Last week I zipped back for a quick trip to visit our oldest son, Jesse in North Carolina, and had a wonderful trip. And, in an amazing coincidence, there was a UNC basketball game to watch while I was there! So last Tuesday morning I was sitting on an airplane, wishing that I could watch the presidential inauguration on television. I was resigned to missing it.

That’s when the wonder of technology kicked in. Since I’m sometimes a critic of our technological obsessions, I need to give you the positive side as well. I suddenly realized that the 767 I was on had a mini-tv screen in front of every single seat, and that I could watch live network coverage of everything for free. Will wonders never cease?!

So there I was, 35,000 feet over Nebraska, headphones in, watching this amazingly historic event unfold as though I were sitting on the platform. I know some of you were actually there. Regardless of your political leanings, it felt like a very significant time for our country.

There were lots of things to notice- there surely was a lot of “God-talk” flying around that ceremony. Rick Warren praying the Lord’s prayer, in Jesus’ name. Vice-President Biden and President Obama both being sworn in by the words “so help me God.” Both of them resting their hands on Bibles as they repeated their vows, Obama using the same Bible Abraham Lincoln did. Pres. Obama’s speech ended with “May God bless you.” And then Rev. Joseph Lowery ended the ceremony with a benediction that started with the words to the hymn we sang last week “Lift Every Voice and Sing”(James Weldon Johnson). And Lowry directly asking the Lord for help any number of times.

All pretty amazing for a country that sometimes seems determined to eliminate all public Christian references and influence outside the 4 walls of a church.

Well, we’re reading the prayers in the Old Testament book of Psalms together. If you’ve been following the little schedule Julia Sensenbrenner put together for us, you’ll finish Psalm 30 today.

In the last two Sundays, we’ve looked at Psalms 1 & 2. Psalm 1 helped get us ready to pray by reminding us of God’s desire for us as individual people, urging us to make right choices and sink our roots deep in Him. Psalm 2 helped get us ready to pray by reminding us how big God is, dwarfing kings, rulers, history and time. So, Psalm 1:we experience the intimate proximity of God. Psalm 2:we acknowledge the power and scope of God. Now we’re ready to pray. Today we’ll read Psalm 13- please stand if you are able.

Reading: Psalm 13

Psalm 13 is a classic example of what people often call a “psalm of lament.” That is, it voices personal distress to God, and asks for God’s intervention and rescue. The truth is that most of the psalms- not all but most- deal with some sort of trouble. To walk through this a bit, I’m going to invite us to hear from three people from history: John Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr. and Father Richard John Neuhaus.

If we read Psalm 13 and don’t hear some pain, anger, frustration, bewilderment, then we’re not reading it correctly. (read in a stiff, churchy kind of voice)

God, where are you? Have you forgotten me? How long will you hide your face? How long do I have to bear this pain in my soul, this sorrow in my heart?

No. This is a real person, a real conversation. I think Psalm 13 reads like this: (read in loud, crushed, angered voice)

God, where are you? Have you forgotten me? How long will you hide your face? How long do I have to bear this pain in my soul, this sorrow in my heart?

If we read this smoothly, if we gloss over how raw it is, we kill it. The Psalms are not meant to be a blueprint of formal prayer…they show us what praying is. There’s a difference. It’s a conversation. Prayer is one of those things that is often caught, more than taught. A big part of our learning to pray in the Psalms will be caught. We have to enter in. We have to sit with them. We have to hear them.

In Psalm 13, we have to feel that the speaker feels like their life has fallen apart. This is the cry of someone whose friend has died, or who has lost a child. Who has sought God to no avail. Who is out of work and feeling like they are slogging on their own. Who is tormented by others, or by injustice, or who has a desperate illness. God where are you? Why in the world won’t you show up? How long, God, how long?

This is the most basic kind of prayer. It’s the words of the heart that spontaneously cries out: “Help!” I need help. We hate admitting that, most often. But when life falls apart, it’s not even a question of coming to a mental conclusion and admitting it…it just blurts out. When John Lennon wrote the Beatles’ song “Help” back in 1965, he cried out “Help, I need somebody.”

Now, I’m not suggesting that an old Beatles’ song is like a Psalm…or then again, maybe I am. Seventeen times in that short song comes the word “Help!” Maybe that is nothing more than a lack of imagination in writing lyrics. But what Lennon was expressing was his own stress and fragility over the group’s quick rise from years of obscurity to an unbelievably massive level of success. “I was crying out for help, I was desperate” he once said in an interview. And his song says he needed help for: a lack of confidence, feeling down, not knowing who he was, being insecure, feeling untethered. Help.

Lennon had this going for him: he knew he needed help. Do we? If we do, I suspect prayer will come easily. Not articulate, polished prayer but the crying out that says “help!” If we don’t know we need help, Eugene Peterson says, “prayer will always be peripheral to our lives.” Just another thing we’re supposed to do rather than a conversation with God.

What is going on in the Psalmist’s life? We don’t actually know. It was something big. Something painful. It caused sorrow, caused the writer to wonder if God actually was with him, caused him to be bold enough to demand an answer from God.

I think maybe it’s a good thing we don’t know. Because we can’t get bogged down by wondering about exact circumstances, or think that this is a prayer limited to just one kind of situation. We get to hear part of a conversation.

Someone is in trouble, and cries out for help: “How long, O Lord? How long will you forget me? I’m hurting.” The Message puts it like this: “Lord, I’ve looked at the back of your head long enough…Answer me!”

Charles Spurgeon, the famous London pastor I mentioned last week who did extensive work in the Psalms in the late 1800’s, called Psalm 13 the “Howling Psalm.” Is it okay for us to howl? to lament? to complain? It sure sounds like it is. Do you need help? Pray. Are you hurting? Cry out. Howl, even. It doesn’t have to sound like anything, God doesn’t need your mind to filter what your heart feels, it’s okay to simply pray.

The largest complaint in this Psalm, and probably in the whole Bible are these exact words: How long? Spurgeon said if we don’t call Psalm 13 the “Howling” Psalm, it should be the “How Long?” Psalm. “Lord, it’s taking a long time. Too long. I don’t have the stamina, the endurance.” How long, O Lord? How long will you forget me? How long will you hide your face? How long must I bear pain in my soul and sorrow in heart? How long will my enemy win? How long, how long, how long?

On March 7, 1965 (same year as Lenon) in the midst of the civil rights movement, a group of people in Selma, Alabama marched for the right to vote. 600 African Americans wanted to show the world that it had been too long, they wanted to be participants in the democratic process…and though 80% of the people in their county were black, none were registered to vote. They peacefully marched across the bridge over the Alabama River, where they were met by Alabama State Troopers and beaten with bullwhips and nightsticks and teargas. They called it “Bloody Sunday.”

The next day Martin Luther King Jr. arrived, and another symbolic march was held. Then 2 weeks later, with a court order in hand allowing the march, a group walked across the bridge and all of the 54 miles from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery.

On the steps of the capitol building, King spoke and what was the refrain that echoed through his speech that day? “How long?” He knew people were asking, “How long? How long is this going to go on, we’re hurt, we’re tired. How long do we have to put up with this?” Ten times King voiced the same cry as the Psalmist: “How long?”

We get worn down when something takes a long time. We get worn down when we can’t see or lose sight of the future, that there is something at the end of the road. We get worn down when if we don’t sense God’s presence in hard times.

It’s one of the many reasons that Martin Luther King was effective in leading people. He had an ability to both give a vision of the future, and to point to God’s presence in the midst of trouble. “How long?” he said at Montgomery. “Not long.” Every time he asked the question “How long,” he answered with “Not long.”

It wasn’t a comment on a number of days or weeks or months in terms of time. It was a confidence in God’s character and the ultimate endpoint. Listen to the words:

-“How long? Not long, because truth crushed to earth will rise again.

- How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.

- How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

- How long? Not long, because mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Vision for the future, but also God’s steady presence in the midst.

NOW. Since we are talking about prayer in terms of a two-way conversation, we need to make one more note on this cry of “How long?” In the Psalms “How long?” is our cry, the human cry. In most of the rest of the Bible, those same words are actually God’s cry! It is God’s complaint against human beings.

-So God says to Moses “How long will these people treat me with contempt? Exodus 16:28

- How long will they refuse to believe in me?
Numbers 14:11

- How long will this wicked community grumble against me? Numbers 14:27

- How long will you waver between 2 opinions? (Lord, Baal) I Kings 18:21

- How long will you harbor wicked thoughts and be unclean? Jeremiah 4:14

- Even Jesus said “O unbelieving and perverse generation, Matthew 17:17. How long shall I stay with you? how long shall I put up with you?”

So “How long? is not only what we cry to God, but what we need to answer as well, if prayer is a conversation.

What is the bottom line of the Psalmist’s complaint? Why is he asking for, even demanding that the Lord answer? He is in fear of his life, “Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death.” My enemy (whoever/whatever that is) will win. This is no small trouble. It is life and death.

Richard John Neuhaus (New-House) died two weeks ago. He was first a Lutheran pastor, and later a Catholic Priest. He founded a journal called First Things, and wrote a number of books, including a well-known one called “The Naked Public Square” on faith and society. He was feisty, and unpredictable. He marched with Martin Luther King, and wrote a manifesto called Evangelicals and Catholics Together with Charles Colson.

In 1993 he had emergency surgery for a cancerous tumor that had ruptured his intestine and nearly died. As he lay in the hospital, he had the strange feeling of having absolutely no control of anything. There was nothing he could do. One night he felt a “presence,” in fact 2 presences which he felt clearly, saw vaguely and heard say to him “Everything is ready now.”

He reflected a great deal on that experience, believing the “presences” to be angels, and the word to be an offer for him to go to the face of God. There was no urgency, but “things were ready.” It made Neuhaus amazingly “indifferent” he said as to whether he would live or die. For he had felt himself in the presence of God, and could continue that in either choice. “Everything is ready.”

Much later, the biggest difference the experience made, he thought, was that “I remember where I have been, and where I will be again.” It was 16 more years before he died. He had been in God’s presence, and knew what was at the end of the road. The fear of death was gone.

Now notice that at the end of this Psalm, there seems to be a resolution…but it’s not “all ends happily after.” The writer turns to praise, but not necessarily because he has received what was asked. He just turns to praise. Why? We are invited into a conversation with God.

When we cry out- we’re not generally looking for information. How long? Give me the day, the week, the year. Sometimes we ask for that, but I’m not sure we really want it. When we cry out- God sometimes answers by fixing that immediate problem, there are healings, miracles, situations that work out, but not always. When we cry out, what do we want? Or need? We need to know God is with us. We need to know there is light at the end of the tunnel, a future.

Somehow, that’s communicated to the Psalmist. Whether by prayer or reflection or a word of encouragement from someone, God’s presence is communicated. It’s the only explanation for such an abrupt change from complaint to praise in the last two verses. In order to deal with the difficult present (How long?), the Psalmist looks to the past (I trusted in your steadfast love. The Lord has dealt bountifully with me). And can then believe for the future (my heart shall rejoice. I will sing).

If God is with us, we can make it through. What God has done before, he can do again. God meets us in the present, reminds us of the past and gives hope for the future. In Jesus Christ, God meets us in all three. The author of Hebrews said it this way: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”

This morning- I want to invite you to be a Psalmist. There’s room on the insert in the bulletin. Write a psalm, write a prayer. Maybe you want to use Psalm 13’s structure- complaint, request, praise. Maybe want to cry out. Maybe you are moved to praise. Maybe something else. It doesn’t have to look any particular way. I’m not going to ask you to show it to anybody. It’s just for you, part of a conversation. Just start in. Practice.