52:150

We have to call a plumber today. After an afternoon of trying to fix the leaky shower, researching on the internet, buying the appropriate part, replacing it, and then turning the water back on to find the leak was much worse (leak would be an understatement: “gush” or “flow” might be better words), I have thrown in the proverbial towel. We will call a plumber, and take a hit to our checkbook, and then get back to normal life.

Except, of course, having to call a plumber is part of normal life. As is traffic or car maintenance or high energy bills (hello, air-conditioning) or stepping on someone’s metaphorical toes (I try not to step on toes, either the real or metaphorical kind, except I did yesterday), which causes stress even thought a toe-step is easily forgotten. This is normal life. Abnormal life is the stuff of television shows and honeymoons, where time and money are endless and hassles are taken care of by someone in a uniform.

While I wouldn’t say having to call a plumber is a trial, it certainly prepares you for those trials when a daughter is in the hospital or you find your father has cancer: releasing—or in spiritual parlance, dying to—those little inconveniences maybe lets us release or transcend (or whatever you want to call it) the larger ones more quickly.

Psalm 52 is about David (I know, surprising). It tells of David and Doeg the Edomite. As the story goes, David went to Ahimelech the priest asking for help; Ahimelech gave David and his men the holy bread (after confirming the men had not been with women—a significant detail). Doeg, as the text says, “was there that day,” and he reported to King Saul what he had seen.

Now, we know the relationship between David and Saul was not one of watching the chariot races together while throwing back some mead. Saul, once he realized Ahimelech helped David escape, ordered Doeg to kill Ahimelech and “all his father’s house.” (You really need to give it to the ancients: they knew how to get revenge. I think of Kierkegaard’s quote, “[Today] people’s thoughts are as thin and fragile as lace, and they themselves as pitiable as lace-making girls…That is why my soul always turns back to the Old Testament…There one still feels that those who speak are human beings; there they hate, there they love…”) Doeg kills the priest, but naturally one escapes (how is it one person always escapes?) and tells David.

From this, we get Psalm 52. It begins with a juxtaposition of the evil man with God’s steadfast love, and the psalmist does not hesitate to go after someone else: to name evil and blame ole’ Doeg. It ties into Psalm 1 (among others) as it compares the evil man to a tree. “But God will break you down forever; / he will snatch and tear you from your tent; / he will uproot you from the land of the living.” This contrasts v. 8, where the righteous are green olive trees. They see and fear and even laugh at this man—someone who “sought refuge in his work of destruction.” It seems cathartic for the righteous to watch the evil fall; sort of how we laugh at the guy keeps videotaping while his child swings a bat near his groin. It’s a warning. Except for the psalm, as it mocks evil, it reminds us of the evil’s power, in what might happen if we follow the same path.

David, however, suffers because of this evil surrounding him (and within him, but that’s for later). The green olive tree is steadfast and waits for God’s love. Here, we get a glimpse of David’s “passion,” namely the suffering he must endure for God (the word passion that we use today to mean love or affection actually comes from the Latin passus, meaning to suffer or submit). We all face passions at times, and while not the same stuff of David or Christ, we quite popularly “die to ourselves” and submit to the God we seek to follow.

I think about this after a day of frustration, with those agonizing moments as the plumber takes a look at the problem and we will the fix to be easy (and cheap). The faith of David was one of vulnerability, and a divine vulnerability marked the life (and death) of Christ. And so, while I prayed this morning that the plumbing fix may be quick (I don’t have much confidence in my ability to will things to happen), I wonder if we look at such inconveniences wrongly. I know that I look upon them as exactly that: things to be avoided until life can get back to normal. Only it doesn’t. Only the inconveniences might be part of our making—one of the most important parts.

If we believe in a suffering and vulnerable God, why do we expect comfort and, if not a semi-invincibility, at least an avoidance of that which could hurt us?

Faith in God comes from a land of dust and dryness, a land of reliance on the Unknown, of need for sustenance in ways that first-world moderns simply cannot understand. We can, however, release or transcend those frustrating moments, in hopes that when the real “passion” comes—whether in the form of waiting or suffering (and we sadly know it will come)—we are able to wail and fight, to slowly suffer and submit. To become more like the God who formed us, more able to speak to this world of pain.

I rode on a plane a few weeks ago with an artist. She talked about learning her vocation when she was well into her fifties: though she had been doing art since college she more recently discovered what she was actually called to do. Yet, she said she could not have created with the same fervor and purpose if she did not wander all those long years, suffering through her art, suffering as a person. She spoke of the times we get a flat tire on the highway or need surgery on a knee or the line at the DMW is two hours long as times that were integral to her art. They were part of her journey, her suffering, and allowed her to speak into this world.

Life imitates art. May I, may we, see our light and momentary sufferings as conduits to something higher; may they help us die to our false ideas of self and agenda, and may they help us communicate with a world that desperately needs to hear a transcendent voice.