If the Lord had not been for us
–let Israel repeat it—
If the Lord had not been for us when there arose against us: people,
then alive they would have swallowed us in their burning rage against us.
Then the waters would have engulfed us,
a torrent
sweeping over us, body and soul,
then sweeping over us, body and soul,
would be the cruel waters.
Praise be to the Lord,
who has not let us be torn by their teeth.
We, body and soul, are like a bird
escaped
from the fowler’s snare;
the snare has been broken,
and we have escaped.
Our help is the name of the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
Psalm 124
Our psalm tonight is a psalm of praise, a prayer, a song. Words that can be repeated in a congregation—just like it says to. I could go on. I could tell you how the psalm is one of the songs of ascent. How we don’t know for sure, but probably it was written by David. How we don’t know for sure, but probably it was used when the people took pilgrimages on their way each year to the worship in the temple in Jerusalem. I could tell you a lot of things.
Mostly, I want to tell you the psalm is a poem. So I wrote it up for you, played around with the words and word order and placing the words on the page—all of these things are important in poetry. Poetry is an art for hearing, but it has a visual component as well.
Psalm 124 offers a poetic take on what it means to be the people of God, on what it means to call ourselves God’s people. It starts by wondering, what if we weren’t?
“If the Lord were not for us…” The psalmist asks the people to consider life without God. What would life be like without God in a world full of trouble?
Specifically, what would life be like without God in a world with other people?
The community’s trouble, a word set emphatically at the end of the line, isn’t “enemies” or any specific nation or adversary; it is just “people,” “man,” “adam”—the same basic word for humankind used in Genesis. In the world, “people” rise up against us. That is the way of the world.
Right on the heels of this most concrete of words—“people,” flesh and blood, created by God from dust and breath—the psalm begins to play with metaphors, one after another. The psalmist talks of “being swallowed alive” and the “burning rage” of anger.
And water. Three water metaphors in a row, poetic repetition and you don’t need a lot of literary education to understand, to hear what it would be like “if the Lord had not been for us.” “The water would have engulfed us, a torrent sweeping over us, cruel waters sweeping over us” (Ps 124:4-5). “If the Lord had not been for us,” we would have drowned.
“If the Lord had not been for us” in the face of death…For death is what is at stake. Though we translate here “us” and “we,” the psalm doesn’t use generic pronouns. The psalmist says, “nafshéinut,” a complex Hebrew noun which means “life”—our whole lives, body and soul. Our physical lives as well as our spirits, all the ways we are alive in the world and present to each other and to our Maker.
“If the Lord had not been for us,” then in the face of death—in midst of death…
The psalm doesn’t say. The “then…” statement is incomplete. It leaves us, swallowed alive, sitting in the belly of the whale, deep under the water, swept away. It doesn’t say what happens next.
It doesn’t say because the psalmist pushes past all the deadly water and starts over. He has something else to say.
“Praise be to the Lord…” There’s a bird.
—
I was talking with a friend last week who asked me, laughing, “What is it with Scripture? Every time you turn a page there are all these birds!”
She’s right. The Bible is full of birds. After the flood Noah sends out a raven and a dove—three times!—from the ark. When the dove doesn’t come back Noah knows the water has receded; the world is no longer forsaken, for a little, lone white bird has found a place to perch. When Elijah is on the run from King Ahab, God sends ravens to bring him bread and meat, like manna on wings, like take-out, birds hustling for tips. Psalm 74 says to God, “do not deliver the life of your turtledove to the beast” (74:19). The turtledove is smaller and slighter than other dove species, timid and migratory. A precarious bird. The psalmist calls out: protect your turtledove from hunters and foes.
Scripture goes on. The courts of the Lord are envisioned as a place where “even the sparrow [finds] a home, the swallow a nest for herself” (Ps 84:3) and God’s kingdom is like a mustard seed, planted, tended, grown into a massive tree that provides shelter for the birds (Luke 13:19). God the Father attends to each and every sparrow and Jesus names himself Mother, a hen who longs to gather her chicks under her wing (Matt 10:29; 23:37). And, of course, there is Jesus’ baptism, when the Holy Spirit tears open the heavens and comes to rest on Jesus; Spirit is a bird sitting on Jesus’ head (Mark 1:10).
Birds everywhere: God cares for birds. God is a bird. God’s mercy is found and delivered by birds. God’s kingdom—made for the birds.
And here, the Psalmist sees us—the gathered congregation—identifies us as one of the Lord’s birds. That bird is in trouble, no doubt; a hunter is after it, a snare is set. But at this point in the psalm the metaphor shifts. The image of overwhelming engulfment is replaced. The community “is no longer deep within the throat but only at the surface of the mouth, the trap closes on nothing.”[1] The teeth do not tear. Instead we are a bird escaped, set free, flying out of the mouth of the beast whose teeth are snapping uselessly, piteously—silly beast tethered to the ground, trapped in the sea while we soar right up and out of the way.
There is a beautiful turn, a hitch in the poetry at verse 7: we escape—like a bird—from the snare // the snare—has been broken—we escape. The bird is meant to be caught in the snare; instead the snare is broken. The bird isn’t broken, the weapon forged against it is. Right here, in the midst of the waves, the sea that threatens to destroy, engulf, overwhelm—right when it looks like our souls are going to be unmade and covered over, destroyed—the sea disappears and the snare itself is broken. “Our help is the name of the Lord,” the Psalmist declares, “the Maker of heaven and earth” (124:8). Instead of being destroyed, we are made.
It is as though the Psalmist, with stark, truth-telling clarity, is lifting a veil, showing the world as we have seen it for illusion. “If the Lord had not been for us” we would be drowned in the ocean. We thought we were drowning in our trouble. Instead, the psalm reorients us to an unexpected, absurd truth: we are that bird—thin wings, fragile bones, frail song—little bird freed from trouble.
This, this, Karl Barth tells us, is the understanding of the people of God: “by a slender and indeed invisible thread it clings to its God, standing with God and God’s living will and work and Word. Without God it could only fall. But it is not without God, for God is not without it. God, however, does not fall. Hence it cannot fall. The slender, invisible thread shows itself to be an unbreakable chain. It alone holds. But it really does hold.”[2]
I know so many people who are hanging on by a thread. Hanging by a thread financially. Hanging by a thread emotionally. Whose bodies are hanging by a thread, or who are caring for people whose bodies are frayed and worn. People hanging by a thread with their faith. Communities and infrastructures and nations and churches whose threads look like they will break any moment. Some days the threads are invisible. Not just thin or hard to see: really invisible.
“And yet the thread holds. It really does hold.”
The good news of our Psalm today: it doesn’t much matter how visible or thin your thread is. No matter how deep the water, no matter how we show up or quit, no matter how we fight to swim or just float along in the foul, fair sea, we are being made. The Maker of heaven and earth is our “help.” That bird is gonna fly.
The work of the community, then, the people of God, is this: to recognize those invisible threads. To name them, acknowledge them as we grope together through the dark. When the time is right, to shine a light, like a flashlight on cobwebs in the forest, for it doesn’t take much light in the deep dark for even the thinnest threads to become visible. Visible with the kind of beauty that makes you shout, call a friend over to marvel at the delicate, complex, strong threads that you find weaved across an expanse.
It is the work of prayer. I have wondered this week reading in James, is this is the “prayer of faith,” naming the thin threads we find for each other? James tells us:
“Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. Is anyone among you sick? Let them call on the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will make them well; the Lord will raise them up” (James 5:13-15)
James offers a snapshot of who we aim to be as the people of God. James is famous as a book of “doing,” “faith without works is dead” (2:17) and all that business. As Mennonites, we are a church of doers. We build houses, put roofs on, stitch quilts, cook food. We pour wine and break bread for each other. And all of this is prayer.
Prayer is hard. It is hard to speak and be present in the face of trouble and sickness. Some days it is even hard to speak and be present in the face of happiness.
Prayer is also wide—the speaking and the doing and the calling on each other in times of trouble and joy and sickness—all of that is prayer, prayer breathed from deep in our throats, prayers from our hands dripping with anointing oil, sticky and clinging, imparting God’s slick grace into the world. We, through our prayers, are sign and sacrament to one other that the Lord is for us.
And “if the Lord is for us…”
—
I think that is the imagination Psalm 124 is leading us into. “If the Lord is for us…” Then what?
The Psalmist leads backwards, talking like a poet. The psalm starts, “if the Lord had not been for us…” repeats, “if the Lord had not been for us…” The psalm starts there because that is our experience, our deep, abiding fear—that the Lord is not for us; that we will be destroyed. Whether by our enemies or by disease or by the wearing away of time or by death—we will be destroyed. The psalmist takes that fear seriously—names it and holds it out.
And then clears the table, sweeps fear aside.
Tonight, Psalm 124 reorients us to the real reality: we are not being destroyed. People have attacked us. Floods have come. And yet the Lord does “not” let us be torn by teeth. The Lord “is” “our help.” Our name for God is “our help.” We are being created, formed and freed by the “Maker of heaven and earth.”
Our work now, as a community, as the people of God, is to pray. To name—in word and deed—how the thread holds. How it really does hold. How the loop of the fowler’s snare has already been clipped, allowing birds to escape, flying free.
[1] Jonathan Magonet, A Rabbi Reads the Psalms (London: SCM Press, 2004), 147.
[2] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.3.2 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishing, 2010), 732. Paraphrased.