Lent 2, Year B, 2024: Psalm 22:22-30

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?*
    and are so far from my cry
    and from the words of my distress?

O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer;*
    by night as well, but I find no rest.
Yet you are the Holy One,*

     enthroned upon the praises of Israel.

Our forefathers put their trust in you;*

     they trusted, and you delivered them.

They cried out to you and were delivered;*

     they trusted in you and were not put to shame.

But as for me, I am a worm and no man,*

     scorned by all and despised by the people.

All who see me laugh me to scorn;*

     they curl their lips and wag their heads, saying,

“He trusted in the Lord; let him deliver him;*

     let him rescue him, if he delights in him.”

Yet you are he who took me out of the womb,*

     and kept me safe upon my mother’s breast.

I have been entrusted to you ever since I was born;*

     you were my God when I was still in my mother’s womb.

Be not far from me, for trouble is near,*

     and there is none to help. (Psalm 22:1-11)

Any time our lectionary leaves out some verses in the middle - like it does in Genesis today - I like to go back and see what is being left out. In Genesis, what is left out is part of the covenant, but it doesn’t really change the meaning of what we read. What it is accomplishing is pairing the change of Sarah’s name with the changing of Abraham’s name.

But what is left out of Psalm 22 drastically changes our experience in reading it. Today, we heard verses 22-30 of Psalm 22, the triumphant end of the psalm which proclaims the greatness of the Lord and praises Him. The previous 21 verses are a prayer for help of a person in great distress, paired then with a song of thanksgiving and praise that follows God’s response of deliverance. The “title” given the psalm in my bible is “Plea for Deliverance from Suffering and Hostility”, and the Latin heading in the Book of Common Prayer translates “my God, my God help me”. Neither one of those makes any sense from the portion read today. All we get is the praise, none of the pleading.

Most of the psalms of lament, with the singular exception of Psalm 88, make a turn part way through. Oftentimes they are summarized by saying something like, “things are bad, but God is good”. I don’t love that summary because of the conjunction “but”. The “but” negates the first part of the sentence. I’ve always appreciated the advice, “Ignore everything before the ‘but’.” The psalms are operating under the assumption that both sides of the statement are true: “things are bad, and God is good”. Only reading the last third of the psalm is acting like there is a “but” between verses 21 and 22. There is not. Things are bad. And God is good. As we are told in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, there is darkness. The light of Christ shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.

When I was a hospital chaplain, a common refrain from people I visited was, “well, there are other people who have it worse.” Which was, undoubtedly, true. There certainly were people doing worse than all of the people I heard say that. But every single person I heard say that was a patient in the hospital. They weren’t doing great either. It’s okay to not be okay.

When we start at verse 22, we can be tempted to enter a toxic positivity. That is, trying to make everything good without acknowledging that it doesn’t always have to be. Being sad, feeling abandoned by people or by God, feeling overwhelmed by the suffering either in front of you or in the world in general, none of those things negate or are negated by our praise of the Lord. Our God is our companion in our suffering. He’s not there to undo it, but to walk with us to the other side. Things are bad, and God is good.

One of the professors of Old Testament at my seminary is a Baptist minister, Dr Judy Fentress-Williams. We had ecumenical services every year in seminary celebrating our full communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and one Presbyterian style because we had a professor who was Presbyterian (we’re not in full communion with the Presbyterians, but Dr Yieh was there). We had a Baptist service when Dr Fentress-Williams figured out the only way to properly have a Baptist service was to bring her own choir, so the choir from the historic Alfred Street Baptist Church came - as did the entire worship team - and they let us Episcopalians experience how a black Baptist service was properly done. That particular day when they came, I wasn’t having a great day. And I was therefore…impatient with the joy of the hymns. And then I thought of the context in which the spirituals being sung were first sung. How the people from this church which was founded by enslaved people in 1803 - a full 60 years before the ratification of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery - were singing about the goodness of God. If anyone knew how to find the light shining in the darkness and how to not be overcome, it was held in the institutional memory of that choir, passed on from generation to generation. They were living the promise that God is good when things are bad, and also when things are good. The consistent strain across all situations is the goodness of God.

The writers of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all use parts of the first 11 verses of Psalm 22, which we will read on Good Friday, in their accounts of the crucifixion. The first part of verse 1, “my God, why have you forsaken me?”, is quoted in Jesus’ cry from the cross in both Matthew and Mark. And in that cry, both are true: things are bad, and God is good. Those authors know the entirety of Psalm 22, and the entirety of the story they are telling about Jesus. That while Jesus is feeling abandoned by God, it remains true that “kingship belongs to the Lord; he rules over the nations.” That “My praise is of (the Lord) in the great assembly.” They know that “those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy” (Psalm 126). Even while Jesus is on the cross, God continues to work in the world. To work with and through Jesus. Psalm 22 is a reminder that no matter how hopeless we may feel, no matter how alone we may feel, that “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46).

Part of why most of the psalms of lament end in joy is a reminder that all of the psalms are experiential. That is, they are very true in the sense that it is how the author feels. The author of Psalm 22 feels that God has forsaken him and is so far from his cry and the words of his distress. Just because it is honest doesn’t mean it’s correct. But it is important that this is a sacred text. It is important that it validates the feelings of abandonment. And it affirms that God isn’t just present for our praises. God is also present when we feel that “Packs of dogs close me in, and gangs of evildoers circle around me.”

Oftentimes I will have someone in distress say to me something like, “I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but I’m mad at God.” I always push back at that idea that we shouldn’t feel any way about God. God can handle it. And one way we demonstrate trust is honesty. So we don’t need to talk ourselves out of our emotions, or shame ourselves for feeling like we are “scorned by all and despised by the people.” That’s in verse six of Psalm 22. And in verse 26, the same author says, “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall bow before him.” Just because we trust in God does not mean we are required to be happy all the time. We are allowed to hurt. To grieve. To doubt. To be angry. And we can do so with the confidence that none of those feelings are permanent, and God is ready to walk with us through the darkness. To be our light shining in the darkness, so that we are not overcome. Amen.