Things are upside-down. The world is not as it should be.
When the Shins released their 2001 album Oh, Inverted World, the name struck me. I thought, “Yes. That’s exactly the problem.” The top is where the bottom ought to be.
This is our experience far too often. The wrong politician is in office. The team that should win loses. The best employee doesn’t get the promotion. The best songs don’t make it to the Top 40. Good drivers end up injured in accidents while the intoxicated walk away unharmed. And our own lives go all topsy-turvy.
When the world goes upside-down, our relationships with God go upside-down as well. They have to. They’re supposed to. There’s a temporary inversion in our relationships with God as we become the ones who demand things from him, instead of the other way around.
Not only are the Psalms filled with imperatives — command language — but Jesus himself taught us to pray with imperatives in the Lord’s Prayer (a prayer that in many ways echoes and summarizes what Jesus prayed from the Psalms).This telling God what to do is an inversion, but it’s only temporary. It’s only to last as long as the world is inverted. Once the world is restored — at least the part we’re telling God to fix — then praise becomes our primary language with God again.
This is the shape of the biblical story. We see the world get inverted in Genesis 3-11, with the breaking of all our core relationships in those chapters. But then we see the restoration of the world taking place throughout the Scriptures and ultimately in Jesus. And finally, all becomes praise in the Revelation as heaven (the realm of God) and earth (the realm of humanity) become united again.
This is the shape of the Psalms. We see the inversion in Psalms 1 and 2, where people listen to mockers rather than to God’s Law and where the nations are in turmoil because they don’t “kiss the Son,” God’s messiah. But then the Psalter ends with five “hallelujah” psalms, where the language of unsettled imperative throughout the Psalms is replaced by a standing ovation of praise.
This is the shape of our lives. Things go awry and our prayers turn from praising to commanding. “This is your world, God. Fix it!”
There’s an audacity to the Psalms that keeps many from being willing to pray alongside them. But this is exactly why we need these impertinent imperatives. They teach us to pray the inversion with a longing for the day when our imperatives cease forever and our praise is the true worship of those who know themselves to be fully and finally saved.
Psalm 69 is one of our prayed inversions. It begins with three verses that show the inverted life and ends with three verses that look forward to the restored world with its songs of praise. And in its long middle, it engages in inverted imperatives.
Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
the floods engulf me.
I am worn out calling for help;
my throat is parched.
My eyes fail,
looking for my God (Ps. 69:1-3).
The inverted world is here a person experience. As king, it could also have been a national experience in David’s case. Regardless, David feels as if he is deep water, hoarse with crying for help, and on the verge of drowning.
The inverted world is experienced as an upside-down life. It always hits us personally.
Those who hate me without reason
outnumber the hairs of my head;
many are my enemies without cause,
those who seek to destroy me.
I am forced to restore
what I did not steal (Ps. 69:4).
When I read of enemies outnumbering the hairs of my head, I’m grateful for being bald. But the sense of being overwhelmed remains. In the psalm, David looks around and sees way too many people out to get him. They feel innumerable. After all the good he’s done for them, there shouldn’t be this many people lined up against him.
Things are backward. People should have real reasons for opposing him, but they don’t. If he needs to replay someone, it should be because he owes them something, but he doesn’t. There is inequity and injustice here. Or at least, it feels like it.
But before getting on his high horse, David pauses and acknowledges his sin. His cause may be just, but he has no illusions about always being right. Before he continues, he confesses.
You, God, know my folly;
my guilt is not hidden from you (Ps. 69:5).
In my outrage, humility is a necessity. If I can only see the sins of others and not my own, I need to back up a few steps and get some perspective.
But having acknowledged his own folly, David quickly switches gears. The reason for his outrage, it seems, has to do with his suffering — suffering not for his own sake, but for God’s sake.
He starts out by saying he doesn’t want God’s name to be sullied by his own sinfulness. But he segues almost immediately to the real problem: It’s not that God has taken it on the chin because of David; it’s the other way around.
Lord, the LORD Almighty,
may those who hope in you
not be disgraced because of me;
God of Israel,
may those who seek you
not be put to shame because of me.
For I endure scorn for your sake,
and shame covers my face.
I am a foreigner to my own family,
a stranger to my own mother’s children;
for zeal for your house consumes me,
and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.
When I weep and fast,
I must endure scorn;
when I put on sackcloth,
people make sport of me.
Those who sit at the gate mock me,
and I am the song of the drunkards (Ps. 69:6-12).
God suffers significantly by being associated with humans in our pettiness. It’s almost cliché to say you like Jesus but not his followers.
But the opposite is true as well. Because the world is so often upside-down, the blessing that should come from being associated with God sometimes brings pain instead. Persecution is real.
David uses this as leverage with God, saying in effect, “Since I suffer for your sake, you should help me out.” And though this may seem like crass bargaining, it’s an accepted part of the inversion. David isn’t faulted for it.
But I pray to you, LORD,
in the time of your favor;
in your great love, O God,
answer me with your sure salvation.
Rescue me from the mire,
do not let me sink;
deliver me from those who hate me,
from the deep waters.
Do not let the floodwaters engulf me
or the depths swallow me up
or the pit close its mouth over me (Ps. 69:13-15).
Ultimately, it’s not his own goodness or his having suffered for God’s sake which David relies on, it’s God’s great good love (vs. 13, 16).
The only real negotiating power we have with God is that he has tied himself to us in love. But because his face is turned toward us in deep and loyal affection, we can call and know we’ll be heard.
Answer me, LORD, out of the goodness of your love;
in your great mercy turn to me.
Do not hide your face from your servant;
answer me quickly, for I am in trouble.
Come near and rescue me;
deliver me because of my foes (Ps. 69: 16-18).
Answer me. Turn to me. Don’t look away. Come closer.
The first four imperatives sound like a parent talking to a child. This is stunning language. It really is. God gets scolded and it’s actually appropriate.
But then come the requests only God can answer: Rescue me. Deliver me.
You know how I am scorned, disgraced and shamed;
all my enemies are before you.
Scorn has broken my heart
and has left me helpless;
I looked for sympathy, but there was none,
for comforters, but I found none.
They put gall in my food
and gave me vinegar for my thirst (Ps. 69: 19-21).
Seasoning a meal with gall and offering a drink of vinegar instead of wine is hospitality gone bad. The table in the ancient Near East was sacred. It was to be the safest place. Eating with someone was a sign of friendship and agreement, which is why Daniel and his friends wouldn’t eat from Nebuchadnezzar’s table.
All four of the gospel writers pick up on this in their telling of the crucifixion of Jesus (Matt. 27:34; Mark 15:36; Luke 23:36; John 19:29). Their are so few details in their tellings, but they include the detail about being given vinegar for thirst to pull Psalm 69 and its inverted hospitality into the Jesus story. His people are killing him instead of honoring him as their king, but God will turn this upside-down death rightside-up in the resurrection.
This trick at the table is a sign of the scorn, the condescension being experienced instead of loving hospitality. So, David prays that it boomerang back with a matching inhospitality from God.
May the table set before them become a snare;
may it become retribution and a trap.
May their eyes be darkened so they cannot see,
and their backs be bent forever.
Pour out your wrath on them;
let your fierce anger overtake them.
May their place be deserted;
let there be no one to dwell in their tents.
For they persecute those you wound
and talk about the pain of those you hurt.
Charge them with crime upon crime;
do not let them share in your salvation.
May they be blotted out of the book of life
and not be listed with the righteous (Ps. 69:22-28).
The reaction to inhospitality is bitter and unrelenting. Like round after blasting round from a gun, command after command is issued to God. The begin with intentions to wound but quickly move to kill shots. This is wrath turned up to full volume.
This is a hurt that has built up and built up over time. This is no quick knee-jerk reaction. There is a bank account full of pain stored up here. And that is exactly why we need to pray our pain.
What we don’t release, we retain. What we don’t pray builds up in us till we burst.
But when we finally do pray it, we drain that bank account down to zero. Praying it hands it all over to God. (By the way, social media rants are both similar and very different from Psalm 69. They often include the same vitriol from built-up anger, but they don’t hand over their anger to God since they’re choosing to aim their words at the world instead of to God.)
Most of the time, we don’t require such bitter words as we read here. But if we haven’t been praying our pain, we sometimes require such an emotionally violent outburst, calling on God with brutal imperatives.
And then after the catharsis of his tirade against his abusers, we get a last sigh of semi self-pity. It’s the final command and it comes out as a simple plea for help.
But as for me, afflicted and in pain —
may your salvation, God, protect me (Ps. 69:29).
Having exhausted his supply of imperatives, laying out before God everything wrong in the world around and inside of himself, David turns from the inverted world and imagines the world restored.
I will praise God’s name in song
and glorify him with thanksgiving.
This will please the LORD more than an ox,
more than a bull with its horns and hooves.
The poor will see and be glad —
you who seek God, may your hearts live!
The LORD hears the needy
and does not despise his captive people (Ps. 69:30-33).
The restoration hasn’t taken place yet. Everything David imagines in the verses above are still in the future. But a biblical imagination is always a hopeful imagination, for the future belongs to God.
We don’t step into God’s good future. We are pulled into it, like a boat is pulled down a river to the sea. For God’s future is irresistible, unavoidable.
Praise will spring from our lips and from all heaven and earth, for the restoration will take place. As depressing as the current inversion seems, the restoration will be so complete and so glorious, it will wash away the hurts of the inversion and leave us with only joy.
Let heaven and earth praise him,
the seas and all that move in them,
for God will save Zion
and rebuild the cities of Judah.
Then people will settle there and possess it;
the children of his servants will inherit it,
and those who love his name will dwell there (Ps. 69:34-36).
When things go bad and upside-down, the Psalms show us how to invert our relationship with God — but only temporarily. For as certain as a new day will dawn, God will revert things to how they ought to be and we will lay aside our awkward commands to him, replacing them with the praises that are much more fitting for our tongues.