Sorrow Trembles Into Song: A Response to Psalm 69

After the heights of psalm 68 we are plunged back int the depths of sorrow in the harrowing words of psalm 69. This is the psalm of someone whose goodness and simplicity has been met with hatred and contempt, whose zeal for God has met with mockery and persecution, who is ‘weary with crying, whose throat is dry’. even as we read its opening verses we cannot help thinking of Jesus, and wondering what it was like for him to read this psalm. By the time we get to verse 22: ‘They gave me gall to eat: and when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink.’ we know that it is one of those psalms that prophesy his passion. And yet when we read the psalm in the full light of Christ’s atoning death then we also come up sharply against the contrasts as well as the similarities: for after verse 22 this psalm becomes a call for vengeance on wickedness and on the enemies of God culminating in the two terrible verses:

Let them fall from one wickedness to another: and not come into thy righteousness.

Let them be wiped out of the book of the living: and not be written among the righteous.

What are we to make of that? If we are to read this psalm in and through Christ then we must understand that Christ is not only the suffering righteous one in the psalm but that he suffers precisely to redeem the wicked people whom the psalm condemns, that in one sense all the vengeance that psalm calls down falls on Christ himself and he takes it willingly for us. His will is not that we should be ‘wiped out of the book of the living’ but on the contrast that our names should be written in the lamb’s book of life. As Paul put it ‘He was made to be sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God.’.

This is a mystery beyond our fathoming, but I have tried to evoke a little of it in my response to this psalm especially in the last three lines:

Christ takes this psalm and turns it inside out
He does not pour out indignation, but
Instead pours out the life-blood of his heart.

As always you can hear me read the poem by clicking on the play button or the title.

These poems will all be gathered together and published on January 30th under the title David’s Crown. I am very much looking forward to seeing it appear as a proper book and there is already an amazon page for the book if you wish to pre-order it Here

LXIX Salvum me fac
 
His day is coming, it will not be long!
But first he came to suffer with us here.
That sorrow might yet tremble into song,
 
The psalmist here foresees and counts each tear
Our saviour weeps, sees how he was accused
So falsely, sees the spite, the shame, the fear
 
Surrounding him, the way he was abused
By those he came to save, the way his zeal
Was mocked and taunted, mercy was refused.
 
And all this was for me, that he might seal
Me in the book of life, not raze me out.
They cried for vengeance, but he came to heal.
 
Christ takes this psalm and turns it inside out
He does not pour out indignation, but
Instead pours out the life-blood of his heart.

 

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Rocky Mountain Railroad, Epiphany by Luci Shaw

Image by Linda Richardson

For January 5th in my  Anthology from Canterbury Press, Waiting on the Word, I have chosen to read Rocky Mountain Railroad, Epiphany by Luci Shaw. this poem makes an interesting contrast and parallel with Coleridge’s psalm-like outpouring of yesterday. Both poems are a response to the beauty of nature, and specifically to the sight of snowy mountains, and the whole play of light on snow and ice. In both poems we have a sense of glory and of the sublime rising ‘reaches of peak above peak beyond peak’.

You can hear me read this poem by clicking on the title or the play button. The image above was created by Linda Richardson. She Writes:

Luci Shaw takes a subtly different approach to Coleridge as she describes, ‘in a net of words’, her transcendent experience. She uses herself as a mirror to describe the effect the experience has on her. ‘I imbed it in my brain so that it will flash and flash again…an alternate reality…my open window mind is too little,…I long for each sweep….’

 In the image I made, the words open and condense in the lines, sometimes clear, sometimes hidden in the ink, indicating the fleeting glimpses we see as we hurtle along in a train. Life reflects the train journey. The Divine is always around us, sometimes clearly visible in love given and received, sometimes only glimpsed as we speed by. And often, if our focus is too close, all we see is our own reflection in the window.

You can find the words, and a short reflective essay on this poem in Waiting on the Word, which is now also available on Kindle

Rocky Mountain Railroad, Epiphany   Luci Shaw

The steel rails parallel the river as we penetrate

ranges of pleated slopes and crests—all too complicated

for capture in a net of words. In this showing, the train window

is a lens for an alternate reality—the sky lifts and the light forms

shadows of unstudied intricacy. The multiple colors of snow

in the dimpled fresh fall. Boulders like white breasts. Edges

blunted with snow. My open-window mind is too little for

this landscape. I long for each sweep of view to toss off

a sliver, imbed it in my brain so that it will flash

and flash again its unrepeatable views. Inches. Angles.

Niches. Two eagles. A black crow. Skeletal twigs’ notched

chalices for snow. Reaches of peak above peak beyond peak

Next to the track the low sun burns the silver birches into

brass candles. And always the flow of the companion river’s

cord of silk links the valleys together with the probability

of continuing revelation. I mind-freeze for the future

this day’s worth of disclosure. Through the glass

the epiphanies reel me in, absorbed, enlightened.

If you would like to encourage and support this blog, you might like, on occasion, (not every time of course!) to pop in and buy me a cup of coffee. Clicking on this banner will take you to a page where you can do so, if you wish. But please do not feel any obligation!