“Don’t strike the rock!”
The hand-written note was taped to my desk where I would see it every day. I was pastoring a congregation going through significant change and I knew that with the pushback I was getting, I’d want to do some verbal pushing back myself.
But I didn’t want to be like Moses, leading God’s people for four long decades only to die outside of the land of promise because of a momentary flare-up of anger. He’d struck the rock and missed out on entering the land. I wanted to enter the land, whatever that meant.
And so, “Don’t strike the rock” became a personal motto of mine.
So, when I start reading Psalm 39, I hear that motto echoed in the words of David.
I said, “I will watch my ways
and keep my tongue from sin;
I will put a muzzle on my mouth
while in the presence of the wicked.”
So I remained utterly silent,
not even saying anything good (Ps. 39:1-2a).
Just keep your mouth shut. If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything. Be careful — even the good things you say might reveal the anger inside you.
These seem like wisdom, but the silent tongue doesn’t release the poison building up inside. In fact, it retains it. It boils up and scalds the soul.
But my anguish increased;
my heart grew hot within me.
While I meditated, the fire burned;
then I spoke with my tongue: (Ps. 39:2b-3)
Silence isn’t the answer. Prayer is. We must voice what’s inside of us, but we need to avoid spewing it on others. God is the only safe place, the only safe person to vent with.
And so David vents. But surprisingly his anger turns away from the people or person he was initially angry with. It turns toward God himself. And where it leaks out is in his frustration with his own mortality.
Show me, LORD, my life’s end
and the number of my days;
let me know how fleeting my life is.
You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Everyone is but a breath,
even those who seem secure.
Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom;
in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth
without knowing whose it will finally be (Ps. 39:4-6).
This was completely unexpected. Anger at another human has become frustration with mortality? Where the connection here?
Death seems like a mean joke. We’ve been given this most amazing gift of all — life — and yet it slips through our hands so quickly. Every day is another step closer to the grave. No amount of exercise and diet will delay it with any real significance.
The sarcasm in the psalm is thick. God gets to live forever, but in comparison to his my life is a mere handbreadth (a small unit of measurement in a world before tape measures). And it’s God’s fault. He made us this way. Even the most secure and established among us is an insignificant puff of wind. And we’re comical in our hamster wheel lives, all busy and getting nowhere, piling up stuff and not knowing where it’ll end up.
I’m in the process of getting rid of my parents’ stuff after my Mom’s death and because my Dad has moved in with my family. After all those decades of accumulating things, most of it will end up donated to a thrift store. There is something bitterly wrong with this. Meaningful things on sale for pennies on blue tag discount days.
Mortality is cruel. Death is vile, an evil. And yet every day it draws nearer as our bodies fall apart.
“But now, LORD, what do I look for?
My hope is in you (Ps. 39:7).
In desperation, David turns to God and holds out his empty hands: “But now, Yahweh, what do I look for?” Is there any consolation out there?
In a thin but real statement of faith, David acknowledges that “My hope is in you.”
For those of us who live on the other side of the resurrection of Jesus, this hope is far more robust. It’s not a wishful thinking in the face of contrary evidence. It’s a solid hope in the light of the empty tomb. And the New Testament is absolutely thick with hope.
But like David, we live in a culture that is quickly rejecting any hope of life beyond the grave.
And I don’t want a never ending life
I just want to be alive while I’m here
[Stumbellas, “Spirits”]
The time for sleep is now
It’s nothing to cry about
‘Cause we’ll hold each other soon
In the blackest of rooms …
If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark
[Death Cab For Cutie, “I Will Follow You Into The Dark”]
I could keep quoting song lyrics and conversations with young people, all reflecting a new hopelessness in the face of death — all expressed with a stiff upper lip and an “I’ll make the most of the life I’ve got” attitude that comes out in the final verse of Psalm 39.
Save me from all my transgressions;
do not make me the scorn of fools (Ps. 39:8).
Finally, we come across a recognition of personal sin. David no longer sees just the sin of others around him, he sees his own.
From Genesis 3 on, sin and death have been tied together, most famously in St. Paul’s line, “For the wages of sin is death …” (Rom. 3:23).
But even though there’s a sense of culpability here with acknowledged transgression, there is still a sense of unfairness. Adam and Eve and everyone else gets death because they ate an apple? That sure sounds like overkill! And David expresses that after that brief nod to his sin.
I was silent; I would not open my mouth,
for you are the one who has done this.
Remove your scourge from me;
I am overcome by the blow of your hand.
When you rebuke and discipline anyone for their sin,
you consume their wealth like a moth —
surely everyone is but a breath (Ps. 39:9-11).
Yes, sin has consequences. But God, you’re way too heavy-handed, David complains.
Your scourge. Your hand. You rebuke. You consume. God is the active antagonist in this psalm, not the enemies we see in other psalms. David points his finger at the heart of heaven and says, “You’re the one causing all of my difficulties.”
So, do something about it.
“Hear my prayer, LORD,
listen to my cry for help;
do not be deaf to my weeping (Ps. 39:12a).
If God pays such close attention to our sins and deals out death, shouldn’t he pay attention to our prayers, to our cries for help? Why should we ever have to ask him to listen, to hear? Why would we ever worry that he is deaf to our weeping?
But the silence of heaven is so complete sometimes that the deafness God is resounding. Or at least, that’s how it seems.
David feels like a foreigner before God. They speak a different language. They don’t understand each other. They have nothing in common, nothing binding them together. They don’t belong to each other. Sure, they may live next door to each others, but for all intents and purposes they’re strangers.
I dwell with you as a foreigner,
a stranger, as all my ancestors were.
Look away from me, that I may enjoy life again
before I depart and am no more” (Ps. 39:12b-13)
Whoa! He actually asks God to turn around and walk away from him so he can get on with enjoying what’s left of his meager morsel of life.
Death is coming and he just wants to have a little peace, a little space to have some fun before this life is done and gone.
What a stunning conclusion to this David prayer! Where we have grown accustomed to a struggle that loops back into a song of praise, we don’t get that here. We get: Leave me alone while I die. And that’s it.
David has struck the rock. In fact, he’s struck the Rock; he’s struck God.
He’s done the only two things we humans have in our arsenal to launch at God. He’s spoken accusing words and he’s turned his back. We can’t kill God, but we can hurt him with our words and our rejections.
The honesty is refreshing. Because, truth be told, we all end up praying this prayer in some shape or form. We all deal with our mortality. We all deal with the heavy-handedness of God. We all deal with the seeming silence of heaven. We all want to strike back, to turn our backs. And here we see the man the Scriptures most tie to prayer doing exactly that.
If David can do this, so can we. Permission has been extended by the inclusion of Psalm 39 within the Scriptures. Canon equals permission.
But as with every other honest psalm of struggle, it doesn’t stand alone. It’s one of the 150. We can sink into it knowing we’re not left in it. There will be another psalm tomorrow, another prayer on another day. Because of that, on this day, we can explore and articulate the emotions of this day.
We don’t have to pretty up our prayers. We don’t need to tidy up our spirituality. We have permission to be where we are today if only we pray it.
As long as we pray our pain, we’re still engaging with God. Even if our prayers say, “I don’t want you. Walk away from me,” we’re still saying these words to God. And maybe we will say these things for days or weeks on end. But the silent-seeming heavens are still listening.
We may strike the Rock. We may even crucify him. But he doesn’t turn from us, no matter how often we ask him to. Instead, he listens and waits till we are ready to make our peace with him again.