Caller: Good morning.
Excuse me just a moment, I need to make a call. This will only take a second…
Recording: Thank you for calling Acme Incorporated. Your call is important to us. Para escuchar en español, oprima el número
siete… Please listen to our menu options, as they may have changed. To order new service, press 1. To change your existing service, press
2. For billing, press 3. To tell us how wonderful we’re doing, press
4. If you’d like to make a contribution
to help our CEO buy a new yacht, press 5.
Your contribution is NOT tax-deductible, but for him, the purchase of
the yacht is…
Caller: Hmm, none of those are what I want. I’ll just press zero.
Recording: I’m sorry, that is not a valid option… [Caller groans…] Thank you for calling
Acme Incorporated. Your call is
important to us. Para escuchar en
español, oprima el número siete… Please listen to our menu options, as they may
have changed. To order new service,
press 1. To change your existing
service, press 2. For billing, press
3. To tell us how wonderful we’re doing,
press 4. If you’d like to make a
contribution to help our CEO buy a new private jet, press 5. Your contribution is NOT tax-deductible, but
for him, the purchase of the private jet is…
Caller: Oh, fine, I’ll press 2.
Recording: Please hold while we transfer your call…
Customer
Service Rep: Hello, my name is Greta;
for quality control purposes, this call may be recorded. Can I have your
account #?
Caller: Oh, I have it… uh… here it is. 5739029573872307473830503292688888…8….7261…Q.
Customer
Service Rep: Thank you. How can I help you?
Caller: Yes, I have an issue with–
Customer
Service Rep: Hold please. [silence for a
moment]
Recording: Thank you for calling Acme Incorporated. Your call is important to us. Para escuchar en español, oprima el número
siete.
I’m pretty sure that the psalmists never
experienced anything quite like that,
but in many places throughout the psalms one does encounter the words of a
person who is frustrated at the way he’s been treated. The psalmists know what it is like to have no
respect, to be treated like dirt, as if you’re not even human, to have someone
look right at you and not even see you as a person, but only as a tool or an
obstacle.
So I’ve titled today’s “Cry of the Heart,” “See Me,” because that is the longing we
all have, to be seen and recognized as who we are, humans with a soul, with a
heart, in need of respect and affirmation and kindness.
In case you weren’t here last week, we have
begun a six-week series on the Psalms.
Over the past several months I’ve read through all 150 psalms, and have
discovered that many of them are cries of the heart, honest expressions of
human emotion to which I can so easily relate.
The psalms don’t always tell me how I should act; rather, they let me know
that even thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away, were people
living their lives, trying to please God and trying to live by God’s teachings,
and yet encountering many of the same human emotional experiences and challenges
that you and I encounter in our everyday lives.
The desire to be seen, to be validated, is,
I think, one of the things that motivates many people to share about their
personal lives on facebook. I’m often
surprised at what people will share on facebook, to hundreds of friends who may
then, in turn, re-share it with thousands of others, including many
strangers.
And a lot of what people share is just
complaining and whining about little things.
If you are on facebook, you’ve probably noticed that there are one or
two people (actually, more than one or two) who complain about everything. This is true in real-life, too. Everytime they open their mouth, every time
they post something on facebook, it’s to complain, to talk about the latest
“tragedy” in their life, to let you know how difficult this past day or past
week has been for them.
I’ve actually blocked one or two of these
facebook friends because I found that their constant negativity was like a
poison, and I could no longer consume the constant negativity without letting
it affect my own attitude.
But those are just the extreme cases. And I realize now that what they really
desire in sharing their difficulties with the world is to be seen, to have
someone, anyone, look at them as a
person, as a human, to validate their suffering.
Here is a facebook status I saw a few weeks
ago. Listen to the person’s deep need to
be seen as a live human being. This is
what the person wrote:
I
had a meeting at work this morning. You know how you “feel someone out” to see
where they are coming from. I did that
with my new boss. As he walked away I went
into my office and cried. My staff and
our region have been reduced to data; no longer people, we are being judged
like machines. This is the new organizational leadership style; [it’s all
about] statistics... “make me look good” and I will leave you alone.
A few weeks ago, I read Psalm 22 to our
high school youth, and asked them to imagine that the psalm was written by a
kid at school who was picked on and bullied.
Well, now I’m going to re-read a few verses of the psalm to you, but I
want you to imagine that it was written by a worker who is devalued by his or
her boss, or talked about by co-workers, or left alone and uninvited to social
gatherings that everyone else is going to.
It could be someone who works in an office,
or it could be a bus driver, or a hotel maid, or a grocery store clerk. Perhaps
you can even imagine that this psalm was written by the person whose facebook
post I just read to you…And if you are in school, then go ahead and imagine a
kid who is being bullied as the author of this psalm…
I’m just a worm,
less than human; insulted by one person, despised by another. All who see me
make fun of me—they gape, shaking their heads:
“He committed
himself to the Lord, so let God rescue him; let God deliver him, because God
likes him so much.”
Many bulls surround
me; mighty bulls from Bashan encircle me. They open their mouths at me like a
lion ripping and roaring!
Dogs surround me; a
pack of evil people circle me like a lion—they just stare at me, watching me.
Other psalms
reflect similar experiences:
Psalm 3: “So many are against me, so many are talking
about me.”
Psalm 44: “You’ve made us a joke to all our neighbors;
we’re mocked and ridiculed by everyone around us.”
Psalm 69: “So many are against me – and all because I’m
devoted to you! They ridicule and insult
your servant. Save me from the flood of insults!”
Psalm 129: “From youth, people have constantly attacked
me. Say it with me: From youth, people
have constantly attacked me!”
Sometimes, it
becomes too much. At the end of Psalm
139, the psalmist is so upset at the way he is treated, that he says to those
who are against him, “A blessing on the one who takes your children and smashes
their heads against the rocks!” Not
exactly the most compassionate response, but sometimes it’s just so hard to be
compassionate. It’s just so hard to be
perfect. You know that. I know that.
And the psalmist knows that.
But the psalmist
also knows that God is with those who suffer, even though for a while it may
not seem like it. And for a while, it
may look like evil is winning. Psalm 37
says, “The wicked draw their swords and bend their bows to bring down the weak
and the needy, to slaughter those who live by what is right.” That is the present reality. But then the psalmist says: “The future
belongs to persons of peace.”
Teresa of Avila was
a 16th century Spanish nun.
She is regarded as a mystic, and wrote a book called “The Interior
Castle” in which she described a series of visions she had.
She also suffered
quite a lot, from illness, from those who doubted that her visions were from
God, and from her own feelings of inadequacy.
This led her to say to God in prayer, “If this is how you treat your
friends, no wonder you have so many enemies.”
I imagine that
Teresa took great comfort in knowing that the psalmists shared her experience.
Jesus had a special
place in his heart for those who were picked on and devalued. He once approached a woman who had come to a
well to draw water at noon, the middle of the day, when the sun was hottest and
all the other women were back at home.
She had come to the
well at that hour, when no one else was there, to avoid the stares and the
gossip of the other women.
When Jesus
approached her, she was naturally suspicious.
He was, after all, a man, and men and women didn’t socialize like
that. He was also a Jew, and she was a
Samaritan, and Jews and Samaritans didn’t socialize like that.
And she… well, she
was a woman who had been used and abused, a woman who had made mistakes and had
been made to suffer because of the mistakes of others. So when Jesus started
talking, she was ready to defend herself and fling any derisive comments back
in his face.
But Jesus surprised
her by speaking words of compassion. He
looked at her… and he saw her. Jesus
recognized that the road on which she travelled was difficult and rocky.
He knew that she
had made mistakes, and that she had paid dearly for those mistakes; and that
she was still paying for those mistakes.
Even when her words
toward Jesus were hostile, defensive, or rude, Jesus recognized that they came
from the pain she felt deep within, the pain of not being seen for who she was, the pain from being seen only for
the mistakes she had made.
“I know all about
you,” Jesus said. “I know why you’re here
in the middle of the day. I know why you
hide from others. I know why you speak
defensively, why you’ve built up this protective barrier around yourself. I
know all about you… I see you.
“Here… let me love
you. Let me heal your wounds.
“Let me show you
how to handle your suffering, how to care
for your suffering.
“Let me give you
some living water, that will quench your thirst and cleanse your wounds.
“Let me love
you. For no matter what anyone says, you
are a beloved child of God. And you, my
dear child, are truly beautiful in God’s eyes.”
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