Monday • 7/29/2024 •
Monday of Proper 12
This morning’s Scriptures are: Psalms 56, 57, & 58; Joshua 24:16-33; Romans 16:1-16; Matthew 27:24-31
This morning’s Canticles are: following the OT reading, Canticle 9 (“The First Song of Isaiah,” Isaiah 12:2-6, BCP, p. 86); following the Epistle reading, Canticle 19 (“The Song of the Redeemed,” Revelation 15:3-4, BCP, p. 94)
Sometimes in the Daily Office a single verse stops you in your tracks. Today, a single thought from Psalm 58 invites reflection: that of God bottling my tears:
You have noted my lamentation;[you have] put my tears into your bottle; *are they not recorded in your book? — Psalm 56:8
On the run from the current King Saul, the future King David seeks refuge in a surprising place: “David escaped from Saul and went to King Achish of Gath,” of Philistia (1 Kings 21:10). David had to be pretty desperate to decide that, of all places, the safest place for him to seek refuge would be the home of Goliath. Gath had been the home of the Philistine champion Goliath, whom David had killed, bringing humiliating defeat to Philistia. Perhaps the fact that David now carries Goliath’s sword (see 1 Samuel 21:8-9) makes David think Gath’s king will honor him and provide him sanctuary. It turns out to have been as bad an idea as one might expect. “The officers of Achish were unhappy about his being there. ‘Isn’t this David, the king of the land?’ they asked. ‘Isn’t he the one the people honor with dances, singing, Saul has killed his 1,000s, and David his 10,000s’?” (1 Samuel 21:10-11).
David, according to 1 Samuel 21:12-13, realizes his peril and plays a humiliating role: “he pretended to be insane, scratching on doors and drooling down his beard.” The psalm’s superscription—Of David. A Miktam, when the Philistines seized him in Gath—gives us the physical setting of the psalm. David writes while under custody, as King Achish weighs his fate. The “lamentation” (an alternative translation of the Hebrew is “wanderings”) and the “tears” receive their setting as well: fear, anxiety, failure, disappointment, rejection. Ultimately, David is banished from Gath: “Finally, King Achish said to his men, ‘Must you bring me a madman? We already have enough of them around here! Why should I let someone like this be my guest?” (1 Samuel 21:14-15).
David is the remarkable figure he is because of the way he processes his “stuff” with such honesty, and comes out with such faith in the end. Who can’t relate at some level to David’s tears? Who isn’t in need of such faith?
…you have put my tears in a bottle… — Psalm 56:8. Despite his situation, despite being hounded, attacked, and betrayed; despite his own fears and heartbrokenness in his circumstances; David holds fast to the truth that he is not alone in his distress. Yahweh has such care for him that David envisions each of his tears being acknowledged, treasured, and preserved by his Heavenly Father, his Counselor, Friend, and Advocate. The God who sees every sparrow that falls has numbered every hair on our heads; and he knows each and every tear we have shed (and will shed). He cares very much about the sorrow or fear or suffering we have endured, or are enduring, or will endure. He will give it meaning. He will make everything right one day.
An aside: Brilliant poet that he is, David uses a wordplay to communicate the tightness of the emotional connection between Yahweh and himself. It is David’s tears over his nōḏ (“lamentation” or “wanderings”) that God puts into his own nōʾḏ (“bottle” or “skin”). David can’t help but create something beautiful and elegant out of a situation that is anything but beautiful and elegant. Think of David as the original singer of “the blues.”
When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God whose word I praise… — Psalm 56:4; and this is repeated and expanded in verses 10-11: This I know, that God is for me. In God, whose word I praise, in the Lord, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I am not afraid. What rescues David from getting lost in despair is his trust in God who makes and keeps promises. What sustains David is the trustworthiness of the God who speaks order in the midst of chaos, peace in the midst of strife, hope in the midst of despair. I pray we hear that voice in the midst of the chaos, strife, and despair all around us.
This I know: that God is on my side. — Psalm 56:9. And I pray that you and I can hold on to this thought, as David did in his day. May we cling to this thought even more firmly with the apostle Paul, who having seen its truth confirmed and transcended in the dying, rising, and ascending of Jesus, amplified it for us: “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?”
Be blessed this day,
Reggie Kidd+