 Evening and morning and at noon
I utter my complaint and moan,
and he will hear my voice.
18 He will redeem me unharmed
from the battle that I wage,
for many are arrayed against me.
19 God, who is enthroned from of old,
Selah
will hear, and will humble them—
because they do not change,
and do not fear God.
20 My companion laid hands on a friend
and violated a covenant with me
21 with speech smoother than butter,
but with a heart set on war;
with words that were softer than oil,
but in fact were drawn swords.
22 Cast your burden on the Lord,
and he will sustain you;
he will never permit
the righteous to be moved.
23 But you, O God, will cast them down
into the lowest pit;
the bloodthirsty and treacherous
shall not live out half their days.
But I will trust in you
Grace and peace to you from God, our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
There are some parts of scripture that make us uncomfortable (I hope we can all admit that). At the very least, there are parts of scripture that we can never picture ourselves saying, and other scriptures that make us a little embarrassed. Whether it’s the concern about circumcision, the promiscuous language of Song of Songs, the Levitical laws that seem foreign, or the frightening images of Revelation, there are several passages that do legitimately leave us wondering, “Is it ok that that’s in the Bible?”
I think too often we hush those doubts in our minds, because this is the word of God we’re talking about! We tend to think that to question God’s word is a form of apostasy—after all isn’t this where God is revealed to us? Yet, in his prefaces to the book of James and the book of Revelation, Martin Luther does just that, railing against whether either book has any place in the canon. As Christians, freed by Christ to serve as his body, we have freedom to do just as Luther did; we have the freedom to question. This is not a free pass to throw out what we don’t like, but instead it is an opportunity to ask ‘Why don’t we like it?’ It may in fact be that there are scriptural words that are of no value to us, but we cannot make those determinations unless we first allow them to work in us. Please don’t make the mistake of making judgments on what you haven’t read.
When scholars categorize the psalms, Psalm 55 fits neatly into the category of an “imprecatory” psalm; in other words, it is a psalm written against the enemy. Already, you may find yourself squirming. ‘Didn’t Jesus say to love our enemies?’ you might be thinking. Yes, he did. So one option is to see that this psalm is saying something that might not agree with what Jesus later says and throw it out. That is basically what the editors of the Lutheran Book of Worship—the green book—did when they didn’t include the imprecatory (or even many of the lament) psalms in their hymnal. There is precedence for ignoring these scriptures, but they are still there and we do ourselves a disservice when we don’t read them. To ignore anger and wrathful feelings is to ignore part of what we naturally feel as human beings. It is, in a real sense, to deny our humanity. The psalm ends on this note: But you, O God, will cast them down into the lowest pit; the bloodthirsty and treacherous shall not live out half their days. But I will trust in you. I think if we’re honest we have felt that way before about somebody. Is it a good way to feel? Maybe not. But the psalms capture the whole spectrum of human emotion, and this is a real human emotion. It’s one that is as present today as it was two or three thousand years ago.
We have no further to look for an example of this than the most “liked” figure on Facebook, a rapper out of Detroit, Michigan who goes by the stage name Eminem. Even before I begin, I feel the need to address the jarring-ness of using Eminem as a primary sermon illustration. The normal method of addressing historical figures in sermon-form is either to lift up a figure as a positive influence, say Gandhi or Mother Theresa, and talk about his or her positive qualities. In this way, you learn how to act more “Christian.” Or, conversely, you may examine a negative character, say Stalin, in order to delve into the depths of human sinfulness. I think the temptation with a character like Eminem is to do exactly what we would do with the imprecatory psalms—either ignore him or disparage him.
Yet, there are over 30 million people who have clicked on the “like” button on Eminem’s Facebook page, 30 million people who resonate with something that Eminem is doing. And what Eminem is doing, I want to suggest, is much the same thing that Psalm 55 is doing. He is speaking poetry out of confusion, anguish and hatred, though he often doesn’t even know who to direct it against. In his 2010 song, Talkin’ 2 Myself, Eminem raps, I almost made a song dissin’ Lil Wayne//It's like I was jealous of him 'cause of the attention he was gettin'//I felt horrible about myself. He goes on to say: I've turned into a hater, I've put up a false bravado. Confession is confession, no matter the form.
Is it appropriate for your kids to be listening to Eminem? Maybe not. But there’s something behind his mass following that is bigger than blind hatred and explicit lyrics. Millions of people are crying the same laments of Psalm 55: It is not enemies who taunt me— I could bear that;it is not adversaries who deal insolently with me—I could hide from them. But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend. Everyone has been let down by a friend and, whether you say it or not, you have felt the same way as this Psalm. Eminem realizes this, and so do his fans—often on a subconscious level—because he is rapping to a generation of individuals who feel lost, alone and betrayed. They know intuitively what it means to be broken. Eminem’s rap is an expression borne out of the struggle to get by, a struggle for the basic needs in life—love, friendship, and meaning.
Again, in Talkin’ 2 Myself, Eminem raps: But instead of feeling sorry for yourself do something about it//Admit you got a problem your brain is clouded you pouted long enough//It isn't them it’s you, you [expletive] baby. The reason we should still read the imprecatory psalms is that they leave us where Eminem does, and they even go one step further. Where Eminem makes it finally about taking responsibility for yourself, the psalmist gives up complete control, saying,
Cast your burden on the Lord,
and he will sustain you;
he will never permit
the righteous to be moved.
and he will sustain you;
he will never permit
the righteous to be moved.
The final chapter on the Eminem saga remains unwritten, but don’t be surprised if it ends up looking more like that. Don’t be surprised, in short, if all the self-loathing and anger at others leads back to the cross. The reason we recoil against the psalms that cry out in pain, anguish and hatred is because we have that assurance of the cross, but when you doubt it—and you will—Psalm 55 may become for you words that resonate across millennia. There are people out there looking for that assurance and turning to Eminem because he is the only one offering a cogent message; he is the only one they can relate to. He knows their struggles. That is Christian witness, even if it is wrapped up in non-pious rhetoric. To know individuals’ struggles is to be Christ for them.
The purpose of Psalm 55 is to show the depths of that humanity. Should we throw out Eminem? Well, should we throw out this psalm? Should we—like Thomas Jefferson—begin cutting out parts of the Bible we don’t like? This isn’t the only option. We can get off our high horses, admit that we often aren’t the best examples of Christ-like love, and then we can meet a world that is exactly there—at the intersection of anger and desire, looking for something to give ultimate comfort and ultimate meaning. We are broken and sometimes it feels like we are talkin’ to ourselves, but that is not the final word. The promise we have is that when we cry out in anger there is yet redemption, not just for us individually but for all the broken relationships that have brought us to that point.
That is the gospel just beyond the lyrics. It is the promise just beyond the psalm. Eminem and the psalmist may not bring us into that country, but they take us to the precipice by admitting what we are, by acknowledging what we feel, and by suggesting that there is something more.
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