The Hell of War
Psalm 13
June 26, 2005
First Baptist Church, Wilson, NC

            If September 11, 2001 was the day that our country went to war against terrorism, then June 1, 2005 was the day that the war came home to Wilson.  That was the day that a son of this city was killed.  Philip Edmondson was 17 or 18 when September 11 happened.  He enlisted in the Army and assigned to the 2^nd Infantry Division and sent to Iraq.  On June 1 he was riding in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Ramadi when an explosion ripped through the vehicle and killed him.  He was 22 years old.  His body came home to Wilson.

            That has not been the only tragedy that war has brought to a son of Wilson.  Johnny Horne is now in military prison.  Last September Seargeant Horne’s platoon was patrolling in Baghdad one night.  The “platoon spotted a dump truck that was carrying garbage with several people in the back throwing boxes from it.  One of the boxes exploded. É The soldiers fired on the truck and destroyed it.”  (Article by Alex Keown, Wilson Daily Times, June 20, 2005, pp. 1-2A)  When they got to the truck, several Iraqis were hanging dead out of the truck, but one young man was still alive.  Horne pulled him away from the flames.  The man was mortally wounded, and lay dying. 

            At this point Horne says his lieutenant asked him what he wanted to do about the man.  “Horne said he would rather put the man out of his misery.  Horne said the lieutenant gave the order to kill the IraqiÉ” and so Horne did.  Horne said, “I felt horrible for the young man, but I knew he had to be put to rest.”  Later, the lieutenant denied that he had given Horne the order to shoot.  Johnny Horne was found guilty of murder and is now serving a three year sentence.

            Two sons of Wilson caught up in war.  One is dead.  One has had a part of him die, too.  If we did not realize it before September 11, we are learning now the tragedy of war.  And none of us knows how much longer it will take.  On 19 June 1879 General William Tecumseh Sherman gave an address to the graduating class of Michigan Military Academy:

I am tired and sick of war.  Its glory is all moonshine.  It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation.  War is hell.

            Sherman said it well.  Psalm 13 communicates the hell of war even better:

For the director of music.  A psalm of David. (NIV)

How long, O Lord?  Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

and every day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Look on me and answer, O Lord my God.

Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;

My enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”

and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

But I trust in your unfailing love;

 my heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord, for he has been good to me.

            An editor has added a superscription to the psalm: “a psalm of David,” which means either it was written by David or it was written about David.  David the warrior fought against many of enemies in his time: against Saul, against the Philistines, the Arameans, even his own son Absalom.  David knew what it was like to be hunted down and to suffer at the hands of his enemies.  There were surely many times when he wondered, “How long must I suffer?”  The words could speak for any warrior who has ever wondered “How long,” including soldiers in Iraq now, and including the people of Iraq.  How much longer will this war have to go on?  The psalm captures the agony of a soldier in the midst of the hell of war.  And in this psalm there is a double agony.  Listen again to the first two verses and listen for whom this warrior is fighting with:

How long, O Lord?  Will you forget me forever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts

and every day have sorrow in my heart?

How long will my enemy triumph over me?

            Whoever is praying this is fighting a two-front war.  One front is the war against the enemy.  “How long will my enemy triumph over me?     But the second front is the struggle with God.  The psalmist feels that God has forgotten him; worse, that God has purposely turned away from him and hidden his face from him.  The pain of the fight with the enemy is hard enough.  But the pain of feeling God turning away is unbearable.

I don’t think anything can make one feel farther from God than the hell of war.  In war, soldiers suffer things no one should ever have to suffer.  In war, soldiers have to do things no one should ever have to do. 

            And yet, as much as the psalmist complains of God’s absence, he is nevertheless complaining to GOD, as if the absent Lord can still hear him.  In verses 3-4, the psalmist asks for help:

Look on me and answer, O Lord my God.

Give light to my eyesÉ

Then he gives God three reasons to give help:

or 1) I will sleep the sleep of death,

And 2) my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”

And 3) My foes will rejoice when I fall.

Each question, each succeeding sentence is more intense and desperate.  Haven’t there been times when you have pled this way:  God, stop hiding your face from me.  God, answer me.  God, give me strengthÉ

            And then in verses 5 and 6 there is a great shift from complaint to praise, from disappointment to faith. 

But I trust in your unfailing love;

My heart rejoices in your salvation.

I will sing to the Lord,

For he has been good to me.

Why the sudden shift from complaint to praise?  Have the circumstances of this person changed so quickly?  Surely not.  But it does sound like the person himself has changed.  Somehow he can profess that the Lord has been good to him, even as he cries, “How long O Lord?”  And somehow, he can ask “How long O Lord,” even as he confesses that the Lord has been good to him.  The two go together.  The pain and the joy are both part of the same deal.  Martin Luther once said this psalm is a prayer “in which hope despairs, and yet despair hopes at the same time.”  (Quoted by J. Clinton McCann, Jr., New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IV, p. 727)  Hope despairs, and yet despair hopes.  We can be overwhelmed by God-forsaken events, and yet still see God at work around us.  We can be overwhelmed by suffering, and yet still feel the comfort of God. 

            In war, I am told, people are far more brutally honest about things than the usual polite small talk we usually get along with.  This psalm is honest like that.  It talks about things we usually don’t talk about: forsakenness, abandonment, anxiety, and death.  (McCann)  That brutal honesty about the pain earns it even more credibility to speak about the power of God.  This psalm is an honest prayer for war time, whether the war is in the Middle East, or in our own heart.  “How long, O Lord?  Lord, you’ve been good to me.”

            I have a friend in Iraq who surely wonders how long, and yet who speaks freely of how good the Lord has been to him.  Preston Dunphy is a Marine colonel stationed outside of Fallujah, Iraq.  Preston and I have disagreed about the wisdom of starting the war in Iraq.  I feared it would only serve to spawn more terrorism.  Preston hoped it would convince other rogue countries such as North Korea and Iran to restrain themselves.  But now that our forces are in Iraq, all those arguments are moot.  Now the mission is to get out without leaving a broken country behind.  Now the issue is, “What is best for the people of Iraq?”  So in a way, there is more agreement in our nation than ever before.  No longer are we arguing over whether to go in Iraq or not.  We are there.  And we are agreed that we want to get out.  The only question is timing.  We want to stay not one more minute than we have to, but we don’t want to leave so early as to leave a civil war in our wake.

            I pray for wisdom about that.  I pray for wisdom for our government and our forces.  I pray for wisdom for the Iraqi people and for our enemies.  And I pray for Preston.  Preston has been sending me emails about how he is doing.  Here are some excerpts:

23 April 2005

            Hot day yet, about 104F mid afternoon and it’s only April.  Thankful we have A/C as long as we have electronic power.  Days like todayÉmake me glad I am not a young Corporal or Sergeant pulling convoy escort duty or doing dismounted patrol with all that “Battle Rattle” gear and trying to see any danger before it can hurt anyone.

24 April 2005

            This afternoon and into evening we had a “mild dust storm” (winds only to 34Kts, gusts only to 40Knts, and visibility down to ¼ mile).  As in the movies but to lesser degree, you could see the horizon turning tan, and then a wall of sand coming toward you. 

5 May 2005

            We had an Indirect Fire (IDF) attack over lunch.  This IDF landed É close enough that you could hear the distinct two-part sound of an explosion and feel the shock wave in the mess hall.  However, with God’s grace only a HUMV and some quad-coms were damaged. 

14 May 2005

            This evening we had some more Indirect Fire aboard Camp Fallujah.  Three 122mm rockets were shot at camp from 3.4 miles SW of camp É One reported to have landed in a motor pool, 1 across the street in the convoy parking area outside one of the main mess halls, and one in vicinity of some unoccupied trailersÉIf you get hit or injured by rockets fired this way, it’s almost totally random bad luck; you were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.

20 May 2005

            Éthe length of time without any real break is starting to tell, some are getting more tense and excitableÉMe, I try to do my job as I see it, go to the Protestant Communion Service on the Sabbath, and hope we have a relatively cool summer and fall here, in terms of both political/military issues and in terms of weather.

            The thing I admire about Preston is that he has been much closer to man’s inhumanity than I have ever been, and yet he still seeks to commune with the divinity of God.  In that way he reminds me of this 13^th Psalm, which cries, “How long, O Lord,” and yet at the same time confesses, “I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” 

            -- Douglas E. Murray

            “O Lord, you who rule over every nation and leader over all the earth, we pray for your guidance right now. 

            In the midst of this war, we ask how long.  In the midst of this war, we at times wonder if you have turned your back on us.  Please don’t abandon us, for we need you more now than ever. 

            Forgive us for falling short of your ideal of peace on earth.  Guide our leaders and the leaders of our enemies and the leaders of our allies, that together we may learn your ways of peace, that an end to this conflict will come.

            We pray for our enemies.  We know not how to pray for them exactly, but we ask that your Spirit would intercede for our confused thoughts and pray for us.

            We pray for soldiers like Preston.  In the midst of many ungodly situations and trials, may they nevertheless know the peace of your presence with them.

            We pray for soldiers who have returned home with the wounds and the marks of war upon them.  May your healing balm restore them to wholeness.

            We pray for families across our state and nation who, like the Edmondsons of Wilson are grieving for sons and daughters who will not come home.

            We pray for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, that their suffering will soon cease, that their parents may see their children playing in the streets without fear, and that their lives may resume with hope.

            And we pray for ourselves, for all the little battles we fight that separate us from you.  We pray that you will forgive us and lift us back up into your will and into the peace you desire for us.

            In the name of the Prince of Peace we pray.  Amen.