The Angry Sermon

Well, I preached the “Angry Sermon” yesterday morning. Actually that was the title of my Word file. For Sunday morning I called it “A Lamentable Monday” where I described last Monday in detail and then looked to biblical texts that help us to deal with days like that. I settled on the lament psalms as psalms that were written for Mondays like last week.

There are more lament psalms than hymns of praise in the Bible. Those who suffer and work their way through frustrating days (like Monday) or awful days for those who experience great loss can find solace in the psalms.

We looked at Psalm 12 (a lament for someone attacked unjustly), Psalm 6 (a lament for a sick person) and Psalm 88, the angriest psalm in the Bible. I called it the Mariana Trench of the Old Testament.

There are four things we can learn from these lament psalms:

1. They remind us that we are part of a community that has experienced these emotions before. Evangelicals in general, and Baptists in particular often ignore the rich religious tradition that came before us. The psalms remind us that others have suffered before us.

2. By praying these psalms we can transform our own prayers. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said “Whoever has begun to pray the psalms earnestly and regularly, will soon give leave to those other, easy prayers of their own because they lack the power, passion, and fire to be found in the Psalter.” Praying the psalms provides a powerful antidote to the “Lord, we just wanna” prayers that characterize so much of church life.

3. The lament psalms push us to communicate with God. Even the deepest, darkest, most painful psalms are still addressed to God. Angry prayers still have a seed of hope in them that God listens and that God can change things.

4. They remind us to be authentic. The psalmists were authentic in their prayers. They unashamedly shared their true feelings. Far too often today we keep our church relationships superficial. (“I’m fine, how are you?” “Fine” “How is work?” “Good!” Etc.)

I am convinced that part of what turns people off to church is the superficiality of church members (including myself).

Our church posts mp3 versions of sermons, contact me if you suffer from insomnia and would like that link.