Ps. 142 (Out of prison)

Aloud / to Yhwh / I cry

                Aloud / to Yhwh / I plead for aid

I pour out / before him / my worries

                My troubles / before him / I relate

When my spirit faints within

                You are one / who knows my path

I glance to the right / and look

                But nobody takes / any notice of me

Escape is impossible / for me

                Nobody cares about me.

The psalmist begins with his out loud crying to Yhwh, pleading for aid. He tells Yhwh about his worries and his troubles which are making his spirit faint. And yet, while he is unable to find strength or see through his worries and troubles, he knows that Yhwh his path. His darkness—his inability to see a way forward—is deepened by the fact that his spirit is fainting but that “nobody takes any notice” of him. Not only are his troubles and worries making it impossible for him to see a way forward into life, but he also does not have any companions who help him see a way forward. Internally (his own spirit) and externally (companions) he is blind and alone.

That is why his trust in Yhwh is so important—he has nothing in himself or outside of himself—that he can rely on to shepherd him through the darkness. That is why “escape is impossible” except through Yhwh hearing his cries.

I cry to you / Yhwh

                I say / You are my refuge

                My sustenance / in the land / of the living

Listen to my shouting

                Since I am brought / very low

Save me / from my persecutors

                Since they are too strong for me

Bring me / out of prison

                So that I can give thanks / to your name

Around me / the righteous will crowd

                When you treat me / with kindness.

The psalmist’s cry to Yhwh has to be seen within the context of his internal and external isolation. When he claims Yhwh as his “refuge” and “my sustenance in the land of the living” he is saying that Yhwh is his only refuge and source of sustenance. Everywhere else he turns, he finds abandonment. Nothing else “in the land of the living” can or will come to his aid. His shouts, which are utterly ignored by men, have to be heard by Yhwh. Only Yhwh can “save him from my persecutors”. He is, again internally and externally, in prison.

It is key to see that his external abandonment—the fact that when he looks “to the right” “nobody takes notice of him”; “nobody cares about me”—does not turn into a bitterness or a source of cursing. In a way, the psalmist accepts his position of isolation and abandonment; he understands it. This is why he knows that when Yhwh “brings him out of prison” and he is again permitted to “give thanks to your name”, then he will “turn to the right” and he will be surrounded by the righteous. They will crowd around him. And they will do so because he will have become the place of Yhwh’s kindness. He will be a inhabit the light of Yhwh and, for that reason, the righteous will be attracted to him.

When we turn to the gospels we find Christ, as he approaches the crucifixion, moving between two realms—that of his father and that of his disciples and of me. In both, Jesus is being pushed further and further into isolation. On the one hand, he approaches his father and asks that the cup be removed, to which the father responds with a “No”. Jesus then gets up and walks over to his disciples, whom he finds asleep. He asks them if they cannot simply stay awake and watch and pray now that the hour is approaching. This entire movement—of receiving the ‘No’ from the father, to the sleeping disciples—is the movement of Christ’s toward his sacrifice. And that movement is one of ever-deepening isolation and abandonment. That is the form our salvation takes in Christ; each step Christ walks deeper into this abandonment is a stone in the edifice of salvation.

In this psalm, we witness this back and forth of Christ. Up to the point of his crucifixion, he turns to his right, and all have abandoned him. He knows his father to be his refuge, but he also knows that his father’s mission is, now, for him to die. We also witness his resurrection—when he is brought out of prison so he can give thanks to his father’s name. And, we see each Pentecost—when around him the righteous crowd, because in him they see the kindness of God. That is a rather poignant way of describing the resurrection—the kindness of God.