Texts:
Rather than talking about the texts for today, I think a discussion around living through disappointment is what is clamoring to be written. Though most of us would assert we have learned as much from closed doors (if not more) than we have from open ones, we don't really talk about what it feels like to hit the closed door. We don't talk about what it feels like to be rejected. We don't talk about what it is like to not be selected for the team. Most of us have seen the closed doors or worse, having not seen them, ran headlong right into them.
We tell ourselves (and others tell us) it is for the best, but it sets a cascade of self-doubt, drawing up the other times we have faced disappointment: at a lost job, at a lost relationship, at a lost life, at the person who was meant to be "the one" falling in love with someone else, and at the disappointment when we fail to meet our own expectations for ourselves. On second thought, Psalm 22 might be the quintessential lament.
25From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
26The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever!
27All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
28For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.
29To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.
30Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,
31and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.
The end of Psalm 22 does not betray the first stanza, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The Psalmist, in grief and despair, in disappointment, cries out only to find himself preaching. This is not a theology of glory. This is a theology which wades in to the messiness and despair - into disappointment and faiulre. This is not a God who blesses those who are already blessed, but those who don't even dare ask for a blessing. There is no God-forsaken place. There are lonely places. There are dark places. Though we stumble along the path, we do not stumble alone. It may not be the blessing we hoped for, but it is the blessing we have received. It is enough... in fact, it is more than that for which we have asked.
Dayenu. It is enough.
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