The Bible’s only tragic ending
By Rev. Dr. Jason Byassee
Sunday, July 14, 2024
Reading: Psalm 88
Well, that was a dismal psalm, wasn’t it?! It’s even sadder than it sounded. The last line in our translation is “my companions are in darkness,” a reasonable rendering of the Hebrew. But here’s a better one: “Darkness is my only friend.”
The psalms are the hymnal of Israel. They are the songs God gives us to teach us how to sing. We have favourite psalms in the church: “The Lord is my shepherd,” or “I lift up mine eyes up to the hills.” We put those in needlepoint or on cat posters. And then there are psalms like this one today:
8 You have caused my companions to shun me;
you have made me a thing of horror to them.
I am shut in so that I cannot escape
Can you feel the claustrophobia? The problem is not just the misery. It’s that God has brought the misery about: “You have caused.” I am alone, Lord, and you are to blame. Hard to put that on a throw pillow or send it with an emoji.
We’re in a series at our church on rude praise, about psalms that misbehave. This is my last crack at y’all in this series. After today we have excellent guest preachers—some of the best in the world. I’m here a lot but not preaching. I’ve described this series and several of our guests have said “Ooh, I like it, I’ll preach on that too.” I think we like it because so much faith comes off as a hallmark card, a fortune cookie, a you-can-do-it sort of pick-me-up. That won’t cut it in real life. The Bible is actually a jolt to our superficial religion. It says ‘everything you think is wrong. God and the world are entirely different than you thought.’ And that’s good news. I hear about folks’ atheism, and when I ask them to describe the God they don’t believe in, I can usually say, “I wouldn’t believe in that God either. And neither should you.”
For example, Psalm 88 has a depth of sorrow that’s hard to believe. No matter how crushed you are, this psalm is just as desperate, right there with you.
I am like those who have no help (v. 4)
O Lord, why do you cast me off? (v. 14)
Your dread assaults destroy me (v. 16).
Psalms often bend down to this depth of sorrow. Because we live at this depth. Where everything is broken, and we are abandoned by everyone. But the psalms usually don’t stay there. They bend down, down, down, but then by the end of the psalm they bounce back up to a place of praise and gratitude.
Jesus on his cross does a good Jewish thing: he quotes a psalm. No need to make up a prayer, God has already given us one. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Theologians have been kept very busy trying to understand how the second person of the Trinity could be abandoned by the first. But by the end of Psalm 22, all is right with the world again:
25From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the Lord.
May your hearts live forever!
27 All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him.
28 For dominion belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.
From the suffering of one Jew to world-wide praise from all families of the earth. That’s the whole story of the church: Jesus is crushed, and all peoples are blessed. That’s a reason to say hallelujah. And that’s the shape of most psalms, most of the Bible: from misery to glory.
Not Psalm 88. This one stays in misery. It doesn’t bounce back up to glory. It’s the Bible’s only tragic ending. A Scottish musician I admire named John Bell set this psalm to music, and the conclusion is discordant. And he wrote in a little note to his fellow musicians: this is not a mistake. It ends as the 88th psalm does. Don’t make it pretty. Leave the psalm jarringly ugly.
And this is such good news. The Bible doesn’t always have a happy ending. It can end in sorrow. Because that’s where lots of us spend our lives: drowned in sorrow. Wherever you are friends, however deep your sadness, there is another who dives down there with you: God almighty. God’s presence is not just for winners, the victorious, the happy. It’s for his creatures who suffer the most.
Someone wise pointed out theatre in North America tends to love musicals that always end cheerfully. Historians will look back on our day and wonder hmm, how come these folks were trying so hard to cheer themselves up? Find me a tragedy on stage or screen. We’re nearly pathological about our happy endings. Meanwhile our Greek ancestors loved tragedy. It wasn’t a good play unless it left you in tears. The Bible is also a tragedy: everything is ruined. It is a comedy too: Christ’s resurrection heals creation. It’s even a fairy tale: your wildest dreams aren’t wild enough. But first, tragedy.[i]
A friend wrote a memoir about her struggles with mental illness, bi-polar disorder specifically. She has found health with lots of support and medication and therapy. But she named her book after this psalm’s ending: Darkness is my only companion. That’s how she felt at her lowest, for years. And that’s where she found God.
There’s a reason we say in our creeds that Christ descends into hell. It sounds jarring, discordant too. Him, of all people, there, of all places, doing what? He’s descending as low as his most hurting creatures. I sometimes pray with despair. Oh no. That’s not getting better. Ay, I have no idea what an answered prayer here would even look like. Thing is, I don’t have to instruct God how to answer prayer. Whatever hell I think of Christ is already there, and he’s all the healing there is.
But wait, see, there I am making things better, happier again. This psalm is in the Bible for a reason. It says, ‘you don’t have to do that.’ Don’t tidy things up. Let them be as bleak as they are.
The great Canadian writer Kate Bowler found that when people spoke to her of her stage-4 cancer in her 30s, they felt the need to end with “at least.” Well, at least you’re young. At least you have your son, your husband. At least you’re ... at a world-class hospital. At least at least at least. Made things worse. Yeah, a son who’ll grow up without me. A husband I’m making a widower. A world-class hospital that’s no match for incurable cancer. She realized when we say “at least,” we’re comforting ourselves. It’s no comfort to the sufferer. Trust her, she searched every dark corner looking for light and found none. So, what do we say instead? You can say “I’m so sorry.” Or “Can I do the laundry?” Or even this, try this, you can say “I love you.” This psalm gives us permission to let the darkness be dark. Name it. And then go get the person’s favourite coffee and sit in the darkness with them. You don’t have to say a thing.
I turned 50 years old last week. It’s a good bet that half of my life is behind me, maybe two-thirds, or a lot more. A friend told me 55 is the golden mean. Because you’re not stupid anymore, and your body still mostly works. So, I’ve got that to look forward to. My wife Jaylynn is already 55. She’s perfect. I’m at an age when lots of my friends are aging out of their careers involuntarily. I worked in the humanities in academia. Tenure is scarce. What do you do when your career goes away? Everything you ever worked for is gone. Or get blindsided by an illness no one can prepare for. Or another kind of thief in the night: bankruptcy. Infidelity. Rejection by family. I’m really tempted to tell ‘em “at least.” Well, at least, you, uh, have great kids! Don’t. Instead, you can name the sorrow. You can linger there. No need to pretend. I remember the hardest time in my own life, career going nowhere, misery with my mom. I felt like I wanted to dive underwater at the ocean and never come up. It wasn’t a death wish, it was just hey, it’s dark down there. No one can see me. And that’s weirdly peaceful sounding.
Here’s the thing. Jesus wouldn’t leave me down there. He wouldn’t leave the psalmist down there. He won’t leave anyone down there alone. There is no hell he doesn’t liberate. No darkness he doesn’t linger in. This is why I love Christian faith. Our saviour is tortured to death. No one, I mean no one, can look at Jesus and say, ‘you don’t know real suffering.’
Our Jewish and Muslim siblings disagree politely here. Messiahs don’t die. They bring God’s rule by definition. Look out the window at all the sorrow, Jesus of Nazareth must not be messiah. That’s our Jewish friends’ polite take. I respect it. Muslims say Jesus Christ is a prophet, so he didn’t die on the cross. There was a mix-up and Simon of Cyrene was crucified instead. You can go see Jesus’ grave in Punjab. He died with lots of wives and children in peace like a proper prophet. That’s our Muslim friends’ take. I respect it. Here’s our take. The only God there is suffered our worst sorrow, to heal it. Make it and all things new. That’s why we don’t have to lie and pretend to be cheerful. We can linger in the darkness. Because that’s where God lingers. At the end of the day this psalmist is wrong. Darkness is not her only companion. God is there too. Darkness is where we meet God. Darkness might be the only place we meet God.
I was sitting with one of you in your sorrow recently. I asked about your friends. And you said I wouldn’t be here without my friends. What I’m facing is awful. But with their support, I’m going to make it. That’s the greatest wealth in life: friendship. The psalmist doesn’t have it. The one praying has been abandoned by friends and is alone: “18 You have caused friend and neighbour to shun me; darkness is my only friend.” There again I want to say: Christ hides in that dark. What we feared as kids is incorrect: the dark is not full of monsters. It’s full of Jesus.
I was complaining to a friend once about some sadness, I don’t remember who honestly. She heard me out. And she said, well, I once would have said lucky you. God must be bringing something better. I can’t say that now. It’s not always true and it’s too cheerful. Then I used to say, well, this isn’t God. God only brings good things. But I can’t say that now. Sometimes God brings a cross. So, here’s what I’ll say: This is an unwelcome gift. It’s not what you or anyone wanted. But God is still in it. Bringing grace through it. Whatever ill comes, we can’t say God did that. God doesn’t ever do evil, ever. But we also can’t say God is surprised. Out of control. Powerless. No.[ii] We have to figure out how to say, okay God, this is my cross. How will you work resurrection, here? Not somewhere else, but in my life? What’s this unwelcome gift for?
Friends, whatever you’re facing, and I know some of it is bleak. Whatever you’re facing, I can promise you two things. One, it will be more painful than you can bear. I can’t say “always look on the bright side of life.” Nope. I can’t say “every cloud has a silver lining.” Ugh. Those cliches are for bad comedies and fortune cookies. Things might get worse. Shakespeare said, “when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but as battalions.” Or to use another cliché, when it rains, it pours. Let’s get out of cliché-land, whatever we face will be more painful than we can bear. That’s Psalm 88. Darkness is our only companion. But Psalm 88 is not the only psalm. We have 149 others. Here’s what the others add to it. The second promise I make to you. Whatever you’re facing, it will also be more beautiful than you can ever imagine. The God of resurrection is not defeated by death. And God is not afraid of the dark.
I knew a man I admired profoundly. He was from South Sudan, a place riven by warfare. Bombed by Khartoum, shredded by civil war. And in that place God raised up a saint. Joseph Taban Lasuba was from a small minority tribe in the south. Their rival tribes were stronger, so they had learned how to negotiate. Keep them off balance. When you can’t fight you learn other kinds of strategies, like talk, poetry, dance, surprising alliances. He also loved his Muslim neighbours. He said we have all been mistreated in South Sudan. My Muslim friends know only how to get angry. As a Christian, I tell them forgiveness is stronger than rage. He was going to get a doctoral degree, lead a seminary in Juba, help build a better country. Then he got cancer and died. That’s it. Nothing heroic about it. God, you sent us the right person then struck him down. He should have been Nelson Mandela. Instead, his wife is a young widow, and his children bereft. There is no why. There is no “at least.” There is just sorrow. A friend said this was her only consolation. If God raised up a life like his, God must be planning a resurrection that much more glorious. Feels like limp hope. But it might be the strongest hope there is.
[i] It’s Fred Buechner’s language.
[ii] This is Fleming Rutledge’s language. Earlier in the paragraph is Holly Taylor Coolman’s.