"A Gospel Song With A Restless Spirit": Why we need the Psalms ~ Psalm 40 (Poets series)

In 1987 the band U2 released the album The Joshua Tree, inspired by their experience of America. A song on that

album was “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” which astounded many for its powerful declaration of Christian faith amidst struggle and doubt: I believe in the Kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one / Bleed into one / But yes, I'm still running / You broke the bonds / and you loosened chains / carried the cross of my shame, of my shame / You know I believe it / But I still haven't found / What I'm looking for. U2's lead singer and songwriter, Bono, has referred to it as “a gospel song with a restless spirit.” I like that. It’s also a perfect description for the Psalms of the Bible with their bombastic praise and frustrating complaint. It should be of no surprise that the two Christians of the group, Bono and the Edge, also love the Psalms and find in them an animating spirit for their own music. One of the most notable and consistent elements of

the band for a long time was that they would end their concerts singing their own arrangement of Psalm 40. For that reason alone it may be one of the more known Psalms, sung by concert goers who have no self-proclaimed religious faith at all (give it a listen Psalm 40 Live, Red Rocks, U2). What is it about the Psalms that make them so powerful? Why is it that millions of people, many of whom might never darken the door of a church, would sing one? Why have a faith that sings Psalm 40?

   1.    I’m aching for a metaphor.

We need metaphor because life, faith and God are not a multiple-choice test to answer, a puzzle to solve, or a to-do list to accomplish. It’s the work of poetry. Spiritual sight, David declares in vs. 5, is about learning to be amazed, about standing still and recognizing that the world “is a huge stockpile of God-wonders and God-thoughts.” It’s about being ushered into a mystery. And “mystery,” according to the psalmist is not something that you cannot understand, but it is something that is endlessly understandable and ever-present (Richard Rohr). So I need colorful words and images that help me beautifully express what I struggle to say. I long for a spirituality that’s so beautiful it leaves me speechless (vs. 5).
When I read the psalms and ponder the beauty and mystery

of divine poetry, I recognize that I am so tired of “cookbook theology.” You know: 3 cups of academic theology, using properly difficulty words like eschatology, soteriology, sovereignty, a pinch of proper church piety, a teaspoon of Biblical proof-text.  The Bible, however, is not a cookbook. It offers deep words that run and smear together like paint, that drip and drizzle like honey, that fill us with beauty, that stretch us, that confound us. The Psalms capture our imaginations and vividly remind me that I ache for metaphor and simile like: “your faithfulness reaches

beyond the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your justice like the ocean depths. You care for people and animals alike, O Lord. How precious is your unfailing love, O God! All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings” (Psalm 36). And if the Psalms announce such divine beauty then we must read them in a different way than some of the other writings in our series. We should read them in small bites and remember the words of the poet laureate Billy Collins.

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins.

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

We need metaphor to show us that a proper, Biblical spirituality isn’t simply about “what it really means” and more about mystery, silence, seeing this world as a gorgeous stage from which God moves, acts, cares for, and loves. Remember the words of Rabbi Abraham Heschel: “to be spiritual is to be amazed.”

          2.    I'm longing for some experience in this life. 

The Psalms offer words that make sense of my complicated life. They speak from experience in ways that touch my own. And if you think that experience doesn’t matter – then try explaining chocolate to someone who has never tasted it, the ache from the death of a loved one to someone who has never had a parent perish. The Psalms are not investigations in abstraction. They epitomize C.S. Lewis’ explanation of “friendship”: “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’” Psalm 40 traces an actual difficult experience of David. We don't know the exact situation that led to this psalm, but it was clearly a time of waiting in prayer, of doubt, anxiety, uncertainty . . . and then of being delivered. What! You too? We discover what David experienced: that believers often go through a difficult time only to face another one. It gives us words to use in our prayers when we are going through our own struggles, spiritual or otherwise.

Psalm 40 calls for testimony, for sharing our experiences: “I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation” (verse 10). When we receive God’s aid, the “thank you note” that God desires is that we tell others that they, too, can find God. Sometimes you never know who needs such sharing and what affect it can have.

In my small group someone shared struggles she had as a teenager with the senselessness of life. She said she found peace when a woman wrote a letter to the editor of a magazine telling younger woman that she had struggled with suicidal thoughts and now found herself thriving with a family and a job in her thirties. The person shared that the letter had a huge impact her. That’s the Psalms, I realized – they give us hope by sharing our experience and helping us

see hope. They remind us that in this life we can “remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” (Psalm 27:13)

The psalms are restless songs sung by those who have walked the darkest valleys, stood in the midst of the shaking mountains, experienced life when the bottom drops out. Life will never be the same. But God met these sufferers in the depths of their sufferings. And they have a simple message: God found me. Praise the Lord.

          3.    I'm hoping for some honesty and truth 

What have I learned from the Psalms by Bono (watch the first 48 seconds)

 But the psalms do more than simply frame experience. Bono is right. They also offer permission and an invitation for brutal honesty and truth. We can lament our waiting, announce our despair, even while we declare God’s goodness and faithfulness. Bono once remarked that Christian popular music in his experience had gotten better musically but remained lyrically dishonest, incapable of helping people speak authentically. In response, he urged Christian artists to read the Psalms and write about their bad marriage or being upset with the government. We need to give vent to honest feelings of pain, frustration, joy, delight, even anger and violence. Bono also said “being brutally honest is the route not just to a real relationship with God but it’s the route to a great song. In fact it’s the only place where you can find any work of art with merit.” David would agree. But the Psalms don’t simply beckon us to honesty. They also throw truth in our face. They want us to grapple with the tension of God’s overwhelming goodness amidst terrible absence and pain. They hold out to us the terrible tension that while one may not see, one can at least still know. And the Psalms have no problem placing these two realities: honesty and truth side-by-side, inviting them to duke it out. Authentic Biblical spirituality will always wrestle with both. The Psalms help us do that.

4.    I’m hoping to (not) find myself.

On the one hand, I read the Psalms because I’m longing to find myself there, in its struggles, with its joys. And I do. In Psalm 40 I find myself in words and images that resonate with me like a tuning fork that causes things to similarly vibrate.
But if all I find in the Psalms is myself, my silly little face, my limited perspective, my pitiful problems and complaints, then that spirituality is too small it seems: to small to heal, to tiny to create wonder and mystery and to miniscule to be very meaningful. More than that, if spirituality is all about me it also becomes just one more burden that I have to shoulder, one more task at which I utterly fail. But the Psalms are not songs destined for saints but are a spirituality designed for sinners. The good news is that while you might find yourself like I do in them – there’s one verse in Psalm 40 that I want to encourage you with because it’s not about you. In fact, I want to argue that by not being about you – it will save your life. I’m talking about vs. 7. This verse is also quoted by the writer of Hebrews who adds an interesting twist.

Hebrew 10:5-7 writes: ⁵ Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; ⁶ with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. ⁷ Then I said, ‘Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll— I have come to do your will, my God.’”

It is because we are not in vs. 7 that we can be saved, that we can wait, that we can hope. Here is what I mean to read this Psalm as a Christian. Jesus says things that I can’t. And if he does, if he says them, if it’s his voice and not my own, then all I need to do is say “yes” to him.