Start:Stop - Out of the deep

Sunrise III, Arthur Garfield Dove, 1937

Hello and welcome to our Start:Stop reflection, when we stop for a few moments and start to reflect on a passage from scripture. Our reading this week is Psalm 130.

Bible Reading - Psalm 130

Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O LORD; * Lord, hear my voice.
O let thine ears consider well * the voice of my complaint.
If thou, LORD, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss, * O Lord, who may abide it?
For there is mercy with thee; * therefore shalt thou be feared.
I look for the LORD; my soul doth wait for him; * in his word is my trust.
My soul fleeth unto the Lord before the morning watch; * I say, before the morning watch.
O Israel, trust in the LORD; for with the LORD there is mercy, * and with him is plenteous redemption.
And he shall redeem Israel * from all his sins.


Reflection

For millennia, countless people of different faiths have prayed this psalm, perhaps using these words from the Book of Common Prayer, or their own version of them. In a moment of despair; overwhelmed by events – out of their depth – crying out to the only one who can assist. The psalmist has confidence that, if we wait patiently, God’s help will come; he will act in His time, as sure as the morning follows the night. God’s loving mercy will redeem the faithful who repent and trust in the Lord; whatever sins they have committed.

We know from an entry in his journal that this psalm was heard on a formative day for John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who, with his brother Charles, was remembered by the church this week.

John Wesley had been back in London for five months after spending the previous two years as priest in charge of the new parish of Savannah, the capital of the then British Colony of Georgia in what later became the United States. His diaries record his disappointment at not being able to evangelize the Native American people as he had hoped; as one of the few priests in the new town, his ministry had necessarily focused on serving the settler community. A relationship with one of the colonists added to the emotional complexity of his experience there. While Wesley’s biographers have viewed his achievements in the New World more favorably, evidenced by publication of the first of his many hymnals, his own diary entries suggest he considered this period negatively and that he returned to England in a state of what we would now call depression.

John Wesley later published his thoughts on deep sorrow or “heaviness,” exploring how loss of energy, loss of interest in life and suicidal thoughts may be caused by situational factors such as trauma caused by illness, poverty or bereavement; personal choices such as excessive consumption of stimulants or sedatives like alcohol or tea or a lack of regular physical exercise. He also speculated that our individual ‘constitutions’ may be predisposed to lowness of spirits – today, psychologists consider that family history and our upbringing plays an important role in the development of our mental health development.

Wesley wrote about the link between our spiritual, mental and physical health – understanding that Christians are both soul, mind and body and that something which affects one area can impact upon another. A decline in our mental and physical health can affect our spiritual lives. Choices we make that affect our physical health – about what we eat or drink and how much we exercise – can affect our mental and spiritual wellbeing.

Perhaps influenced by his own experience of ‘deep sorrow’, John Wesley seems to have been keen to address the stigma of mental illness by explaining to his readers that such feelings are not incompatible with a faithful life – we can all feel out of our depth to some degree during our lifetimes; as the psalmist shows. One may be depressed – even suicidal - but still a believer.

In his essay “Thoughts on Nervous Disorders” Wesley wrote that while we can – and should – do all that is within our control to address the natural causes of lowness of spirits, ultimately it is only God who has the power to transform our lives. Like the Psalmist, Wesley calls on his readers during the darkest moments in their lives to hold fast to their faith and trust that God will act. “If you are convinced of this [he wrote], set about it, trusting in Him, and you will surely conquer.”

John Wesley had to wait five months before he found himself coming out of the deep. On May 24th 1738, he attended Evensong at St Paul’s Cathedral where the choir sang Psalm 130. Later that evening he went to a Moravian Prayer Meeting in Aldersgate Street where, at around quarter to nine in the evening, after hearing a discussion about Luther’s preface to St Paul’s Letter to the Romans, he wrote:

“I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Wesley’s “Aldersgate experience” is celebrated as leading to the foundation of the Methodist church. While like Luther himself – and St Augustine before him, John Wesley’s experience is principally attributed to St Paul’s Letter to the Romans; the words of Psalm 130, which he heard earlier that day, are hard to ignore. He waited for the Lord, in whose word he placed his trust. The Lord answered him, with the assurance that he had been redeemed from all his sins.

St Paul’s Cathedral welcomes the Methodist church to Choral Evensong on 24th May each year to celebrate their role on this historic day.

As a new book exploring the origins of Choral Evensong explains “as we listen to the singing of the psalms, we can relax into their rhythm: not so much to understand the words in terms of analysing them meticulously; but simply to be attentive to what they might offer us in that moment."

Let us give thanks for power of the psalms and of music to warm our hearts.


Silent Reflection


Prayer

Holy God, Creator of Life,
you call us out of our dark places,
offering us the grace of new life.
When we see nothing but hopelessness,
you surprise us with the breath of your spirit.
Call us out of our complacency and routines,
set us free from our self-imposed bonds,
and fill us with your spirit of life, compassion, and peace,
In the name of Jesus, your anointed one, we pray.
Amen.

(Nancy C Gowler)

Thank you for listening. Do join us for Choral Classics in church on Thursday at 12.15pm if you are able for beautiful spine-tingling music, or catch up with the recording online from Monday. Have a wonderful week.


Links

A recording of the Choir of Westminster Abbey singing Psalm 130 to a chant based on an anthem by Purcell can be heard on YouTube at this link.

Wesley and Depression – an article by Dr Tony Headley published in the Free Methodist Magazine, 1999

Lighten our Darkness – Discovering and celebrating Choral Evensong by Simon Reynolds was published by DLT Books in 2021.

Image : Sunrise III by Arthur Garfield Dove, 1937