BILLBOARD: God S Greatest Hits-4

BILLBOARD: God’s Greatest Hits-4

Psalm 79

August 31, 2014

A little over 60 years ago, Waiting for Godot premiered in Paris, France. It was an extremely polarizing play that ended up being performed all around the globe. The essence of the play is quite simple. In fact, before Seinfeld was a show about nothing, Waiting for Godot was a show about nothing. At least upon first glance, this is true. The premise is simple, two ragamuffin type characters named Estragon and Vladimir are friends, and they meet up at a tree. This is where the play will take place and where they will wait.

These two men are raggedy, tired and beaten men. They are friends but often at odds. For two acts of the play,there is little that happens. There is no saving the day. There is no helping each other find the woman of their dreams. There are no action sequences or fights. There is only talking. And waiting. We find out that these two men are waiting for someone named Godot. They wait and talk for the first act and meet a set of two other men. At the end of the first act, Estragon and Vladimir are tired of waiting and they commit to leave, but they don’t. They keep waiting. The second act is basically the same. Vladimir and Estragon waiting by the tree, talking about life and they meet the same two men. They talk some more and wait some more. The play ends with them committing to leave and then they keep waiting.

It’s a play about nothing until you look closer. Most people now agree this is an existentialist play that is an extended indictment of a God who seemingly never shows up, and it’s actually not that subtle. Godot is an attenuated rendering of God, a small god. Throughout the play they talk about Godot finally showing up to save them and how they are tired, afraid, beaten, hungry and alone. They also talk about the Bible and about Jesus. Least subtle of all, these two men are waiting by a tree for Godot to return. The point being, Jesus came, died on the cross and promised to come back…and his imminent return seems like it will never happen. That is the big picture- God showing up. But there is also the small picture of the daily waiting for God to show up to fix things and to turn a broken situation around.

We all have known, at some point in our lives, how Vladimir and Estragon feel. And the Israelites have definitely felt what it was like. Let me read to you from Psalm 79.

Psalm 79: 1-11

The Psalmist is waiting among terrible circumstances. Verses 1-4 paint a pretty grim picture. The Holy Land has been invaded and conquered. The temple has been destroyed, the walls are rubble and the city is in shambles. And it gets worse. There are dead bodies everywhere because the city is devastated and no one is left to bury the dead. The streets are sprayed with blood. This is a horrific picture, and they are being mocked on both sides. The temple is destroyed, blood has been spilled and insults are hurled.

As it turns out, this must have been written after the Babylonians decimated the Israelites between 597 and 587BC. King Nebuchadnezzar was on the Babylonian throne and they were the superpower of the day. They came in and conquered in 597BC and they deported a great deal of Israelites, including a man named Daniel. The Babylonians had this interesting practice. They didn’t just conquer you and put a puppet king over you, they would assimilate you and bring you to their land so you would never rise up again.

But they didn’t take everyone. They took the best, brightest and richest. They took the artists and the intelligentsia. They left the lowly and the poor behind until they came back to finish the job in 586-7BC. For 18-20 months, they sieged Jerusalem. It was bloody and brutal. The temple was destroyed, blood was spilled and insults were hurled. The beautiful thing about the Bible is that you get to see some of the big events from multiple angles. Jeremiah wrote about the coming judgment for Judah and the Southern Kingdom and then it came to fruition. You get to hear about life in exile from Daniel and then you hear about the aftermath in Judah from Jeremiah also in the book of Lamentations. Chapters 4 and 5 talk about what happened when the Babylonians invaded the second time and it is extremely grim. There is violence, cannibalism and sexual violence.

This is the scene that Psalm 79 is addressing. The Promised Land had been taken away…you noticed how he called it the inheritance. Land was important to the Israelites because it was the main piece of wealth they had, but more importantly it was a reminder that God kept his promise and brought them into the land of giants and had given them this land. Not only was the land stolen, the people were dead and probably worst of all, the temple was decimated. In this culture, a city’s walls represented their strength and God’s temple represented their strength and power. The message was simple. God had left, or was evicted. Those who were left behind were left to wait. Wait and wonder. Would he come back? How could this be fixed? They too were waiting for Godot.

As it turns out, prior to writing Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett worked for the French resistance in World War II. No doubt he saw horrible things. Then as the war ended, the stories and pictures of the Holocaust began to seep out. He saw a whole people group in a situation quite comparable to the Jews in Babylon. Dead, alone, starved and beaten. In the same way, he probably saw them waiting, waiting, waiting.

After the grim scene, we come to verse 5 with its raw emotion. How long will you be angry? How long will you leave us like this, is essentially what the Psalmist is saying. Some of you have sung some version of this Psalm in your life or maybe you are right now. Your retirement has evaporated. Your love life is not turning out the way you had hoped. Your job or lack of a job is keeping you awake at night. Or maybe your family has been visited by death or disease. In all of these, I think we can feel like there is an interminable waiting. It may feel like God forgot about us.

Fifteen years ago, right around this time, I was forced to wait. I was in the middle of my first semester in college. I was off to Oklahoma Baptist University (OBU), and I was studying to go into ministry. I knew God had called me to ministry and I knew God had called me to OBU. OBU is a private school, it wasn’t cheap, and I was footing the bill. It was Thanksgiving break of 1999, and I was out of money. I had a job waiting tables my senior yearin high school. I found out they would let me drive back to Fort Worth to pick up a few shifts, and hopefully God would bless that and I would have enough cash to pay bills and buy food for the rest of the semester. I made the three-hour trek home and busted out my black vest and starched apron. I hopped into the car that God had provided for me.I couldn’t afford to buy a car, so someone from church sold me a 1981 BMW for $1.00. On the first of three double shifts I had scheduled, driving up Forest Park in Fort Worth, a woman ran a red light and totaled my car. I was shocked, my neck was throbbingand an ambulance attendant strapped me onto a backboard with a neck brace and took me to the hospital. I wasn’t able to get a hold of my parents, and I laid on that backboard motionless for almost two hours. I wasn’t critical, but I was in pain and alone. A flood of emotions rushed upon me. I had it out with God because it didn’t seem like he was going to show up. I went to OBU to study for ministry to serve him. I was working hard to pay my way through college. I was using my holiday break to work so I could continue studying for ministry for him. And nowmy car, which was a gift, was totaled. I was alone in a hospital room strapped to a backboard, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to work. How was I going to pay for school? What was I going to drive? I seriously pondered the question at 18 years old- is God going to show up?

This is minor in the grand scheme of things and this is minor compared to what some of you are going through right now. But for me it wasn’t just about the car or the neck brace. It was this deeper question of God’s goodness and how he works. I had this feeling that since I was chosen for ministry, life should look a certain way. That it wouldn’t be easy, but it wouldn’t feel this defeating this early on. Some of you can identify with this. We sometimes come into the Christian life feeling it will look a certain way. We aren’t naive or wearing rose-colored glasses, but we think if we are serving and following Jesus, it won’t be this brutal.

As it turns out, the concept of Waiting for Godot has become synonymous with waiting for something that will never happen. As this work has been appropriated by culture, it simply means interminably waiting for someone or something that will never happen. Throughout this series, I have introduced you to a few ofBillboards’ top songs. This week, I want to introduce you to a cellar dweller. In 2012, Janina Gavakar released her album, Waiting for Godot. The title song’s chorus goes like this:

My idle mind is a devil's playground

Can't keep my hands to myself as I watch them go 'round

Friends may come, and friends may go, but I still I say

If I wait for love, am I waiting for Godot?

Interesting lyrics and beautiful singing, but it wasn’t a hit. Probably because the chorus of the song hinges upon an absurdist play that is 60 years old that few people have heard of, fewer have read and even fewer understand. Needless to say, the chorus is lost on a lot of people. Do you know what the biggest song of 2012 was? Call Me Maybe by Carly Ray Jepsen. The chorus for that one?

Hey, I just met you,

And this is crazy,

But here's my number,

So call me, maybe!

It's hard to look right

At you baby,

But here's my number,

So call me, maybe!

Not quite as deep is it? It’s catchier and easier to digest, but it doesn’t really confront the deep and messy nature of relationships. Unfortunately, I feel like a lot of Christians have been given a “Call Me Maybe” version of faith, especially when it comes to suffering. Many pastors deliver fluff and simplistic answers, usually something trite and untrue; maybe this suffering is happening because you don’t have enough faith, or maybe this suffering is happening because of sin in your life. Or if you prayed hard enough,the problems would go away. As it turns out, it’s not quite as popular to confront your faith with a waiting for Godot-type approach. It’s not as popular of a chorus, but it leads to a better song.

Psalms 79:6-11

Verse 9 and 10 are especially important. Forgive us for your name’s sake. Deliver us for the glory of your name. We have been talking about this phrase for several weeks. It pops up in several Psalms. At the root of it, it’s about God keeping promisesnot because we are faithful but because he is. The Psalmist appeals to that truth. God brings about redemption because your name is at stake. The surrounding nations are asking, “Where is their God?” God’s name and his reputation are at stake. His temple is destroyed, blood has been spilled and insults are hurled.

I want you to see something here in Luke 24. Jesus shows two men on the Emmaus road that all of the scriptures were about him or pointing to him. That is definitely true for today.

Psalm 79 is about the Babylonian destruction of the Jewish temple, but it is also a foreshadowing of Jesus. This Psalm starts off with a simple and brutal picture- the temple is destroyed, blood is spilled and insults are hurled. Does this sound familiar? Jesus was broken, his blood was spilled and he was mocked while he hung on that tree.

Here is what is amazing to me. The Psalmist asks for what we really need. He asks for deliverance and sins to be forgiven. That’s what Jesus came for. That’s why the temple was broken, blood was spilled and insults were hurled. He came to fix the biggest problem in our lives. The greatest suffering that could not be undone. Sin way back in the garden separated us from God. That led to suffering and separation from God. Jesus came to fix that. Here’s why, and I have told you this before there is always some kind of temporary oppression or oppressive regime. Before there were the Babylonians, there were the Assyrians. Before the Assyrians, were the Philistines. Before that there were the Egyptians. After the Babylonians, there were the Persians and then right around the corner were the Romans.

It’s not just oppressive or dangerous regimes and armies. Before we were faced with cancer, we were faced with things like polio and before that tuberculosis. One disease is cured and another plague shows up. Hear me out- I want to see a cure for cancerlike yesterday. But the biggest problem confronting our world is not cancer. Our biggest problem is not ISIS surging through Syria and Iraq. Our biggest problem is not whether our economy will bounce back.

Jesus came to fix our biggest problem, to reconnect us with our Maker through his death and resurrection and to show us a different way to live life. Essentially, he came to offer eternal and abundant life. This is in no way is meant to lessen the severity of what you or your loved ones have gone through. It is simply offered to remind you that your greatest problem has been handled. If you have put your faith in Jesus Christ, then one day the war will be over, your diseases will be healed, and your tears will be dried.

Paul says that our current sufferings are not to be compared with the glory that is to come. The sad truth is that we are all heading to the same destiny. Recent statistics have come out to say that 1 out of 1 people die. We are trained from an early age to forget this truth, to dodge it and to not think about it. A little girl named Sadie recently talked to her mom about growing up and mortality. Her response is cute, adorable and sad all at the time. She has just been told that her brother won’t stay little forever and that she too has a certain amount of time on this planet. Let’s watch:

Jesus came to fix our biggest problem, our greatest suffering. The temple was broken, blood was spilled and insults were hurled. The Psalmist asks that God would pour out his wrath, that he would spill blood for his name’s sake. And he did, just not the way they expected or could have foreseen. Jesus stood in the place of the condemned and God’s wrath was poured out on him. Blood was spilled so that grace could go forth. The Psalmist asks for justice and vengeance, but God turns that into grace and redemption.

My friends, sometimes God will show up exactly as you expect. You will pray for a new job and financial provision and it will land in your lap. After my car crash my freshman year, the insurance money came through and was more than I could have expected or known about while lying out on that stretcher. It paid for a new (used) car and for the rest of my semester. But other times he won’t show up in the way you expect. Two years later, in a different car wreck, same road, the very same thing where someone ran a red light, my car was totaled again, and this person didn’t have insurance. I just had the wreckage and not much else.

If this was a “Call Me Maybe” type of church and if I was a “Call Me Maybe” type of pastor, I would tell you it will always turn out well. All you need is to pray hard and be good enough. But I am not and you are not. We are also not a “Waiting for Godot” church because Samuel Beckett was an atheist, and he was a man without hope. A refraining line in the play is “nothing to be done.” I disagree because something has been done. Jesus died in your place. No matter what you are facing right now, if your faith is in him, he will catch you in this life or the next. God did show up. The great irony is Vladimir and Estragon spend the whole play by the tree wondering if Godot will show up when that tree is a reminder that he already did.