Psalm 22
Second Sunday in Lent 2012
There I was again
shaking a fist while holding fast in faith.
Perhaps you were doing exactly
the same thing this past week. It
happens all the time, this indignant lamenting to God while at the same time hanging
all hope on God. Our hearts and minds rock back and forth
between plaintiff cries and primal praise.
In the particular instance of Monday, February 27th, the duel
motion happened while reading the horrendously sad news headline coming out of
Chardon, Ohio.
A .22 caliber pistol obeyed
the hand of an extremely quiet seventeen year old by pounding ten bullets into
a group of students just sitting in their High School cafeteria. This
perturbed teen from a deeply troubled home life had, I understand from reports,
stolen the weapon from his uncle. In
the aftermath of this violence in which no community is completely protected, the
lives of two sixteen year olds and one seventeen year old were so very suddenly,
terribly sadly swiped away. This entire news story – make that, human
story -- is such a swift kick to the gut.
It’s perhaps even more acutely felt for those of us raising kids and
grandkids right now that are in or about to be in high school.
My initial response
when the news broke was to think, “No, not again.” I felt anger before allowing any of the
sadness to settle in. The fist shaking
came first. Along with it came an
inner-dialogue with our Almighty. I didn’t blame or curse God because I accept
the complex tensions between human free will and holy providence. But I sure did let God know I was greatly
aggrieved about the horror of the shooting, about all the dark dominoes that had
toppled into the life and triggered the intentions of the shooter, and about
the Chardon community being rapidly shot into the grip of all the grief. I
also did some self-reflection with God about the quiet, rage-filled teen from a
troubled home that I was twenty-six years ago.
The fist shaking was
held fast by faith. I trusted God could
handle the truth I was decrying. I
trusted God was already responding to this fresh bit of hell on earth with loads
of loving mercy and holy comfort. I
recalled how strongly I had come to see and believe such divine care in all the
other headline tragedies and personal moments cascading through my memory
bank. And through this recollection, I
received fresh insight about God on the move.
It came in the form of
reading about the humble assistant football coach who refused to be called a
hero for just doing what was right and what he was trained to do in a
crisis. He told the families he was by the side of the
victims, he prayed with them and that he knew God was there.
It came in the form of
one of the mothers of a slain teen being asked what she would say to the
shooter. She replied, “I would tell him
I forgive him.” She then went on to declare “It’s in God’s hands” and to report
that her son’s donated organs had already saved the life of another child.
It came in many more forms as I read about
ways the local and national community came together in the bonds of peace and love
despite all the outraged cries for retribution.
This ever-present dance
between plaintiff cries and primal praise is nothing new. It’s the story of God’s people. It’s found in most every passage of the
Bible. And it’s absolutely front and
center in this morning’s passage, Psalm 22.
So much so that there was no way to just read a few verses from it. We needed to experience it all, and I hope
the dialogue way we offered the reading helped you hear both the deep lament
and the steadfast faith.
The Psalmist’s life
was under attack. As a victim, he felt
as dirty, down and squashable as a common worm. He felt mocked, scorned, reduced to melted
wax in a pile of disjointed bones. The
Psalmist was shaking a fist at what he descriptively identifies as encircling
enemy bulls and as evildoing dogs that roll dice to lay claim to his very
clothing. Significantly, even though
it very well might have been the great King David who wrote this Psalm, the
lamenting voice identifies full with all of the earth’s poor and outcast.
This entire fist
shaking episode is companioned by steadfast affirmations of faithful trust in
God. It’s very important to notice
that at no point in the Psalm are we told about a reversal of fortune. The praise does not rise up from suddenly and
miraculously having a safer, better life where evil has been undone. It rises up from firm, faithful trust that
God is listening, that God is indeed responding with loving mercy
and justice, that God is and has been and always will be the safest haven in this sin-stained world. The praise flows beautifully through
affirmations about faithful ancestors being delivered from shame and about security
in God being as intimate as a baby trusting in its mother’s breast. This is bold affirmation that God does not
despise the afflicted of any time and place.
It is clear invitation to praise and live for the Lord in whose good and
holy dominion we all dwell … dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and on into the new
life we have in Christ.
We are in the church
season of Lent. We are all the wounded walking toward the
final, dark, despairing hours of Jesus. Now, whether it’s Lent or not, if I ask a bunch of people at random if they
can quote one thing Jesus said I’m guessing more than a few would answer, “My
God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
That the all-time most faithful representative of the human race felt
abandoned by God is something that really resonates with a whole lot of folks. “Sweet Jesus, you mean you’ve had fist
shaking times too?”
There is a problem
with this, however. Historical studies
indicate that Jesus never intended for us to stop at the lament, at the
fist-shaking part of his tortured time on the Cross. In the tradition of His days, “Citing the
first words of a text was a way of identifying an entire passage.”[i] I suppose, then, it’s kind of like my saying,
“Jesus loves me this I know …” and suddenly the rest of the words pop in your
head.
So what was Jesus
quoting in his final hour that He wanted us to fully recall? Let’s
go back to the first verse of Psalm 22, shall we? “My God, My God, why have you forsaken
me?” Our Lord had Psalm 22 – all of it
– going through His mind as he was dying for our sin. He had endured this dire experience by identifying
himself as one being mocked and scorned, whose meager clothes would gambled
over, as one in complete solidarity with all the poor and outcast of the
world. Most powerfully, He bridged us
to salvation by exhaling a last breath that was a resolute reminder and declaration
of divine deliverance and dominion.
Jesus knew the power
of Psalm 22 for our lives too. It was a
final teaching in the last moments of his fully embodied presence on
earth. He wanted us, His disciples, to
understand that this Scripture “combines prayer and praise, language of suffering
and celebration, in one arc of unity so as to say the one is not to be
understood apart from the other.”[ii] As we experience everything in our lives
and learn about all that’s happening in this wonderful but also wounded world,
we should not box ourselves into either only lamenting or only praising
God. Plaintiff cries and primal
praises are looped together all in and around our hearts and minds. This is nothing new. It’s the story of God’s people.
I’ll leave you with an
inspiring quote about this from a more contemporary voice. A man named Daniel McConchie was struck
down by a hit-and-run accident back in the summer of 2007. He survived, but was left paralyzed from
the waist down. Hear what he’s been
saying since that traumatic, life-altering day …
"God has not healed my affliction, but he
has taught me the power of lamenting to him about it. To our detriment, one of the most
overlooked portions of Scripture in modern-day America are the psalms of
lament. However, [King] David repeatedly demonstrated that laments make obvious
our intense faith in God, that he can and will intervene in our time of need.
They demonstrate just how deep our relationship with the Father really is.
After all, we don't communicate our grief and mourning to strangers. We save
that for those we truly know and love.”
Amen.
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