24 Pentecost Yr A, 12/11/2023

Ps 70 

Pastor Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson

“Waiting for God’s help”

Have you ever been in one or more troubling or dangerous situations in life when you yelled out “HELP!” as loud as you could? Perhaps it was in the water, and you or someone else was in danger of drowning. Or perhaps you felt that someone was threatening you, or you might have been in a war like the Ukrainians, Israelis and Palestinians—and you thought that you might be killed or severely wounded or taken as a hostage. Or perhaps while climbing a mountain you became terrified, and paralyzed, believing you could not move unless someone came to help you. You get the idea. In Psalm 70, notice that the psalmist begins and ends asking for God’s help. We don’t know the psalmist’s exact situation, however there is a sense of urgency in verses 1 and 5: “O LORD, make haste to help me! …hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay.” So, the psalmist urgently cries for help. 

Indeed, Psalm 70 is an individual prayer for help. The GNT title is “A Prayer for Help,” and the NRSV Lutheran Study Bible has this title: “Prayer for Deliverance from Enemies.” It is interesting that Psalm 40:13-17 is almost exactly the same as Psalm 70, with only a few different words. This suggests that the psalm may have been prayed by different people, at other times, for different life circumstances. So too, it is a psalm that we can turn to for comfort, and pray these words when we face troubling times. 

An outline of Psalm 70 consists of the first and last verses urgently asking God for help. Verses 2-3 consist of what I describe as “go get em God” verses. In these verses the psalmist prays against his enemies asking God to: shame, confuse, turn back, and dishonour the psalmist’s adversaries. The notion of “go get em God” appears in a number of the psalms. Unlike Jesus’s teaching of love your enemies, the psalms pray that God would defend God’s faithful people by punishing their enemies in various ways. 

Pastor and Professor Eugene Peterson, in The Message, renders verses 2 and 3 like this: “Those who are out to get me—let them fall all over themselves. Those who relish my downfall—send them down a blind alley. Give them a taste of their own medicine, those gossips off clucking their tongues.” 

Verse 4 of the psalm changes direction, and is the most upbeat verse. In it, the psalmist offers a prayer of intercession for God’s faithful people: “Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you. Let those who love your salvation say evermore, “God is great!” In other words, the psalmist is asking God to bless God’s faithful people. 

Coming back to the first and last verse of our psalm, in addition to praying for God’s help, there is another important, yet more implicit theme. Instead of asking God to hurry up, to make haste, not to delay—the implicit theme involves the exact opposite, namely, that of having Patience and waiting. That reminds me of the following story.

A man was walking through a supermarket with a screaming baby in the shopping cart. A woman nearby noticed that time and again the man would calmly say: “Keep calm, Albert. Keep calm Albert.” 

Finally, in admiration for the man’s patience as the child continued to wail, the woman walked up to him and said: “Sir, I must commend you for your patience with baby Albert.”

To which the man replied, drawing himself up: “Madam, I am Albert!”¹ In this case, Albert’s patience required practicing self-control, not “loosing his cool.” 

Another kind of patience involves careful listening to what God is saying and doing in one’s own life. That reminds me of the elderly pastor’s comment after an appreciative church member said: “That was a wonderful sermon, pastor. How long did it take you to prepare it?” The pastor answered: “All my life.” Like that pastor, patience can and does involve careful listening to and learning from God all your and my life. Do we have the patience to take the time to listen to and learn from the LORD in order to do his will and serve his purposes? Unless we receive with patience what he wants to give us, we cannot give to others and serve them. 

We, like the psalmist’s words in the first and last verses, may think, want and pray for God to hurry up, make haste and not delay—however God knows what is best for us, and what is best may mean that we have to practice waiting on God. Waiting in today’s technological, fast-moving world seems to be more and more difficult. People want and expect everything to happen instantly. Instant gratification rules, waiting is regarded as something negative. Yet, waiting is necessary. 

There are, of course, different kinds of waiting. Some waiting is involved for a mother to give birth to a child. A husband or wife may have to wait for their spouse to die. In both of these instances, the mother-to-be, and the loving spouse will most likely experience a roller coaster of emotions such as: fear, doubt, anger, sadness, joy, and so on. 

There is also a hopeful waiting. A student waits with the hope that she or he will pass their exams and graduate from university, find meaningful work, get married and have children. Citizens, after voting in an election, wait for the party they voted for to win, and then they hope the new government will govern better than the previous one, that justice and peace will prevail. In war-torn countries like Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, citizens wait, pray, and hope for an end to the violence and destruction. They also hope, pray, and wait for healing after losing loved ones in war. They hope, pray, and wait for a better, more peaceful life.

On this day after Remembrance Day, we too hope, pray, and wait for: all wars to end, our nation and every nation to be able to live in peace, and for justice to prevail, for the poor, disabled and elderly to be cared for, for the homeless to have a decent place to live, for the hungry to be fed, the naked to be clothed, the sick to be healed.

Sometimes it is very hard to have patience, and to wait for God’s help. However, with the presence of the Holy Spirit and God’s grace, it can and does happen. So, keep hoping, keep praying, keep waiting—God can and will help you. 

1 Richard Andersen & Donald Deffner, “For Example” Illustrations for Contemporary Preaching (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1977), p. 157.