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Sunday, February 01, 2009
Why have you forsaken me?
5th in a series on Questions from the Bible
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
Scripture: Psalm 22:1-5 – New Revised Standard Version
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest. 3 Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. 4 In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. 5 To you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.
Most of you recognize the first words of this Psalm as the words that Jesus spoke from the cross in the Gospel of Mark. In fact, in that gospel, they are the only words Jesus speaks before he dies.
Psalm 22 goes on at the end to become an affirmation of faith: “I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.” At the beginning the Psalm expresses the loneliness and isolation that must have been present as Jesus saw all of his friends abandoning him, even Peter who proudly boasted that he would never do that and then acted like a coward to save his own skin.
When we look at those words from the cross, they remind us of the humanity of Jesus which many church leaders have lost or ignored, the Jesus who got tired, who got frustrated with his closest friends and berated them because they still didn’t get what he was about. The Jesus who said to one inquirer who called him, Good Teacher, “Why call me good? No One is good but God alone!”
When we look at the words from the Psalm, we learn again how many of the 150 Psalms express the feelings that we feel. Feelings of doubt, isolation, fear, distance from God at times, and loneliness. Who of us has not felt apart from God, distant from God? Many of us felt some comfort, a couple of years ago, after Mother Theresa of Calcutta died and we saw in a book about her life, that even this saint of the church, this moral example of compassion and sacrificial service, had these same feelings of isolation and distance all of her life. We learned that even her faith was a combination of trust and questions, belief and unbelief. And, yet, she is in the good company, not only of many of the Psalmists in the Bible, but even of Christian leaders over the century.
One saint wrote hundreds of years ago about “The dark night of the soul,” the times when we feel apart from God, when we wonder about God. Last year well known writer Kathleen Norris, came out with a new book about the feeling of acedia or depression which she has suffered from for years. She tells about her personal journey through that dark night of the soul.
Most of us understand the feeling of the Psalmist, perhaps, especially now in times of economic discouragement. It seems that we are learning of church members almost every day who are fearful about their job or who have been laid off or who see others around them laid off and wonder who is next.
What do we do when we feel the uncertainty and doubt of the Psalmist? The first thing we learn is that it is OK to tell God about how we are feeling! People in the Bible do this! Not only the people who wrote the Psalms but other Bible heroes as well. Have you noticed that some people in the Bible argue with God? They do! Moses does this. Jacob does it in his symbolic wrestling match with God in the book of Genesis. Job certainly tells God what is on his mind! It is OK to tell God how we are feeling and trust God to be big enough to take our doubts and our anger and our loneliness. Even one of our favorite characters from Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye, is willing to argue with God at times.
What else can we do when we feel lonely and afraid and separated from God? We can remember that other people of faith have felt the same way and that those feelings are part of our pilgrimage of faith instead of being signs of unfaith.
We can look at the other Psalms that are expressions of doubt and fear and read and pray those psalms to express our feelings. We can pray the words of hymns like the one we sang last Sunday from Martin Luther:
A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing: Our helper he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing.
We can use prayers like that of twentieth century saint Thomas Merton:
My Lord God, I have no idea of where I am going I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
We can use the brief prayer that Dr. Marcus Borg taught us when he has been our guest speaker:
Lord Jesus Christ, you are the light of the world. Fill our minds with your peace and our hearts with your love.
We can use the prayer that Jesus taught us, the Lord’s Prayer, that starts by asking God to let God’s kingdom come through us and God’s will to be done through us, before it lets us ask each day for the bread we need, the spiritual and physical food we need to see us through.
We can keep the problems of our lives in perspective. We are in very difficult times, but others are as well. One writer told this week in his regular newspaper column about the little girls in Afghanistan who were on their way to school. They were stopped by a stranger on a motorcycle. For girls, going to school in Afghanistan is very dangerous and controversial because they live in a culture where many religious leaders do not want girls to be educated. The stranger sprayed the children’s faces with acid so they are scarred for life and one or two lost their eyesight. Their families kept them away from school for a while but now the girls are back in school to say that no one can stop them from becoming educated and fully human, even if they live in a repressive culture. And, so, they sit in class happily learning even with scarred and painful faces. Stories like that do not discount our feelings of anxiety or loneliness but they help us keep perspective.
What else can we do when we know the words and the feelings of the psalmist? Two other things that work for me: one is to be sure that I am taking time with God in prayer and silence and listening. I know the truth of the bumper sticker that says: “If you feel distant from God, guess who moved?” Usually it is I who moved away, and when I take time to focus, I don’t feel the fear and the distance.
The second thing that works for me is to see God again in the nudges and the positive coincidences of life. That is how God works most often, I believe, not so much through the dramatic events but through a still small voice, through the quiet nudges and positive happenings around me.
The last insight for me is to see again that when I feel discouraged, God is most strongly at work to bring light into darkness and hope into hopelessness. Have you seen the video of Nick Vujicic who has no arms or legs but has come to terms with his lot in life? The 90 second video delivers an inspirational speech to school kids that they will probably never forget. He talks about faith and falling down. He demonstrates how difficult it is to get up when you don’t have arms and legs. Then he demonstrates how he can get up and he challenges us to finish strong despite our limitations. I invite you to visit the website, http://www.maniacworld.com/are-you-going-to-finish-strong.html, to view this exceptional example of never giving up and always having faith.