At Bethany, we’ve been reading the Psalms. If you are on the daily schedule, you’re around Psalm 58, over 1/3 of the way…keep at it! Or catch up! I was struck this morning as our third graders received their bibles…these Psalms are a part of the scripture Jesus received and knew growing up, part of how he learned to pray.

We’ve been learning how to pray by reading the Psalms. In sermons, we’ve looked at four psalms so far. What have we learned? Psalm 1 & Psalm 2 were sort of preparation or context. They helped get us ready to pray by reminding us of two things about God: that God wants us to know him intimately, AND that God is bigger than governments, or history or time itself. This God we pray with is both personal and powerful.

Then in Psalm 13 we read about “howling” prayer. Psalm 13 was a psalm of individual lament. A complaint, a crying out for God from the mouth of an individual. “How long, Lord?” We saw how honest the psalmist was with God. We even tried writing our own psalm.

In Psalm 46, last week, we considered prayer in a time of trouble, the idea of God as “refuge” and a “very present help” that gives hope.

Already we’re figuring out that learning to pray through the Psalms is quite different from receiving instruction from a “how-to” manual. Every Psalm is a little different, all 150 of them. They defy categorization. We are learning how to pray from reading, hearing, sitting with these Psalms. We are learning to pray by praying.

Have you ever thought like this: “If I just live well enough. If I can measure up to a certain standard of how my life looks. If I can construct a nicely worded prayer and pray it with authenticity (sometimes repeatedly), then God will hear it, answer my prayer and my request will be granted.” Isn’t that mostly what we think prayer is about? I mean really, deep down inside don’t we often think that if we are on best behavior, and do things by the book, prayer will take us to: “and God answered, and they all lived happily ever after.” It’s neat, clean and tidy.

The problem is, that is not how life is. Things don’t always turn out okay, even when we’ve lived well, even when we pray properly. Life is messy and difficult and confusing. And somehow it seems like our prayers- if they really are a conversation with God- ought to at least resemble our lives. Maybe if our prayers were a little messier, less finished…we’d be better off. A mentor of mine, says “we must pray who we are, not who we think we should be.”

This morning we’ll look at Psalm 74. It’s too long to read the whole thing, so we’ll listen to four different pieces of it as we go and see what we might absorb about prayer from the Psalmist.

Read Psalm 74, several pieces of the first 7 verses:

“O God, why do you cast us off forever?
Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?
Remember your congregation which you acquired long ago,
which you redeemed to be the tribe of your heritage.
Remember Mount Zion, where you came to dwell…
the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary.
…your foes have roared within your holy place;
…they hacked with hatchets and hammers…
…they set your sanctuary on fire…bringing it to the ground.”

This is a lament, a complaint to God. We heard something similar in Psalm 13, but that was the voice of an individual. This is a voice that speaks for the whole community. “Why do you cast US off forever?”

The situation is grim. When Jeff talked about Psalm 46 last week, he told us about the miraculous sparing of Jerusalem from a huge army around 700BC. But the historical reference here is most likely a century later, around 587 BC when Judah and Jerusalem were conquered by the Babylonians, and many of the leaders of the people were carried off in exile, and the temple itself was utterly destroyed.

I’m pretty sure we canNOT understand the terror and sense of abandonment that must have overcome Israel. They were God’s chosen people. The temple was the sacred dwelling place of the God who had saved them from Egypt, who had delivered them to a promised land, who had saved them from the siege of the Assyrians. Suddenly it all falls apart. People are killed. The sacred worship site is hacked, chopped, looted and burned. Mayors, architects, teachers, businesspeople- leaders- are carried off, never to be seen again in many cases. And God seems to do nothing.

Most of us haven’t experienced these things. They do still happen today. In 2008 in eastern India, where Christians are something less than 3% of the population, Hindu radicals killed a number of Christians, burnt down over one hundred churches, and torched many hundreds of homes owned by Christians. It barely made the news. Can you imagine? Why didn’t God stop it?

Perhaps September 11, 2001 gave our country a taste of this, senseless violence and destruction, that makes us say “God, where were you? Why didn’t you stop this?” Not just for one individual, but for a whole nation. This is not selfish prayer, not self-centered, not praying for a new car, or for my own life to have more luxury, not trivial- this is prayer on behalf of a whole community, in a time of life and death.

I have felt the closest to such prayer during the times I stood in the midst of large slums in Africa, seeing hundreds of thousands of people living barefoot, without water, in the midst of dirt and disease and garbage, and it welled up in me- “God where are you for these brothers and sisters? Where? Why don’t you show up?” [and I must confess, sometimes I wondered if I heard God answering: Why don’t you?!]

So the Psalmist cries out on behalf of the community- God have you forgotten US? He COMPLAINS. Desperately, maybe even bitterly. And remember…this is prayer.

Reading: Psalm 74:10-11

“How long, O God, is the foe to scoff?
Is the enemy to revile your name forever? Why do you hold back your hand? Why do you keep your hand in your bosom?”

Our translation is gentle. The Message says “How long are you going to sit there with your hands folded in your lap?” The New International Version says “Take your hand from the folds of your garment and destroy them!” The EasyEnglish version echoes this call, “Destroy them!” The voice of vengeance in this prayer makes you shiver. It’s almost like reading Psalm 137, when the prayer is “Blessed are they who take your (Babylonian) little children and dash them against the rock!” It’s horrible. Terrible.

Scholars call these sentiments in some psalms “imprecatory,” a word I never use. But it means “to curse, or call down evil upon one’s enemies.” What in the world are such things doing in the Bible? Is this a model for prayer, to pray for revenge and death for one’s enemies?! No, it’s not a model for prayer. It is prayer.

Maybe these things ought to be cleaned up and edited out of the scripture. You know they have over 4,000 different versions of the Bible out now- youth bibles, bibles for dads, for moms, singles, spirit-filled bibles, new believer bibles, businesspeople bibles, bibles for addicts, Veggie Tales bibles, military bibles, firemen’s bibles…my favorite, a golfer’s bible! Yesterday I even saw a new “green” bible for the environmentally conscious. Maybe we could just go a step further and create a “Cleaned-up Bible.” We could get all the vengeful prayers, all the adulterous kings, all the people of no integrity removed. It would be much more pleasant to read. And a whole lot smaller!

How do we pray for enemies…when we hate them? How do we pray for people we don’t like, people who have hurt us deeply? How do we pray when a spouse has left us, when a boss has a vendetta against us, when a friend betrays us? It seems (and it makes me tremble to say this) that we may be invited to simply pray our hate, our revenge…to voice it to God. We may have to, we may need to tell God the dark thoughts before God can heal them. Even to hear ourselves say them, or write them out might open us to God.

But you know what? It doesn’t sound very good, does it? Whatever happened to Jesus’ admonition to love your enemies? Well, we might have to admit we have them before we can love them. And we may need to thank God that God doesn’t always or instantly give us what we ask for in prayer! What if, within the bounds of God’s love and care for us…we were free to work out our stuff in prayer? To bring it to light before God instead of just letting it fester.

It seems to me that here, and in other places, we are invited to do that. The Psalmist prays his hate for his enemies. This isn’t a model for how God wants us to be, but a prayer that at least invites God into the conversation. And remember: this is prayer.

Reading: Psalm 74:12-17

“Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the earth.
You divided the sea by your might, you broke the heads of the dragons on the waters…
Yours is the day, yours also is the night, you established the moon
and the sun.
You have fixed all the bounds of the earth,
you made summer and winter.”

First the cry of the heart, then the thirst for triumph over enemies…now the Psalmist rehearses part of the story of God. It’s as though he is reminding God of who he is, of how powerful he is, of how easily he could turn things around. But perhaps it is not only reminding God. It might also be reminding himself. The Psalmist remembers who God is, he clings to what God is capable of by remembering what he has done in the past.

We do this sometimes when we come together, don’t we? We just did this today. Sometimes we simply remember who God is by naming the different names or attributes of God in prayer- God is our rock, immovable. God is my comforter. God is the great healer. God rescued me in Christ. God is the creator. God has provided.

We do this when we tell God-stories. In different settings- at a healing prayer service in November, at our annual meeting a couple weeks ago, sometimes here in worship various people stand and proclaim, they practice telling who God is and what he is about, they remind us that when we are in trouble God has found ways to meet us in the past. So they remind us that we can trust God in the future.

A few weeks back, my daughter Dana and I drove to Preston, WA, up between Issaquah and North Bend, for her soccer game. It was a beautiful January afternoon, sunny and cold, but gorgeous. I stood on the sideline near one end to watch the game. About halfway through the first half, this amazing, dense fog rolled in from out of the clear blue. The temperature seemed to drop about 10 degrees instantly, and the fog grew thicker and thicker and just sat there over the field for the rest of the game. The lights on the field came on in the middle of the day.

At one point, the fog was so thick I literally couldn’t see across the field. When the ball went into the far corner, it and the girls disappeared from my sight. I knew they were still there, and there was a soccer game going on. But I had no choice but to trust what I knew from the past, since I couldn’t see in the present. I trusted that they were there. That they were kicking the ball. And eventually the ball came back to the middle of the field and I could see again.

We have short memories, collectively and individually. We need to practice the stories, remind one another, remind God so that we can trust through hard times. The Psalmist simply rehearses the God-story. And remember…this is prayer.

The final piece of this Psalm is perhaps the most difficult for me. Listen to the very end of Psalm 74:

“Rise up, o God, plead your cause;
remember how the impious scoff at you all day long.
Do not forget the clamor of your foes,
the uproar of your adversaries that goes up continually.”

What’s critical here for prayer is what is not here: resolution. The Psalm mostly ends up where it started. No happy ending, no instant action, no dramatic conversion, no warm fuzzy. Some Psalms transition near the end in an expression of trust or praise. Some do not. This one doesn’t. It’s not neat and clean. This same Psalmist who has just reminded himself, God and us of God’s actions and power apparently will have to wait. Will somehow have to cling to the knowledge of where God has been seen in order to get through a time when God doesn’t seem too visible.

Usually resolution takes longer than 23 lines on a page. Usually resolution takes longer than we want it to. Usually difficult things are not set right in a day or two. We are forced to sit and wait. Sometimes it is weeks, months, years before we see a reason, or justice. Sometimes resolution is even beyond our lifetime. Most of those who saw the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem were not there to see it rebuilt 50 years later. We believe that the Kingdom of God broke into the world in Jesus, that it’s here…but also not yet. Not fully. And full resolution won’t come until Jesus comes again. The Psalmist must choose to keep trusting in the face of no resolution. And remember…this is prayer.

Psalm 74 reminds us that these psalms are not a blueprint, not a how-to manual, but a way we join and learn to pray: Voicing our complaints. Praying against enemies. Rehearsing our God-stories. Trusting before there is resolution.

Three years ago, my quiet reflection times with the Lord were feeling a little bit dry. I decided to read a Psalm a day, and then journal/write a prayer. I’d never written out prayers before. I felt sort of silly. But I decided they didn’t have to look any particular way. Some days I prayed and wrote something directly related to the Psalm I had read. Some days I would get intrigued with one word of the Psalm, and most of my prayer had to do with that one word. Some days I doubt if my prayers bore any resemblance to the Psalm at all. I came to Psalm 74 in October of 2006. I’m going to read for you part of what I wrote, in closing. So pray with me and then I will invite you to take a few moments in silent prayer yourself.

“So in the midst of violence, anger
… and desperation,
still one can see your hand, Lord?
The same voice that decries your absence and asks you for burning fire on the heads of enemies can also acknowledge the sovereignty of your hand over all?
“It was you who set all the boundaries of the earth.”…
I confess my confusion and my deep non-understanding of
how it all holds together,
and some days the leap of faith seems to be over a chasm that
is far too wide.
Yet each time I have jumped,
you have caught me and set my feet on solid ground.
And so here, another day and I
willingly, joyfully approach your edge. Amen.”

I want to invite you to take a minute now, to offer your own silent prayers.