When you start looking for questions in the pages of scripture, it’s almost a bit surprising how many you find. Too many people skip over the questions and try to find nothing but the answers in scripture. I think this has proven to be an unhelpful approach that has probably done a fair bit of damage. It’s very hard to get good answers if you haven’t carefully considered what questions you are asking.
The Psalmist is probably a good source for questions. Why haven’t I looked to him before? There’s one question that’s been staring me in the face - we use it over and over again in our prayers in the Sacristy before Mass. Perhaps I have encountered it so often that I assumed it must be a rhetorical question. But it’s not. “Why art thou so full of heaviness, O my soul; and why art thou so disquieted within me.?”
The question is repeated in Psalm 43 from the previous psalm. Twice in Psalm 42 the Psalmist poses it: Why art thou so full of heaviness, O my soul? Why art thou so full of heaviness? And why art thou so disquieted within me?
I am an optimist and an extrovert, and I am unfamiliar with depression, but even for me, this question of heaviness and disquiet resonates. For I am not unfamiliar with heaviness that weighs on the soul. And no matter your disposition, considering the world we live in, I am willing to bet that you are not unfamiliar with such heaviness and disquiet, either.
I’m not sure that it would be useful for me to try to sketch out the headings of a catalog of the causes of the heaviness and disquiet of the soul. Doing so, I might hit on something that gets close to source of the heaviness and disquiet of your soul. But I might also never get close to the source for you. And I don’t want to leave you out. And the heaviness and disquiet of our souls is not, per se, only a function of the particular facts of this particular moment in time: the warfare, the wildfires, the gunshots, the animus, the racism, the diagnoses, the poverty, the relationships, the debt, the pandemic, the cruelty of our own moment in history.
The reason the Psalmist’s question resonates today is because it always resonates, no matter when it’s recited. The human soul knows heaviness and disquiet; there has never been a time when it did not. Why art thou so heavy, O my soul; and why art thou so disquieted within me?
I am guessing that this question resonates with most of you, too, or, if it doesn’t now, it has at some point in your life. Why, O why art thou so heavy, O my soul? And why, O why, art thou so disquieted within me?
The tricky thing about this question is that it is not asking what it appears to be asking. The soul more than likely already knows what’s caused it such heaviness and disquiet. This question is not one for the therapist to use to probe the unexplored possible sources of the weighty disquiet of the soul. The answer it requires will not include much information. Rather, what the question really asks, I think, is whether there is something to be done about all that weighs so heavily on our souls and causes such disquiet.
Furthermore, it’s a question that on its surface seems deeply personal and individualized, as though it could only be asked in private, only encountered in deepest secret. But the Psalmist puts the question on our lips in church when we are gathered together. The Psalms are the hymnal of Israel. And Israel has always known that, private as this question may be, personal as our own disquiet may be, this question is a question that we ask together, we sing together, in the same way that we sing “Just as I am” together. And when we do, we are reminded that we are not alone in what weighs on us, and we never have been.
I have deliberately stayed stuck on the question, because we are stuck with this question. As I say, the Psalmist gives voice to the question three times in fairly quick succession in these two Psalms: 42 and 43. He knows how much the heaviness presses on our souls. He knows the extent of our disquiet.
But the wisdom of the Psalmist is not contained strictly within the question. For each of the three times it is posed, the question is also paired with an answer. Why art thou so heavy, O my soul; and why art thou so disquieted within me? O put thy trust in God; for I will yet give him thanks, which is the help of my countenance and my God. O put thy trust in God.
It is so much easier for us to be in touch with the things that weigh heavily on our souls, and that cause disquiet within our very beings than it is to put our trust in God. Other translations render the answer slightly differently: “Hope in God,” they say. But the older translation rings in my ears, and I think the struggle is essentially the same. It’s as challenging to hope in God as it is to put our trust in him.
I find that I keep wanting to reassure you (and to convince others, too) that there are good reasons to come to church. I suppose I am dubious that you would be convinced if I started with the answers. I don’t think I’d have been convinced if I’d started with the answers.
I suspect that one of the criticisms Jesus is making of the scribes and the Pharisees is that they start with the answers. That is to say, they are always ready to tell others what to do. But when you are so ready to tell others what to do, it can be easy to forget to heed the answers yourself. Maybe this is because you have forgotten how central the questions are to your own life.
I want to encourage you to find, and to live with the questions, especially the questions that can be found in the scriptures. Because I believe we were given those questions for a reason - they are real questions. And the answers the scriptures provide will only be convincing if we take the questions seriously.
Why should you put your trust in God? There is a heaviness in the soul, the cause of which is to be found in many different places, and which results in real and unmistakeable disquiet within us. You can’t just snap out of that heaviness and disquiet of the soul. You can’t just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. The heaviness is bigger than you are, and the disquiet is louder (or perhaps more deadly silent) than any other voice in your head or your heart. And this is true whether it’s your heaviness and disquiet, alone, by yourself; or if it’s our shared heaviness and disquiet, as a community, a society, a people who can sing about it together. It’s bigger than we are: the heaviness and disquiet.
But there is something bigger than the heaviness that weighs us down. There is a voice more powerful than the voice of disquiet that disrupts our thoughts and our prayers. O put thy trust in God! O put thy trust in God; for I will yet give him thanks, which is the help of my countenance, and my God.
I don’t feel the need (do you?) to define too clearly what the “help of my countenance” might be. I know what it is to walk through my days with my head bowed, my face to the ground because of the heaviness in my soul. Isn’t it enough to imagine that whatever the Psalmist means by “the help of my countenance,” it has something to do with the power, the force, the will to lift up my head, lift up my heart, lift up my eyes?
But how do we learn to lift up our eyes, to raise our heads, to reach out for the thing that is bigger than the heaviness that weighs down our souls and causes such disquietude within us? We come together to worship God, and in worshiping God - which everyone keeps telling us is out-moded and old-fashioned - worshiping God proves to be the one activity that has the capacity to lift us up above the weight that presses down on our souls.
I’ve quoted the late American writer David Foster Wallace on this matter before, who asserted that “everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” And he goes on to say that the reason to worship the divine is “that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive,” starting with money.
We learn to trust God by worshiping God. And we desperately need to learn to trust God because trusting God is the only real answer to the heaviness of our souls, the disquietude within us. God is the only bigger thing that’s big enough to be trustworthy in all instances of heaviness and disquiet.
Pour your hearts out to God. Lift up your voices to God. Give some of your time to God. Yes, even give some of your money to God’s purposes, such as we perceive them to be. O put your trust in God! Putting your trust in God is enacting your faith. And where does faith come from? It’s a gift from God. O put your trust in God!
Although the MIBS has not yet become well-known (the Mullen Interrogative Biblical Scale), the more we accept the importance of dealing with the questions before we get to answers, the more likely it is that the MIBS will be recognized for what it is.
We need not avoid this question, or think of it is a rhetorical, for it is too central to our lives: Why art thou so heavy, O my soul, and why art thou so disquieted within me? Mostly we should not avoid the question because the Psalmist always links it to the answer:
O put thy trust in God! For I will yet give him thanks, which is the help of my countenance and my God!
Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
5 November 2023
Saint Mark’s, Locust Street, Philadelphia
