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Psalm 79:1-13

A Psalm of Asaph.
1 O God, the nations have come into your inheritance;
    they have defiled your holy temple;
    they have laid Jerusalem in ruins.
2 They have given the bodies of your servants
    to the birds of the air for food,
    the flesh of your faithful to the wild animals of the earth.
3 They have poured out their blood like water
    all around Jerusalem,
    and there was no one to bury them.
4 We have become a taunt to our neighbors,
    mocked and derided by those around us.

5 How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever?
    Will your jealous wrath burn like fire?
6 Pour out your anger on the nations
    that do not know you,
and on the kingdoms
    that do not call on your name.
7 For they have devoured Jacob
    and laid waste his habitation.

8 Do not remember against us the iniquities of our ancestors;
    let your compassion come speedily to meet us,
    for we are brought very low.
9 Help us, O God of our salvation,
    for the glory of your name;
deliver us, and forgive our sins,
    for your name’s sake.
10 Why should the nations say,
    “Where is their God?”
Let the avenging of the outpoured blood of your servants
    be known among the nations before our eyes.

11 Let the groans of the prisoners come before you;
    according to your great power preserve those doomed to die.
12 Return sevenfold into the bosom of our neighbors
    the taunts with which they taunted you, O Lord!
13 Then we your people, the flock of your pasture,
    will give thanks to you forever;
    from generation to generation we will recount your praise.

Psummer of Psalms: The Least Popular Psalm

Last week, I mentioned in passing the most popular psalm of all--Psalm 23. I preached a sermon on that psalm two years ago, so for this series (and for the sake of balance) I had an idea to preach on the least popular psalm. Yes, that's today (lucky you!).

It's easy enough to determine the most popular psalm--all you have to do is ask 10 people what their favorite psalm is, and 8 of them will tell you it's Psalm 23. But it's a bit harder to determine the opposite. If I ask you what your least favorite psalm is, would you even know? Right. And while there are plenty of "top ten lists" out there for the "best," "favorite," or "most popular" psalms...I was actually surprised to find that no one (at least to my knowledge and 30 minutes of intense google searching) has ever compiled a list of "worst," "least favorite," or "least popular" psalms. My wife Amy tells me that perhaps there's a good reason for that.

Not to be dissuaded, a year ago when I was planning this sermon series, I took matters into my own hands, and with a little help from Google's analytic tools, set out to answer this question.

When you want to read a particular psalm, or are curious about a psalm, what do you do? Probably one of two things: You grab your bible and flip to the number of the psalm you want to read. There's really no good way to analyze that. But more and more these days, when you want to read a particular psalm, you might actually pull out your phone, your tablet, or your laptop and google search for, say, Psalm 23 or Psalm 121. And there is a good way to analyze that, because Google keeps track of all the key words and phrases that people search for across the globe, at least from the year 2004 to the present day. And they are kind enough to share that information.

So...one by one, I entered all 150 psalms by number (Psalm 1, Psalm 2, Psalm 3, etc.) into Google's search trend analysis tool, and figured out how many people around the world have searched for each psalm in the past fourteen years. No surprise, Psalm 23 is far and away the most searched for psalm of all. But I was looking for which Psalm people searched for the least...which psalm people are the least interested in finding.

And it came down to a very close, near tie between two psalms: Psalm 76 and Psalm 79, both psalms of Asaph. We're not entirely certain who Asaph was, but clearly he was no David when it came to writing Psalms. When I initially did this comparison, about a year ago, the least popular psalm (barely) was Psalm 79. So I put it down in my sermon planning calendar for today's sermon, titled as "The Least Popular Psalm." But then a funny thing happened. This psalm has so few people interested in it (the wikipedia page for Psalm 79 has almost no information at all on it) and there are so few searches for it, than as I was researching Psalm 79 this past week (using yes, Google to search for more information about it) I actually singlehandedly increased its popularity just enough to the point where it has now surpassed Psalm 76 and is now technically, according to Google, the second least popular Psalm.

So what I need you all to do right now is to pull out your cell phones and do a quick google search for Psalm 76 to make that psalm just a little more popular so that my sermon title will not be incorrect today.

If that weren't enough to show you just how neglected these two psalms (76 and 79) are in the book of Psalms, I want you to turn in your Bibles to Psalm 151 and let's read that one together. <Pause> This is what Psalm 151 says: <Pause> Absolutely nothing, because there is no Psalm 151. But according to Google, more people search online for Psalm 151 than for either Psalm 76 or 79, meaning that a non-existent psalm is more popular than these two.

So why is Psalm 79 so unpopular, so uninteresting, so neglected?

Maybe it's the part about unburied corpses being fed to the birds of the air and the wild beasts. Maybe it's the cry for God to avenge the people and pour out wrath on the surrounding nations. Maybe it's the utter despair that this psalm communicates that makes it so unpopular. We often turn to the psalms for comfort and consolation in times of distress, for beautiful, soothing poetry--still waters and green pastures like those found in Psalm 23.

Psalm 79 seems (at least on the surface) to have none of these things. It is a type of psalm known as a Psalm of Lament. It is a cry for help, an acknowledgment of sadness and grief. This may surprise you, but approximately one third of all the psalms are psalms of lament--there are more of this kind of psalm than any other kind, including psalms of praise, thanksgiving, or wisdom.

Today, I hope to convince you that Psalms of Lament--and Psalm 79 in particular--are in their own unique way, beautiful, poetic, important in our prayers as individuals and communities, and...filled with faith, hope, and love.

Like many Psalms, Psalm 79 is divided into roughly three sections. The first part, verses 1-4, describes the situation. And it is a bleak situation. We read in verse one that foreign armies have invaded Jerusalem, destroyed the temple. Worse yet, in verses 2 and 3 we read that they have slaughtered countless people, such that there are not enough left to even give a decent burial to the dead. Literally adding insult to injury, in verse 4, all of the surrounding nations (supposedly the allies of Jerusalem) instead of helping their neighbors, have responded by mocking and taunting them.

In a way, I think we have to acknowledge that it is difficult for us, in 21st century America, to completely identify with this situation. We recently celebrated our 242nd birthday as a nation, and in that time our capitol city has only been sacked once, during the war of 1812, and that lasted only 26 hours, with only one death and three injuries. Since then we have certainly lost thousands of American lives on foreign shores, but we don't know what it's like to be utterly and completely defeated as a nation.

Still...there is a sense in which the kind of violence described in these verses is not completely unfamiliar to us. In recent years, we have as a nation experienced terrorist attacks, school shootings, racial and ethnically motivated brutality, the chaos and destruction of natural disasters, and plenty of mocking, derisive and hateful rhetoric from all sides of our national discourse.

This is a good time to point out that Psalm 79, in addition to being a Psalm of Lament, is also what's known as a communal or national psalm. It uses the pronoun "we" instead of "I" to describe the collective experiences and emotions of the gathered people. There is great value in this kind of prayer, then as now, as a way to understand and process tragedies that affect us all, that are often beyond our ability to control.

• Asking forgiveness in the face of a tragedy you didn't cause
• This is a communal/national psalm, uses "we"
• Message: In times of national distress, we are not alone, we are not the first, and expressions of grief and bewilderment are acceptable responses. In these times, we don't want a God who will abandon us...ergo we don't abandon God.
• I Will Stay (love song for Amy)
• How Long? assumes that eventually God will respond. That's faith.