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6 PERSONAL SUFFERING AND THANKSGIVING

Text: Psalm 116

Today’s Bible study is no proper bible study; it is just a meditation on Psalm 116. Much of our thinking here is on education, on political analysis, on strategies, on policies. But, as it is said in Ecclesiastes: For everything there is a season and a time for .every purpose under heaven. So, there may also be a time to remember a song of individual thanksgiving – just to stop for a moment and to listen to these words which were sung by the whole congregation in the courts of the temple of Jerusalem at the great festivals.

Most of the time it seems that there is only the pressure of work and the excitement of daily events and our many frustrations and disappointments and the pressure of expectations which are put on us by others and by ourselves. All these do not permit us to stop and to listen to a song of thanksgiving.

Perhaps, if we succeed to listen, we may hear something which we have not found in our analyses. Perhaps we are so caught up in our many activities that we do not perceive anything if we try to listen to a song of thanksgiving. But perhaps the very act of listening, even though we may not perceive properly, may start to transform us so that we become more accessible to what this psalm has to say and also to what people have to say to us. Lack of listening cuts us off from God and from people. The more involved we are, the more we rotate, and the more we may be isolated. And the more isolated, the more useless we are.

The psalm starts with a joyous discovery: I Love. Probably this is the most fundamental discovery which can be made in people’s life:

I love. The text here is distorted. It does not say whom I love and the commentaries have been eager to fill in an object. The translation reads: I love God. But there is also beauty in this distortion that love should not have a proper “object”. Love, in its deepest meaning does not have an “object”. Love does not make people an object. Love, as Martin Buber put it, is an I-Thou relationship. Love makes people subjects. I recognise you, you recognise me. There is mutual acceptance. This I-Thou relationships

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are inseparable. There is no genuine love of God apart from love of people. We cannot love God and despise people.

“He who does not care for people who are in need of care and simply takes to the worship of God, his effort is wasted,” says the Bhagawatapurana.

Likewise, while we are in love with people, we have more of a chance to understand what love of God may mean.

The discovery “I love” demands room in our life.

I love, because the Lord hears my voice and my supplication. Because he inclined his ear to me and I will call on him throughout all my days.

My love is based on God’s listening. He has inclined his ear and I will call on him all my life.

Modern psychology asserts that it is the basic experience of acceptance, of being wanted and loved and cared for which enables people to develop deep relationships. To call on someone and to be heard again belongs to our most important experiences in life. The relationship of God and his people is one of calling and listening. I cry out my misery and God hears. But also God calls on the people to listen, to hear. Up to this day the most important creed of the Jewish people is the “Shma, Israel”. Hear, Israel, listen, the Lord your God is one. And since people are made in the image of God, it is so crucial to our very humanness to call on each other and to listen to each other.

While this psalm is a psalm of thanksgiving, the life experience which is described here is one of distress and of suffering.

The snares of death encompass me. The pangs of Sheol lay hold on me. I suffer distress and anguish.

Then I call on the name of the Lord: You, O Lord, let my soul escape.

It is not said in the psalm what the dangers of death are which are experienced. It can be individual suffering. It can be simply a mortal disease, the despair of facing death. It can be war, in all its cruelty and meaninglessness. It can be persecution. But it could also be sheer despair, the failure to discover meaning in life. The names of distress are so many.

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But none of these miseries is an individual affair: neither illness, nor war, nor persecution. The incredible affirmation in this psalm and in so many others is that God listens, God remembers.

Generous is the Lord and just and our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple; if I am brought low, he saves me.

We tend to say that this is not true. That, if God would really listen, he would not allow so much misery in the world.

But we tend to forget that he has entrusted his creation and even our own history into our hands. We tend to forget that a lot of misery in the world is rooted in our own incapacity to call on each other and to listen to each other.

Again, in v.6 God’s partiality is emphasised: The Lord preserves the simple. If I am brought low, he saves me.

We read in Ecclesiastes 9:16: The wisdom of the poor man is despised, and his word is not heeded.

This is very much the state of affairs in the present world still. But the affirmation is that God listens. The failure to make the voice of the simple and the poor heard is with us. The singer of the psalm witnesses:

Return my soul to your rest because the Lord deals bountifully with you. Because you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.

Therefore the promise is:

I will walk in the face of the Lord in the lands of the living.

In all our miseries the promise of the fullness of life is made and it is especially made to the simple, the poor, to those who have been brought down. The land of the living is no pie in the sky. The Old Testament does not speculate about life after death. Death means the underworld, the total annihilation of life. Life, on the other hand, means life on earth, in all its fullness. To walk in the lands of the living means: To live among people in the face of the Lord, to live a life of plenty and of equality.

The second half of the psalm repeats the topic of despair and of God’s rescue but it expresses much more the analogy and the co-relation between our relationship with God and our relationships with people.

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I keep my faith even if I say: lam very much bowed down. I said in my despair: all people are liars.

This is a common experience. When I myself am inwardly and outwardly destroyed, I lose my trust in people. I lose my basic human capacity to call on others and to be heard by them and I lose my capacity to listen to others and to respond to their call. When I am totally miserable, I judge that all people are liars. They are deceiving me; they are a vain hope.

Yet, God listens. And through his listening, he reestablishes trust. He opens us for others. He opens others for us. God, being mindful of us, restitutes solidarity among people. The result is praise, celebration and common action.

I will lift the cup of liberations and call on the name of the Lord.

We do not know which sort of a temple ritual lies behind this verse, and in fact, it does not matter. The cup of liberations gets a new meaning with each liberation that people experience. In the Jewish tradition the cup is the symbol of the goodness of God’s creation, the remembrance of the strength of the bread and the joy of the wine which God makes grow. The cup of the Passover reminds the people of the exodus from slavery in Egypt. Jesus shares the cup with the disciples as a promise of the resurrection while at the same time accepting the cup of bitterness in his suffering on the cross. The cup was the symbol of the Hussite revolution in Bohemia because people understood it as a symbol of sharing. The cup is the symbol of our common Eucharist. But even in the celebration we are reminded again and again of the cup of bitterness:

Precious is in the eyes of the Lord the death of his faithful.

So, death is not ruled out. Christ is not only the good shepherd, he is also the one who sends his sheep amidst the wolves.

The last four verses very densely express the dialectics of bondage and liberation, of individual witness and celebration amidst the people.

I am your servant – you have loosened my bonds.

To become God’s servant means the experience of the end of all human bondage. There is no bondage which can last. The bondage we are experiencing is meant to end. The liberation we experience is meant to be a taste of full liberation which is to come.

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The singer brings a sacrifice of thanksgiving. I believe that there is much meaning in this idea of a sacrifice of thanksgiving. This I have learnt from the catholic mass where bread and wine are offered by the people as something which is God’s own. We try to give something which is not our own but which we have received as a free gift. We give this gift away because we do not own it, do not possess it. It is not ours, we have only got it in order to share it.

Our usual thanksgiving services have lost this character. They are a celebration no longer of free gifts but a display of possessions which we acquired and in fact do not wish to share. I remember in a thanksgiving service in a rich parish in Bangalore where all the gadgets of modern consumerism were accumulated, the photo of a policeman with a walkie-talkie being displayed. Probably in the correct insight that also this policeman was a gift of this political system which safeguarded the prosperity of an elite at the cost of the masses and made sure that the wealth displayed around the altar was to stay.

How does one make a sacrifice of thanksgiving of what we have got? Sharing is only possible among equals. Otherwise, to give away .things creates dependencies. How do I become free enough to be able to give of my time, my health, my skills, my bread to others. I’m only raising the question. The answer can only be found in each life.

I would finally like to remember that this psalm, which is a psalm of individual thanksgiving, was sung by the whole community in the temple of Jerusalem. To sing together is a way of sharing what one has got. A song is a song only if you sing it. And the very moment you sing it, it is no longer yours, it is given to others. People singing together experience a oneness which otherwise is difficult to express. This is why in any struggle for liberation people make new songs. They make songs to celebrate the steps of liberation. If we are close enough to them, the people may even teach us to singsongs of thanksgiving and join into this psalm which ends

Praise to the Lord!