Proper 7C’25 22 June 2025
Psalm 42
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
North Little Rock, Arkansas
The Rev, Carey Stone<+>
“For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One: ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength;” Amen. – from Isaiah 30.15
Good morning, how are you doing? There was a person on-line who answered that question like this,
“How am I doing? I’m trying to figure out if I should be getting ready for WWII/, another pandemic, a takeover by Artificial Intelligence, economic collapse, stung by murder hornets, or all of the above!”
Their answer resonates for many of us this morning. While preparing this week for the sermon I was really drawn towards preaching on Psalm 42, I didn’t plan on it becoming literally true and having to live it quite so soon:
“Why are you so full of heaviness, 0 my soul? And why are you so disquieted within me?” v.6
To be disquieted according to the Oxford Dictionary means to be “disturbed, deprived of quietness and peace.”1 This deprivation of peace can lead us into the ditch of despair. The poet, David Whyte describes despair as:
“[taking] us in when we have nowhere else to go; when we feel the heart cannot break anymore, when our world or our loved ones disappear, when we feel we cannot be loved or do not deserve to be loved, when our God disappoints, or when our body is carrying profound pain in a way that does not seem to go away.“2
The psalmist describes their despair as coming in waves of relentless torrential rain and surf, the Message translation makes it clear:
“Chaos calls to chaos, to the tune of white-water rapids. Your breaking surf, your thundering breakers crash and crush me.” V.9
Despair is a close relative to grief and just like grief it does us no good to try and deny its existence. There is no way around it – only a way through it:
“Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” (Psalm 23) This is one of the reasons among many that the book of Psalms (the very first prayer book and
hymnal) has stood the test of time, through long use the Psalms have proven to be truthful and therefore useful. They contain practically every human emotion; from the depths of despair to teeth clinching anger, to the blissful heights of transcendence, to the sublime: In the truest sense they give us permission to be honest with God. One only needs to remember those lines from Psalm 22 that Jesus himself turned to while on the cross: “My God, my God, why hove you forsaken me?” We are invited into closeness to God through stating with gut wrenching honesty, where we are – physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Psalm 42 reveals a soul in great distress, disquiet, and despair. What do we do when we get in a shape like this and are in need of peace? We tend toward fighting, fleeing, freezing, or fawning, none of which brings us the peace we desire.
The psalmist decides to stay put and to stare down their despair. They chose an insightful metaphor to describe their place of despair – a deer in a condition of life-threatening thirst. Thirst, even more so than hunger, reveals the dire straits they are in. The average person can go 20 to 30 days without food, but can only go 3 to 5 days without water:
“As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God.” v.1 Making matters worse, we can feel separated from God:
“My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God; when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?”v.2
“My tears have been my food day and night”…v.3a
Add to this those who are at best cold and indifferent towards us and at the worse those who taunt us with malicious intent:
All day long they say to me, “Where is your God now?” v.3b
Why hove you forgotten me? And why do I go so heavily while the enemy oppresses me? V.11 How many know that we are just like the psalmist and that we all talk to ourselves? Well, what
are some of the things we tell ourselves?
That we are inadequate, and not enough, we have brought trouble on ourselves, that we are less than, that no one cares, that God doesn’t care for or love us? We are doomed, and God is on a coffee break!These and other things that we tell ourselves tend towards the catastrophic, and serves to heighten our depression and anxiety, which causes our inner rest and outward sleep to be disturbed.
All our sins are dead ends and won’t deliver the happiness and satisfaction that they promise.
The psalmist first demonstrates that our primary need is for spiritual waters from the living God. Life giving truth that is rooted in the unconditional love and acceptance of God! They then run through the laundry list of complaints, criticisms, and catastrophes. What they do next is what we need to do. After being honest with God, we need to be honest with ourselves:
“Why are you so full of heaviness, 0 my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?
Put your trust in God;
For I will yet give thanks to him,
Who is the help of my countenance, and my God.”
This reveals the spiritual movement that will restore peace:
1) Bring our complaints and our fears of abandonment to God.
2) Acknowledge in the present moment the ways things seem hopeless
3) Remember the ways God has been faithful to us in the past.
4) Turn our lives once again, over to the care of God.
5) Trust.
Hymn writers like Issac Watts and William Cowper point us
I thirst, but not as once I did,
The vain delights of earth to share;
Thy wounds, Emmanuel, all forbid,
That I should seek my pleasures there.
It was the sight of Thy dear cross,
First weaned my soul from earthly things;
And taught me to esteem as dross,
The mirth of fools and pomp of kings.
I want that grace that springs from Thee
That quickens all things where it flows;
And makes a wretched thorn, like me,
Bloom as the myrtle, or the rose
Words:William Cowper Olney Hymns (London: W. Oliver, 1779), Book 3, number 61. My soul thirsteth for God.
In rest and returning we will be saved
Isaiah 30:15 says, “For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.'”
Amen.
1 https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?scope=Entries&q=disquieted
2 Whyte, David1 Conso/aHons: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words (Many Rivers Press: Langley, WA, 2015) pp. 53-55