Wait (Sixth Sunday after Pentecost)

Willie James Jennings and Adrián Hernández-Acosta discuss steadfastness, alignment, and the depths opening inside repetition in Psalm 130. The text is appointed for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, in Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary.

More Yale Bible Study resources, including a transcript of this episode, at: https://YaleBibleStudy.org/podcast

Willie James Jennings is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School, and Adrián Hernández-Acosta, Assistant Professor of Religion and Literature at Yale Divinity School. 

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Transcript

Voiceover Voice:

That practice of memorizing this Psalm was crucial to being able to live inside the contours of faith to God.

Helena Martin:

This is Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. Join us each week as two Yale Divinity School professors look at an upcoming text from the Revised Common Lectionary.

This episode, we have Willie James Jennings, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies, and Adrián Hernández-Acosta, Assistant Professor of Religion and Literature. They’re discussing Psalm 130, which is appointed for Track 1 of the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 8, in Year B. Here’s the text.

[Psalm 130]

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.

Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?
 
But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.

I wait for the Lord; my soul waits, and in his word I hope;
 
my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem.
 
It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities.

Willie Jennings:

Adrián, some of the best sermons I ever heard around this text, this Psalm 130, they planted both feet on that opening line, out of the depths, out of the depths. And you know, it would always come from those older preachers and those older teachers who, when they said out of the depths, they were talking about their own life. And even if they weren't talking about their own life, they were still talking about their own life. And they would give us a sense, they would let us touch the fabric of their intimacy with God. And what's so great about all that kind of preaching is that it always kind of had two lessons right at the very beginning. The one was, there is great joy and value in having had a life of deep intimacy with God. And then, the other lesson was that there is the recognition that nothing is hidden from God of me. And so the depths are now made clear to God. And so that would always then become the architecture in that preaching, that teaching about what it means to wait. And the waiting, the waiting on God has always been at the heart of so much of the discipline of faith that the saints have taught me. And that reality of waiting. 

Adrián Hernández-Acosta:

I'm really glad that you brought up the waiting bit because, you know, thinking about this particular Psalm and the Psalms in general, which are texts that, at some point, were meant to be sung or be set to music in some way…

Willie Jennings:

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Adrián Hernández-Acosta

…you know, how the musical and the sermonic come together. Or more broadly, worship and the sermon come together as different relationships to time, to weight with a kind of different tempo.  Right? And so, what does it mean to be singing this or to be reflecting on this through sung sermon about waiting. And it's one of these songs of ascent. Ostensibly something that people would be doing on their way to Jerusalem. Right? So, waiting, turning into pilgrimage, turning into some sort of other relationship to the whole aspect of waiting on God and waiting on something.

Willie Jennings:

You used that word pilgrimage and I think that fits perfectly because it really is the pilgrimage that is movement, and the pilgrimage that is movement in your spirit. And it's, I think, it's both those things that's so powerful that the waiting is a journey. That even the waiting is never standing still. It is always moving forward. But you know, this thing you mentioned about the singing, that's so powerful because I can think of so many songs, so many gospel songs, so many hymns, so many tunes that that word “wait” is the whole power of it. Wait, I say on the Lord. And so many sermons that that word, “wait” carried weight. [laughs] And, it carried a sense of this is precisely where you will meet God in the waiting. And it's the place where, the horror, the pain, the burden that you have will actually become bearable. Not good, but bearable in the waiting. 

Adrián Hernández-Acosta:

There's something about the particular Psalm that always strikes me, and it's the repetition of verse six, right? “More than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning” is that the repetition itself is performing this kind of waiting that at some level may seem as if it's stalled, right? We're kind of circling around the same language, but there's work that's happening in the repetition that's very akin to the repeating of a refrain, a repetition of a chorus, right? Yeah, yeah. So there's something about the structure of the text that's kind of inviting us to think about waiting in its movement. 

Willie Jennings:

Yeah. The repetition. You know, I always say to students that, you know, there is something incredibly important and salvific about the repetition. In fact, it's the daily that God has created for life. And it's that repetition that is so important for being able to come to the truth of life itself. It is in having to do it each day. And it is in the petition that is unceasing. And that's what's so great about this Psalm. The depths are for the repetition. [laughs] The depths open inside the repetition. And so, for me growing up, I know, as I think about this text, this was the way. They taught us how to face the struggles and the sufferings for the long haul. That I'm teaching you now that if things don't get better on Tuesday, there's still work for you to do on Wednesday. And that if it's still with you on Thursday, Friday there is more to be done. So that, as you are doing this work of waiting, you are not standing still. 

Adrián Hernández-Acosta:

There's something also very interesting for me in relationship to this passage about worship and just being in the kind of service space, church service space. And that's, you know, I'd never, how do I put this? I didn't always go to church because I wanted to be there, right? And I'm sure many folks have a similar experience at some point in their life. But to lean on the repetition, to lean on the form that's available to continue moving, even if you start in a place of, I don't want to do this, or I don't think I can do this. That the work itself invites this kind of spiritual movement. So even if you don't start with this kind of desire to worship, the worship experience itself has a way of bringing you into some sort of alignment where you feel like you you're moving again.

Willie Jennings:

Yes, I think that's the word. I think the word is alignment. And for me, it's always been the way in which that word that's in this Psalm, that's in so many of the Psalms, steadfast, steadfastness, and then it linked up with the word that it's almost always linked up with in the Psalms, steadfast love. God's steadfast love. The steadfastness becomes shared currency between us and God. And that's what's so great about that alignment that you just mentioned because it's as though the repetition brings us into the steadfastness that is God's steadfast love. So that we might sense it in the repetition. Man, you know, and watching so many of the, the saints of old, you know, the way in which their constancy, their repetition was always bathed and clothed in their unrelenting belief that they are inside the steadfast love of the Lord, the steadfast love of God. And so there's a sense in which in order to be able to know that steadfast love, it requires the repetition of crying out of the depths, which this Psalm, you know, this is one of those Psalms that, especially depending on the church you went to, if it was one of these churches that made sure that you learned scripture, it's one of these Psalms that you had to memorize. [laughs] And I remember many, many a deacon would get up or a church mother would get up and they would recite this thing top to bottom. “Out of the depths, out of the depths, I cry to you, oh Lord”. And they would do the whole thing at the beginning of the service or some place before they say a prayer. And then you realize that that practice of memorizing this Psalm was absolutely crucial to being able to live inside the contours of faith to God

Helena Martin:

Thanks for listening; we’re so glad you’re here. We’re here very week with new episodes to help shape your preaching, teaching, and reflection.

Chapter, Verse, and Season is a production of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. It’s produced by: Creator and Managing Editor, Joel Baden; Production Manager, Kelly Morrissey; Associate Producer, Aidan Stoddart; and I’m your Host and Executive Producer, Helena Martin. And our theme music is by Calvin Linderman.

We’ll be back with another conversation from Chapter, Verse, and Season.