Psalm 77

March 13, 2024

Tonight we have our fourth Psalm of Lament; we’ve had a lament over personal sin; we had a lament that complained to God for being unjust, in causing His faithful people to lose a battle. Then we had a lament because the people had been carried off into exile for their faithlessness.

Now tonight’s Psalm, 77, is a lament in some kind of personal distress, where it seems that God is distant and uncaring.

Throughout the Scriptures we see the righteous suffering. St. Paul had his thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan to harass him. Job experienced the death of his children, the scorn of his wife, the rebuke of his friends, and the wasting away of his flesh. His days were spent on the dunghill, and his nights filled with bitter weeping. Abraham and Sarah spent years in barren sorrow. Isaac and Rebekah grieved over their wayward children. Jesus said that His followers should expect tribulation in this world. And St. Paul told Timothy that everyone who desires to live godly will suffer persecution.

Into this suffering Psalm 77 plants us. And, the Psalm directs us how to respond to our afflictions. “I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me.” We learn in the first years of school to read quietly, and to keep our thoughts inside. The Psalmist prays aloud, and that is good for us too: “I cry aloud to God, aloud to God, and he will hear me.”

Do you sleep well? Many people have experienced difficulty sleeping because of worries. The Psalmist is no stranger to this. “In the night my hand is stretched out [meaning, in prayer] … my soul refused to be comforted… you hold my eyelids open.” He cannot find rest.

Nevertheless his hands are stretched out, palms up, like a beggar, pleading with God to fill them, imploring Him to answer, help, deliver.

But there seems to be no answer. His body trembles with pain. His head spins. He is so tired, but cannot sleep. The trouble he expresses is physically harming him; there is a constant internal distress, as though he will vomit, or his intestines will explode. The distress will does not leave him. “Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time?” 

Again and again he heard in church of the Lord’s mercy and grace, just as you have repeatedly heard the holy absolution and received the blessed sacrament. Yet where is the help? When will things change? “Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?”

That’s half of the Psalm. He knows the promise of God’s grace, but hasn’t experienced it in his life. In fact, just the opposite. All he knows are tears and heartache, misery and insomnia.

Then, with resolution, he has a change of perspective, and this alters how he prays. “Then I said, ‘I will appeal to this.’” Only through the pain and loss, only through rejection and persecution, and the experience of abandonment by God, does the Psalmist find his ground of certainty. “I will appeal to this: … I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your wonders of old.” Faith doesn’t appeal to an abstraction. Faith doesn’t cling to optimism despite all evidence. True faith, godly faith, Christian faith appeals to the Words and acts of God. Only there is certainty.

“You are the God who works wonders; you have made known your might among the peoples. You with your arm redeemed your people.” How? The chief story, the central event of the Old Testament, is the Exodus. Every pious Jew looked to that as the paradigm for who God is and how He acts. He delivers slaves from bondage in the most improbable way at the most improbable time. “Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”

The Psalmist doesn’t see the way out of whatever is causing his sleeplessness and pain. But he knows, he remembers what God has done, how God acts.

What does this mean for us? The Christian religion is not a new religion different from Judaism. Christianity is Judaism fulfilled. Thus the central event of our Lord Jesus is His death and resurrection. All of which occurs at Passover. And the great Passover meal is the occasion of our Lord’s establishment of His Supper. This is how He is with us. This is how we remember Him and He remembers us.

We often cannot see the way out of our present dilemma. But we do see the Jews delivered from Egypt. We see Jesus delivered from death. And we see His gifts, the perpetual memento of His passion, delivered to us at every Eucharist.

So when in the night you sleepless lie, may your thoughts with Jesus be supplied, and say with Psalm 77, “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes I will remember your wonders of old.”