Pastor's Corner: The gift of borrowed words

“Protect me, O God, for in you I take refuge.”

This is the first line of Psalm 16, one of last Sunday’s readings for those faith communities who follow the Revised Common Lectionary. Whether you read this text in worship or not this past week, doesn’t this plea for divine protection sound familiar?

“Protect me, O God.” These words express a fundamental desire, a simple, elemental cry for salvation, for preservation, for well-being. They are familiar because such prayers are found throughout the Psalms and other sacred writings. They are familiar because humans throughout the ages experience a need to ask the Holy One for deliverance. Perhaps in this period of acute anxiety — concerned about the COVID-19 pandemic, facing economic hardship, or beleaguered by a general uneasiness — they are familiar because you have found yourself praying, “God, save me. God, keep my family safe. Protect me, O God.”

It is comforting to find in the Psalms words that give voice to the complexity of human experience. I find reading, praying and singing the Psalms lifegiving especially in times when I feel like I have no words adequate to make sense of what I or my community is going through. The Psalms seem tailormade for times of trial. As Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann puts it, “Psalms offer speech when life has gone beyond our frail efforts to control.” For Brueggemann, this is no accident. He writes, “The Psalms mostly do not emerge out of … situations of equilibrium. Rather, people are driven to such poignant prayer and song as are found in the Psalter precisely by experiences of [disruption]. It is experiences of being overwhelmed, nearly destroyed, and surprisingly given life that empower us to pray and sing.” The Psalms speak to us in times of chaos because they are faithful, ordered words found and formed amidst experiences of disorder, destruction and disarray. It can be a great gift to borrow them, to make their words our own, particularly in times when we have no words ourselves.

The words found in Psalm 16 are not simply a plea for deliverance. The bulk of the prayer is an evocative expression of the psalmist’s complete trust in God, despite the context of crisis affecting the speaker. The speaker uses imaginative language to characterize God as a joyful, life-affirming presence even more powerful than the forces of death and despair.

One of the challenges of the COVID-19 crisis is that it can seem so hard for us to imagine what the future might be like or how a way forward is possible. Even as states consider the process of reopening, we know there won’t be a simple return to the way things were before. We suspect that we’ll be living in the aftermath of this crisis for some time, perhaps from now on. How might we begin to make sense of this new life in the aftermath?

This is a question as old as our species, so I am grateful for the words of those who have come through crisis, testifying that life finds a way. And I am grateful that since their inception the Psalms have provided communities of faith words to borrow for times of aftermath. “Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure. For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the Pit. You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:9-11a). Protect us all, O God, and show us the path of life.

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The Rev. Megan Hoewisch is pastor of First Lutheran Church in Havre.