UNBLOCKING THE WELL OF THE LIVING WORD

READ PSALM 126-130

SUGGESTED PATTERN READ PSALM 130 AGAIN with spouse or household.

SPEND A FEW MINUTES GOING THROUGH 4 STEPS OF LECTIO DIVINA, ON  PSALM 130

“ Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord.  Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you. I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning,  more than watchmen wait for the morning.”

READING  “Put the food whole into your mouth”

MEDITATION,  “Chew it up”

PRAYER “Extract its flavour”

CONTEMPLATION “The sweetness which gladdens and refreshes”

Share together with your spouse or household what the Lord has been saying. Finally one person reads out loud the devotional below and then pray for one another.  

In the BBC wild life programme The Blue Planet, (1) there is a episode where  a submarine travels 4000 feet below the surface. Without the submarine the cameramen would have been crushed in an instant. Down at those depths, it is completely black, cold with no vegetation, a stark almost lunar-like landscape with very little life.

When we say someone is in deep water we mean he is in trouble. The depths of the sea are like the depths of our troubles. Sometimes when we are in the depths, it feels very dark, very cold, under deep pressure. If you feel like that, you are in good company, Joseph  in prison, Daniel  in Lion’s den, King David on the run from Saul. Many characters in the bible were in the depths. The psalmist, in Psalm 130 is crying out to God for help. There is a sense of being engulfed, of being overwhelmed, of being drowned. A couple of Oxford men come to mind, who cried out to God in the depths and drew comfort from Psalm 130, John Wesley and Jonathon Aitken.

On 24th May 1738 John Wesley wrote in his Journal (2): “In the afternoon I was asked to go to St Paul’s. The anthem was De Profundis, based on Psalm 130:1–8” The music and the words deeply touched John Wesley and a seed was planted. Later that day, in the evening, he met with a group of friends who were reading from Luther’s “Preface to Romans”,(3) which also spoke of the depths.  “God judges what is in the depths of the heart. Therefore his law also makes demands on the depths of the heart and doesn’t let the heart rest content in works; rather it punishes as hypocrisy and lies all works done apart from the depths of the heart.” Wesley suddenly saw for the very first time the extent of his sin despite having been to church, despite having been a missionary. He realised the extent to which God by grace and by grace alone saves us ‘out of the depths’. Wesley famously says in his Journal, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.”

Jonathon Aitken was an Eton alumnus and an Oxford graduate. He was a man who nearly became Prime Minister, who rose to the heights of office in Government as a cabinet minister, but who went to prison in the 1990s for libel. He wrote a book called  ‘Psalms for people under pressure’(4) in which  –he describes his first night arriving at Belmarsh prison being processed as a prisoner and being locked in his cell. In the first night he heard the other shouts of prisoners in small hours shouting across the corridors what they would like to do to this ex-cabinet Tory minister. Towards the end of his sentence, while still in prison, he gave a talk on Psalm 130. He said it was not only his favourite psalm, it was the favourite psalm also of Calvin, Luther, Augustine. Towards the end of his talk Jonathon Aitken says  “I noticed  ‘The big face’ ( a notorious criminal) was visibly moved….Tears trickled down his cheeks as he listened in deep concentration with a booming ‘Amen’. A few minutes later he drew him aside. ‘Jonno, that there psalm… it got to my heart it did. I’d like to ask you a favour… Do you think you could come over to my cell and say your piece over again– I may have a couple of my best mates which it would mean a real lot to’…he enlarged his invitation and said … ‘to make yourself comfortable how about bringing along a couple of your mates ‘Augustus’ and ‘what’s his face.’’ Although I was unable to produce Calvin Luther and Augustine  as my companions, Psalm 130 went down well second time round in the Big Faces’s cell- how I wish I had discovered their riches of Psalm 130 earlier in my life.”

The first half of Psalm 130 focusses on ‘crying out’. The second half is focussed on ‘waiting.’ I wait for the Lord more than watchman wait for the morning.. more than watchman wait for the morning.. This is not just vain repetition- the psalmist is making a point -when I am in the depths waiting for rescue my whole being is waiting for God to come and rescue me.

You are not alone… Jesus knew what it was to be in the depths. In the account of Gethsemane we read of a man in anguish crying out, sweating blood in the full knowledge of what was going to happen. When at  the cross he descended to the depths. We have a God who knows what it is like to go to the deep places. He can sympathize with us. We know that we have a God who can sympathize with us– who knows what it is like. One of the key words is – ‘cry.’  The psalmist is crying out of the depths. I cry to you. O Lord let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.  When we are the depths. It is really easy to just give up and just sink into despair.

Andrew Walker in his book ‘Remembering the future’ quotes (5) C. Lewis (another Oxford man), in a letter to the Church Times on 8th of February 1952. He wrote, “.. to a layman it seems obvious that what unites the Evangelical and the Anglo-Catholic against the ‘liberal’ or ‘modernist’ is something very clear and momentous, namely the fact that both are thoroughgoing supernaturalists,… perhaps the trouble is that as supernaturalists whether  ‘low’ or ‘high’ Church … they lack a name. May I suggest “Deep Church’; or if that fails in humility; Baxter’s ‘mere Christians.’

We face a desperate and deep place in the church in England today, with only 6% saying they are practising Christians, in a recent survey (6). CS Lewis words, over 70 years ago, calling for ‘Deep Church’, may be just as relevant today as they were in 1952 . Hans Boersma says (7) Early church exegesis makes space for Deep church and retrieval of orthodox faith which makes possible healing of divisions between Eastern Orthodox and Western, Protestant and Catholic church and global awakening. Augustine said they are very deep in the deep who do not even cry from the deep(8). Let’s cry out from the deep, and remember our future (9)

Prayer

Lord we wait for you Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning,  more than watchmen wait for the morning. Lord you heard Wesley’s cry from the depths. We pray for another youth awakening from ‘the womb of the dawn’. Lord, hear our cry today!

References

(1) Blue Planet

(2) Wesley, J. Journal,103.

(3) Luther.M, Preface to The book of Romans.

Luther, M. Preface to Romans. http://www.ccel.org/l/luther/romans/pref_romans.html

(4) Aitken, J. Psalms for people under pressure.

(5) Walker, A. and Bretherton, L. Remembering our future: Explorations in Deep Church 2.

(6) Talking Jesus survey

https://www.hopetogether.org.uk/Groups/371503/Talking_Jesus.aspx

(7) Boersma, H. Scripture as Presence.

(8) Augustine, Expositions on the book of Psalms, Psalms 57-150, 497.

(9) Walker, A. and Bretherton, L. Remembering our future: Explorations in Deep Church