Holy rage

Imprecatory Psalms and cries for justice 

This fall at Harbor we have been exploring “Songs of Rage: Lament, Justice, and Spirituality in the Psalms.” We’ve dived deep into several aspects of the ancient songs and allowed ourselves to go to dark and holy places. What a rich time of deepening our spirituality it has been at Harbor! 

In our second week of this series, we looked at some of the cries of justice in the book of Psalms. After re-reading Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail”—where King expresses his disappointment in the “white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice” and proclaims that “Freedom is never given voluntarily by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed”—I found myself particularly fueled to look for calls of justice and liberation in the text of the Psalms. 

So, to explore these cries of justice we studied some of the most extreme Psalms—the imprecatory (or “cursing”) Psalms (e.g. 7, 35, 137). Dennis Bratcher describes the imprecatory Psalms as “a much more radical version of lament” because the Psalmist curses those who have caused a crisis. Whether the curses are directed at those who committed injustice within or outside of the community, the Psalmist is angry and curses those who caused the affliction. 

For many of us, we might normally be taken aback and feel quite uncomfortable reading an imprecatory Psalm because of its extreme (often violent) rhetoric for YHWH to bring justice, to bring relief to the Psalmist and the community. But in our Harbor gathering, we set aside the impulse to villainize these intense emotions and songs, instead taking the opportunity to see the imprecatory Psalms as “honest expressions of pain in the face of grief and endings” (Bratcher). In place of enacting actual violence, these Psalms model crying out to God from the depths of our own humanity to, like King said, demand freedom. 

In a Rhythm of Prayer: a Collection of Meditations of Renewal, edited by Sarah Bessey, Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes wrote “Prayer of a Weary Black Woman,” which in many ways mirrors the writing style of the imprecatory Psalms. The prayer begins with these powerful words: “Dear God, help me to hate White people. Or at least to want to hate them.” We read this prayer together at Harbor. We cherished Walker-Barnes’s vulnerable, powerful, integrity-filled, and honest prayer that captures the pain and hardship she has experienced from White people—especially “the nice ones” (or the “progressive” ones who are “wolves in sheep’s clothing”). Our mostly White-bodied community received her words and cried with her. We saw how her raw emotions were inviting us and leading us all into more authentic spirituality. One where we move beyond the walls of order or our nice respectable prayers and into the prayers of justice—that require honest anger and deep lament. 

I keep coming back to her prayer and how our community held her sacred words. The imprecatory Psalms—the ones in the Bible and the one from Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes—teach us that one aspect of participating faithfully in God’s work of justice and reconciliation is crying out to God in deep and holy rage.