Sermon: Psalm 55

 Psalm 55

 

A teacher of the law once asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbour?" Jesus answered with the parable of the Good Samaritan, one of his most famous parables. Today, I want to look at Psalm 55 and ask a similar question: who is my enemy? Who does Psalm 55 actually apply to?

 

You might think it's easy to identify our enemies. They're the people with whom we're at war. Those who are out to get us. Those on the other side, whether that be in politics or religion or some other contest.

 

But then I think the teacher of the law who asked the question "who is my neighbour" also thought the answer was pretty straightforward. Jesus showed it wasn't so simple: in his story, someone who was considered an enemy to the Jews was the neighbour.

 

I don't think many of us would consider that we have enemies. Australia is not currently at war. We are not keenly threatened in our country. Many of us may look around and find it difficult to identify someone who actually holds a strong grudge against us or would actively work to do us harm.

 

You may even think the question "who is my enemy" is an odd question when in the sermon on the Mount Jesus said "You have heard that it was said love your neighbour and hate your enemy. But I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." And so you might think why do I need to know who my enemies are? Don't we just treat everyone with love?

 

Now that is a really good question. And of course Jesus is always right! But this doesn't delete Psalm 55 from the Bible, and so we need to grapple with it, and with the many cursing Psalms. I think it's an easy thing for us to say "love your enemies" when many of us feel we have no real enemies.  

 

In book 2 of the Psalms alone - from Psalm 42 to 72 - over half of the Psalms mention enemies. Today it’s rare to have songs in church like this that we sing. But they remain part of scripture that we read in our personal quiet times, and that we should hear together in community, which is why I’m happy to have the opportunity to preach on Psalm 55 today.

 

I'd like to suggest four ways understanding these psalms help us, and makes them a blessing to us in the way many other Psalms already are.

 

 First, these Psalms capture the real feelings of hurt that are felt by many, showing that God understands our hurts.

 

Second, they give us, both individually and in community, godly words to express our grief and sorrow when we are hurt by others. Many of these Psalms are like prayers of healing for the hurts suffered at the hands or mouths of others.

 

Third, these Psalms lead us to put our pain at God’s feet, asking him to address the solutions to the hurt and injustice we feel.

 

And finally, these Psalms help us see who the real enemies are, and how to love them as Jesus commanded.

 

Psalm 55 is called a psalm of David, meaning either it was written by David or is written to evoke David's story. Psalm 55 is about David being betrayed. There are other Psalms like this: Psalm 52 is about David being betrayed by Doeg the Edomite, a wicked man who at King Saul's command kills a family of priests who gave David shelter; Psalm 54 is about the Ziphites, who contact Saul and tell him "David is hiding here in our land".

 

Psalm 55 doesn't say what part of David's story it’s about. Scholars disagree about it because there are actually so many stories about David being betrayed by a friend. It stands as a psalm reflecting a reality of life: we all know the sting of betrayal by someone we thought was a friend.

 

And the sad truth is that some of us do have enemies right now. Some people hearing this psalm will resonate deeply with its imagery.

 

Imagine someone who has received death threats over the Internet because of their identity hearing these words: "My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught because of what my enemy is saying, because of the threats of the wicked; for they bring down suffering on me and assail me in their anger."

 

Imagine someone who has had to flee their home because of violence hearing these words: "My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death have fallen on me. Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me. I said, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert; I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm.”

 

Imagine a Ukrainian whose city has been overcome by Russian separatists hearing these words: "I see violence and strife in the city. Day and night they prowl about on its walls; malice and abuse are within it. Destructive forces are at work in the city; threats and lies never leave its streets."

 

Imagine a victim of domestic violence, betrayed by their spouse, hearing these words: "If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it; if a foe were rising against me, I could hide. But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend, with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship at the house of God".

 

Some people don't have to imagine. I have friends from Ukraine; there are Ukrainian refugees at Waitara Anglican. I have friends who have had death threats made against them on the Internet. I used to work for Barnabas Aid, who provides help to Christians suffering persecution. I now work with victims of domestic violence at Horizons.

 

Violence is a reality in our world, in our society, even in our churches. How powerful then, as a victim of violence, to hear your reality echoed in the words of God! To know that in your grief, your fear, your pain, even in betrayal, God has written you songs!

 

For those of us who are not victims of violence, these words are still a comfort and an empowerment. These Psalms teach us that the world can be a hard and painful place; they show us our faith isn't built on an idea that God instantly makes everything okay or that Christians have no troubles. Our faith isn't a blindfold we wear to cover our eyes from the pain of the world. We are not called to be delusional.

 

This Psalm tells us that God listens to the cries of the victim and has compassion, which means we should too. It tells us God stands up against oppressors and violence, and so we should too. It tells us God cares about the hurt that even words can cause, and so we should too.

 

Knowing someone is out there wanting to hurt us can make us hyper vigilant and dominate our thinking. Sharing songs about this reality together can give us an outlet for what is weighing so heavily upon us. It promotes unity, boosts our courage, gives us a common language, and makes us feel like we have friends, not just enemies. Addressing these issues publicly as a church provides healing for victims, and makes God’s position clear about this evil behaviour, calling it out and making plain that it is unacceptable before God.

 

Ancient people knew well the power of words. Today we say things like "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me". But words do hurt. In some cultures, like the ancient near eastern cultures much of the Bible was written in, and even in some tribal cultures of Africa such as Namibia where Penny and I worked, words are seen as weapons. Curses spoken against someone are considered powerful, able to cause sickness and physical harm. James calls the tongue in James 3:8 "a restless evil, full of deadly poison." Here in this psalm from verse 20, "My companion attacks his friends; he violates his covenant. His talk is smooth as butter, yet war is in his heart; his words are more soothing than oil, yet they are drawn swords."

 

Think back to the last time someone yelled at you or said something truly hurtful to you. You feel it in your body: you shake, or feel sick like you might vomit, your legs feel weak. Many perpetrators of family violence say things like, "I never touched her", "I never laid a finger on him" and yet their victims still suffer physically, they still get sick. Some people are in situations where they live feeling like that for weeks, months, years.

 

And so it makes sense to pray about this, to bring this sickness to God, to ask for healing. And when we look at some of these cursing Psalms in that framework - as a prayer for the healing of the one who is hurt - I think it helps us unlock a better understanding of these Psalms in a way we find easier to make sense of.

 

Because prayers for healing are possibly some of the most common prayers we pray, especially as we get older. We pray against sickness because we know sickness is not part of God's new kingdom. Sickness and death are the enemy of God, and they are an enemy we know has been defeated in his power. So we pray against them - we pray for the cause of the sickness to go away! When one of us has cancer, we don't just pray that their symptoms might get better but that the cancer will otherwise hang around. We pray for the cancer, the source of the sickness, to be taken away!

 

That's how these cursing Psalms mirror a prayer for healing: they ask for the victim to be comforted and saved, and for the source of the pain and trouble to be removed. Unfortunately, in the case of violence and betrayal, the source of the pain is another person.

 

For many of us, praying for God to deal with a person like he might deal with a sickness may seem harsh. And these curses often are harsh! "Let death take my enemies by surprise; let them go down alive to the realm of the dead, for evil finds lodging among them." This is not the strongest language the psalms use either! It's confronting. But I think these words try to capture the feelings of fear and hurt of victims of violence, and their desire for that pain to stop, for freedom from that fear.

 

Looking for a modern example, I googled "song for Ukraine war", and was directed to a song called "Bayraktar". Bayraktar is the name of a Turkish built attack drone, a weapon being used by Ukrainians against the Russian invaders. They sing a song about it destroying Russian convoys and killing enemy soldiers. The music video includes footage of the explosions. It's brutal. But the song itself is folksy and upbeat and really catchy.

 

My first thought watching this music video was, "That's distasteful." But this is the lived reality for Ukrainians! People are dying! Homes are being destroyed! Children are being taken! Ordinary citizens are having to take up arms to defend themselves. And so they sing of the hero that helps them defend against the huge powerful enemy - Bayraktar!

 

Now I'm not saying that the intentions of every Ukrainian citizen taking up arms against Russian invaders is always pure all the time. I'm not saying that every time they sing this song about Russians being killed by a combat drone they are being righteous. I feel like I'm on pretty strong ground when I say that I'm sure not every time this psalm has been sung it was sung with pure motives, fully aligning with God's will. Victims are still people, and people are not perfect. Christian intellectual Miroslav Volf says in his book Exclusion and Embrace "Evil generates new evil as evildoers fashion victims in their own ugly image". Sometimes we see the victims filled with hate and loathing against their perpetrators, lashing out against them in vengeance. It can be tempting at that point to fall into what Volf calls the "twisted arithmetic of sin", where "blame on the one side and blame on the other do not add up but cancel each other out".

 

But that is not God's way. God understands our hurts, he understands the pain that can be inflicted by our enemies, by their words, by their betrayal, and he has given his people songs to sing about that, ways to express their hurt and their desire for the pain to stop. These songs are an outlet for those feeling hurt, betrayal and injustice, who have these things thrust on them, and who know they don't have it in their power to make it go away by themselves.

 

Those harsh words in verse 15, they are also putting the cause of the pain at God's feet, by asking him to take action. The action requested is harsh, but it's also not outside of God's character. This verse about our enemies falling alive into the realm of the dead is recalling the Korah rebellion back in Numbers 16. If like me your memory is struggling to recall that incident, a bunch of Levites and Reubenites rebelled against Moses when Israel were in the wilderness having fled Egypt, and Moses called out to the people of Israel saying in Numbers 16:30 "If the Lord brings about something totally new, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them, with everything that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the realm of the dead, then you will know that these men have treated the Lord with contempt.”

 

And that's exactly what happens in Numbers 16 - the ground opens up and swallows these people because in betraying Moses they had shown contempt for God. And then everyone freaks out because that is not normal! And if it happened today, we would freak out, because it would not be normal! And that's part of the reality of putting things into God's hands: he can deal with problems in a miraculous, sometimes frightening way. He can do that. He has done that. God definitely is not a fan of contempt. God does get angry about people doing wrong, and he does act.

 

But how many times do you think this song has been sung or prayed by the Lord's people? Probably countless times. This psalm could be 3000 years old. Throughout history when God's people have been faced with enemies, with betrayal, they prayed this prayer, bringing their situation before the Lord.

 

Now, how many times do you think God's answer to this prayer has been to crack the ground open and swallow up his enemies? Given the countless times God's people have prayed this prayer and others like it about their enemies, it is clear that God does not regularly answer this prayer in this way.

 

And we know that, right? We know that when we pray to God to drag our enemies kicking and screaming into hell that's not what's going to happen, not right away. In singing this song to God, in making this request, in putting this issue at his feet, we are accepting that God probably won't do that. We're accepting that God's actions will be sufficient, even if they take a long time, even if they aren’t what we’d like.

 

And why do we accept that? Because God has shown us who the real enemies are, and how he deals with them. To see that, let's go to another psalm - not so far away, still a psalm of David - Psalm 51. You may be more familiar with this psalm:

For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.

1 "Have mercy on me, O God,

    according to your unfailing love;

according to your great compassion

    blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash away all my iniquity

    and cleanse me from my sin.

 

3 For I know my transgressions,

    and my sin is always before me.

4 Against you, you only, have I sinned

    and done what is evil in your sight;

so you are right in your verdict

    and justified when you judge."

 

David was a victim of violence and cruelty. He had enemies who wanted him dead. He had multiple people who betrayed him. And he was a faithful king of Israel, close to God's own heart, keen to bring Israel back on track with God. But he was also an adulterer and a murderer. He was also God's enemy. And when he found himself in that position as God's enemy, did he pray that God would send him still living into the realm of the dead? No. He prayed, "Have mercy on me, O God."

 

And that’s how God treats his enemies. I'm not talking about the Korah rebellion, where the earth opened up and swallowed God's enemies that one time. I'm talking about the way God treats his enemies every single day: according to his unfailing love; according to his great compassion. David accepted that God would be right and justified to judge him and condemn him, but he threw himself on God's love and compassion and begged for mercy. And God relented.

 

And that's why, rather than take revenge on the one who has betrayed us, we sing. Why when they curse us, instead of crafting our own curses, we sing. When our minds are overwhelmed by the pain and trouble our enemies cause us, we sing. We send those things up to God, we put them at his feet, we sing Psalm 55:1, "Listen to my prayer, O God, do not ignore my plea", and we sing Psalm 55:16, "As for me, I call to God,

    and the Lord saves me.

Evening, morning and noon

    I cry out in distress,

    and he hears my voice.

He rescues me unharmed

    from the battle waged against me,

    even though many oppose me."

 

I asked at the beginning of this talk, "Who is my enemy?" When we pray a psalm like this, we are reminded that we would all be God's enemies if it weren't for God's amazing love, mercy and compassion; if it weren't for Jesus taking away our sin and making us no longer enemies of God but drawing us into his family.

 

When we pray a psalm like this, we're connecting ourselves with God's ultimate plan for the world. We are connected with God's plan to do away with evil. In the new heaven and the new earth, there is no place for violence, or lies, or betrayal. Sin is the real enemy, and God has dealt with it in Jesus. If we choose to accept that from him and turn away from violence, our sin is dealt with, even if we are a perpetrator or a betrayer.

 

When we pray "As for me, I call to God, and the Lord saves me" we are connecting with God's plan to rescue people from that evil, both victims and perpetrators.

 

But we need to recognise that, for some victims, church does not always feel like a safe place for them. It feels too safe for their enemies. There is a support group in Sydney for victims of domestic violence perpetrated by their church leader spouses. Recently our old mission agency, with whom Penny and I went to Africa, made an apology to all the children who have been abused while on the mission field in their mission stations by missionaries. 

 

Stories like this keep coming out. Perpetrators getting away with violence in the church in the name of loving your enemies; while victims are pushed out of church for not being loving and forgiving. These behaviours are not in God's will! We need to call them out, and that's what these songs do! Using violence against your spouse is not okay! Using harsh words to belittle, dominate and control anyone is not okay! We need to mourn the realities of these things happening, and call on perpetrators to repent of them! But without threatening to withhold God’s love and grace, which he offers freely to all sinners. That’s a tightrope we walk at Horizons when we are working with perpetrators of domestic violence as our clients. I won’t pretend it’s easy for us, and it’s no easier for a church.

 

And we need to be mature in how we help those seeking to escape family violence. The scourge of violence, even of poisonous words, sometimes needs drastic action. At Horizons we help people get divorces; we help people leave marriages; when it's dangerous for kids to see their abusive parent we help to restrict the child's time with that parent to protect the child.  But we don't go along with those who would take the shield of the law's protection and turn it into a sword to strike at their ex-partners for vengeance.

 

This is the impossible job God gives all of us, and so praise God he gives us words to use. When we pray Psalms like this as a community, we are sharing God's message; a comfort to victims: "Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken”; it’s a warning to the violent: “But you, God, will bring down the wicked into the pit of decay; the bloodthirsty and deceitful will not live out half their days”; and we make our position on God’s message clear and hold out the opportunity to others: “But as for me, I trust in you.” I trust in God. So should you.