A Week of Psalms in New York - Psalm 30 at the World Trade Centre

Psalm 30 is the song of thanksgiving of someone who has survived a terrible crisis, the nature of which is ambiguous but clearly perilous; the psalmist states that their foes were rejoicing over them, that they were in the "Pit".

The psalmist laments that when things were going well, they felt they were no longer in need of God's grace and failed to give thanks to Him. They explain that it was when they lost sight of God (“God hid his face”) that things started going badly.

Scholars teach us that “thanksgiving” in the context of the psalms has a far deeper meaning than our use of the word today might suggest - it is not just a polite word used to show good manners, but a public expression of praise to God for who He is and what he has done. In their desperate situation, the psalmist asks God how they can truly thank and praise Him if they are dead?

“What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the Pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?”

As we read on we learn that their cries for help were heard; God turned their "mourning into dancing" and clothed them with joy. The psalmist acknowledges that God is with us even in the depths of despair – there is hope.

“Weeping may linger for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.”

That might be an easy thought to latch on to on a bright sunny day in April when all is going well in our lives. It is an astonishing thought from someone like the psalmist, who has survived what appears to be a life-changing crisis.

The World Trade Centre site in New York seems to embody the emotions of the psalmist. Taking the lift to the “One World Observatory” on the 102nd floor is just a sixty second trip, with the elevators accelerating to a speed of 23mph. Once inside, the breathtaking views of Manhattan from the tallest building in the western hemisphere are astounding. The colossal height of the observatory physically abstracts us from our surroundings. Looking down across the city, it is impossible not to feel awestruck by the greatness of God, who knows each one of us by name!

Next to the tower, the seven storey pit with burning rubble and twisted girders that became a familiar image after the terrorist attack in 2001 has been transformed into the 9/11 memorial. The noise of the water flowing down into the black granite pits – the footprint of the twin towers - masks the noise of the city. This abstraction from the environment is accentuated by the detail design of the monument – the bronze panels which display the 2,983 names of those who died are heated in winter to prevent snow and ice from settling and are cooled in summer to allow people to touch the panels comfortably.

Between the tower and the monument, smiling tourists marvelling at the sights mingle with office workers and those coming to lay flowers or leave flags at the memorial. Joy and despair side by side.

Words from Psalm 30 have been taken as the title of a book published by the Episcopal Church in which eye-witnesses to 9/11 describe how they have sought to find meaning in their experiences. In ‘Will the Dust Praise You? Spiritual Responses to 9/11’ The Reverend Larry Provenzano, who was a Fire Department Chaplain and one of the first rescue workers to arrive at the scene writes;

“The scene is beyond human comprehension in its magnitude and assault on the senses.....My heart aches, my body hurts, my soul is touched by the tremendous pain of God’s people in this place. I think to myself, this must be what hell is like. Yet this is a holy place, a holy time, redeemed by the presence of God’s people - the human family doing the impossible in an impossible situation.

People have said nothing will ever be the same - I believe that may be true. We never should be the same - not after this. We should grow in our understanding that God is in the midst of us, even in the darkest time of our living. We should develop a deeper appreciation for our calling to sacrifice, to give unconditionally, and to love our brothers and sisters with the love of God that is in us.”

Concluding the book, published in 2003 the authors seek to discern a “Ground Zero Spirituality” from voices like Larry Provenzano’s as they move from shock and disbelief, through grief and towards healing. Drawing on Psalm 30, they identify the importance of the strength that has come from coming to accept the spiritual vulnerability in the months and years after the attack and the realization that God is present even in times of tragedy.

In doing so, they give an affirmative response the psalmists plea at the height of their despair:

Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?

Their answer is a definite yes.

“What we have learned since 9/11 [they write] is that the most basic human experiences of needs, satisfactions, anxieties, and even horror, are the soil, the matter in which the divine can be revealed. Grace shines through, illuminates, and transfigures the natural order, not in part, but in its totality. In the places of the greatest darkness and depravity, God has entered into the process of both birth and death.”

Rowan Williams added: “While it is not a school, which left to ourselves we would have chosen, we are Christians because we believe the school of death is quite simply the only way in which we understand resurrection.”

We pray that atrocities such as 9/11 never happen again. But we also pray that, like the eye-witnesses on that day, anyone confronted by such horrors may find strength in the words of this psalm.

When the World Spins Crazy
By Walter Brueggemann 

When the world spins crazy,
spins wild and out of control
spins toward rage and hate and violence,
spins beyond our wisdom and nearly beyond our faith,
When the world spins in chaos as it does now among us…

We are glad for sobering roots that provide ballast in the storm.
So we thank you for our rootage in communities of faith,
for our many fathers and mothers who have believed and trusted as firm witnesses to us,
for their many stories of wonder, awe, and healing.

We are glad this night in this company
for the rootage of the text,
for the daring testimony,
for its deep commands,
for its exuberant tales.
Because we know that as we probe deep into this text…
clear to its bottom,
we will find you hiding there,
we will find you showing yourself there,
speaking as you do,
governing,
healing,
judging.

And when we meet you hiddenly,
we find the spin not so unnerving,
because from you the world again has a chance
for life and sense and wholeness.
We pray midst the spinning, not yet unnerved,
but waiting and watching and listening,
for you are the truth that contains all our spin. Amen.

From Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann. This poem was written shortly after 9/11.


Links

Psalm 30 was the Psalm appointed for the Mass in the Daily Common Worship Lectionary on Monday 1st April 2019 while I was visiting New York

‘Will the Dust Praise You? Spiritual Responses to 9/11’