Advent Longings: Save Us!
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
Rev. Monte Marshall
Longing: “a strong desire for something or someone.”[1] So says the dictionary. During this Advent season, we’ll be exploring some of our deepest and most intense longings as we seek God and prepare ourselves to discover a renewed sense of meaning in the coming of Christ. This morning, our longing is voiced in a cry: Save us!
When I hear those two words, a chilling memory comes to mind. It was January 13, 1982. Laura Jean and I were on an airplane with our infant son, Brian. We had just spent the Christmas holidays at home in Beeville and were flying back to Washington D. C. so that I could begin my third spring semester in seminary. We were scheduled to land at Washington’s National Airport that afternoon.
But we never made it to D. C. on that cold, January day. We got as far as Atlanta, GA. There was an abrupt change in plans due to the crash of Air Florida Flight 90 into the Potomac River as it was taking off from National Airport.
It had been snowing in D. C. There was ice buildup on the plane. So after the Boeing 737 lifted off the runway, it flew about a mile before stalling out. The plane came down on top of the 14th Street bridge and then plunged into the ice-covered Potomac. The jet broke into multiple pieces and quickly disappeared beneath the water leaving twelve surviving passengers struggling to stay afloat in the frozen river.
Video cameras were already recording the scene as a United States Park Police helicopter arrived and began lifting the survivors out of the water one at a time. The video footage of those survivors in the water awaiting rescue is the memory that flashes across my mind when I hear the words, Save us! Only five of those people actually survived.[2]
So I wonder: How many of us know what it’s like to be in a situation that creates a desperate longing expressed in the cry, Save us? The psalmist who crafted the text of this morning’s scripture reading certainly knew this desperate longing, and on a national level.
Psalm 80 emerged from a period in history when God’s people were in crisis. Disaster had struck. The psalm’s references to the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, Joseph and Benjamin point to a catastrophe that had befallen the northern kingdom of Israel, most likely the conquest of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 BCE. In that circumstance, Israel had been utterly defeated by its enemies. The nation was in ruins. Many people were dead, while many others had been forcibly marched into captivity far away from home.
In its anguish, Israel turned toward God in a communal lament: “Shepherd of Israel, hear us, you who lead Joseph like a flock!” For Israel, God is like a shepherd whose job it is to guide and protect the flock. And Israel needed protection.
“You who are enthroned on the cherubim, shine out!” For Israel, God is a powerful ruler capable of overcoming Israel’s enemies if only God would “shine out!”
Israel begged God: “Shine out….Awaken your power and come to save us! O God, return to us: let your face smile on us, and we will be saved!”
The psalmist notes that this prayer is not Israel’s first prayer. Indeed, the people in their distress have prayed over and over again, but to no avail: “Yahweh, God of Hosts, how much longer will you fume while your people pray?”
So Israel accused God: “You fed us on the bread of tears, and make us drink out tears in such measure; you now let our neighbors ridicule us and our enemies treat us with scorn.”
But Israel continued to petition God: “O God of Hosts, return to us—let your face smile on us and we will be saved! Let your hand rest upon the One at your right side, The Chosen One you raised up for yourself.
And Israel made a promise: “Then we’ll never turn from you again; our life renewed, we will invoke your Name.”
And once again Israel cried: “Yahweh, God of Hosts, return to us—let your face smile on us and we will be saved.”
Now let me be clear. The theology of Psalm 80 is not my theology. I don’t believe that the Assyrian conquest of Israel was God’s doing. Assyrian soldiers didn’t kill, burn, imprison and destroy because God fumed, or was asleep, or had turned away, or refused to smile—all of which are images used to blame God for the destruction. Assyrian soldiers killed and burned and imprisoned and destroyed because that’s the kind of thing we human beings have a habit of doing to one another. And furthermore, I don’t believe that God’s way of saving us involves returning evil for evil, or meeting brutal force with brutal force, as Israel apparently hoped God would do.
That being said, it’s not hard for me to imagine the pain out of which this psalm emerged, and the value of bringing that pain to expression, in all of its rawness, before God. Israel seems to have known that before deliverance can come, the pain has to be acknowledged in a cry for help: Save us!
And yet, this is so hard for us to do these days and in this culture. Peter Vaill highlights this point. He’s a professor of Management Science at George Washington University and he once gave a speech to his peers entitled, “The Rediscovery of Anguish.” Author K. C. Ptomey describes the address in these words: “Vail says that in his consultations with various companies and corporations, in talking with personnel managers, loan officers, credit union people, vice presidents, and union stewards, across the board he has observed a keen awareness of the pain that people are experiencing. But he is amazed that there is little, if any, public recognition or acceptance of this pain. ‘We can’t just share our pain and confusion with each other….There is massive suppression and anguish going on in the organizations and communities of the developed world—no one’s fault in particular; just a fundamental part of the culture’…..Then he says that a friend of his, an international student, recently observed that one of the most surprising things about coming to the United States is to discover that when we say, ‘How ya doing?’ in a loud, jolly voice, we don’t mean it. We don’t expect an answer. We don’t want an answer.”
Vaill also discovered that when we respond to that greeting with words such as “fine, okay or swell,” more often than not we’re covering up some kind of pain that we don’t want to acknowledge. At least Israel knew enough to own up to its own suffering and from out of the pain, cry to God: Save us!
So how is it with us? Can we own up to our own pain in America and out of that desperate longing, turn to God and cry: Save us?
If you ask me, there is certainly pain to be acknowledged. There is anguish in our nation the comes from America being caught up in an ongoing and vicious cycle of violence in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, against enemies like Al Quida, ISIS, and the Taliban? And so in our pain, we cry to God, Save us!
Our people know the ache of economic dislocation with too many people unemployed, too many people underemployed, too many people sleeping on the streets, too many people going hungry, too many people struggling to get by, and too many people who could care less. And so in our pain we cry to God, Save us!
Our nation continues to suffer the torment of racism—America’s original sin, some say. Look to the pain being expressed in the street demonstrations following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Look to the pain of African American parents who feel compelled to have “the talk” with their children about how to act in the presence of white police officers—a talk white families don’t have to have. And so in our pain we cry to God, Save us!
Undocumented immigrants are suffering in America as they live and work in the shadows, often separated from their families, while enduring hostility instead of hospitality. And so we cry to God, Save us!
And we know all too well the hurt experienced by our LGBTQ brothers and sisters who know the sting of discrimination, ridicule and rejection even, at times, within their own families? And so in our pain we cry to God, Save us!
So what has been God’s response? Well, first of all, the gospel points us to Jesus the Christ. The gospel proclaims Jesus, Savior! The gospel proclaims that in Christ, God shines out! In Christ, God smiles upon us. In Christ, we see what it looks like to be saved—and this is the picture: God’s Spirit powerfully present and working through the flesh and blood of a human being to transform the world—which means violence giving way to peace; justice reigning over injustice; hate yielding to love, hospitality replacing hostility; and inclusion supplanting exclusion.
All of this is to say that God’s rescue mission has begun and is ongoing, and this brings us to another aspect of God’s response—you and me. As the followers of Jesus Christ and the bearers of God’s Spirit, we all have a role to play in responding to the painful cries of lament that still haunt our nation and the world.
And it’s here that I recall two other images from the crash of the Air Florida Flight. The first is of a man named Lenny Skutnik. Mr. Skutnik was an onlooker standing on the bank of the Potomac River. But when he saw one of the crash survivors loose her grip on the lifeline, he jumped into the icy water to save her and both survived
And then there’s Armand Williams, Jr. Mr. Williams was a 50 year old passenger on the downed plane. He survived the crash and was clinging to a piece of wreckage when the rescue helicopter arrived. The helicopter crew noticed that Mr. Williams seemed to the most alert of all the people in the water so they dropped life vests and a flotation ball in his vacinity.
The crew expected Mr. Williams to be the first person they rescued. But Arland Williams didn’t save himself, he stayed in the water and aided in the rescue of five other people. After the helicopter got the rescued survivors to safety, the crew came back to pick up Mr. William, but it was too late. He had already slipped beneath the waters.
Now I don’t know about you, but I see the spirit of Christ at work in the lives of these two men. And O how I pray that God might use all of us at Travis Park UMC in such a powerful way as we give of ourselves boldly and unselfishly to the cause of unconditional love and justice in response to the cries of so many hurting people throughout this nation and the world. So here’s the question: How far are we willing to go in saving the lives of others as we participate in God’s rescue mission in the world?