Psalm 22 (25-31)
It’s a moment, even if we haven’t experienced or witnessed it ourselves, that is easy enough to imagine. Think of a crowded shopping mall...or a busy downtown street...or a teeming subway train. A small child becomes separated from her Mother, even if for a brief instant. Mom, of course, knows where her daughter is the whole time, but, in that instant, the child has no idea where her Mother is; Mother, her source of protection & nourishment. For a brief moment, a look of bewilderment flashes across the young girl’s face. Then comes fear followed by crying out. Reunion, because Mom is ever watchful, ever listening, is swift and brings comfort, quelling fears, reassuring the young one that all is well. But until that happens, there is confusion and fear and longing...longing for a return to safety and solace...longing for arms that hold and words that soothe.
Now age the young girl a few decades or so. Elongate that time of bewilderment, fear, and longing. Stretch it out to be several decades long itself in fact. Delay that reunion, withholding comfort, safety, and care from the one who longs for a return.
That description is the way many have experienced God; or better put, experience a lack of God. That description delineates what many of us feel about the Divine. Those of us who are bewildered or anxious or frightened because we feel we’ve been abandoned in the shopping mall we call life, surrounded by strangers in a strange land, seek and yearn for God’s return to our lives, yet think our cries go unheard; we feel abandoned because indeed God does not come to scoop us up in God’s arms right away. We stand amidst the swirl of people going to and fro all around us; people who are seemingly going about their business; people who seem to be connected to their God; people whom we want to be. Instead we yearn for the one who is no longer in sight. Instead we ache for God’s loving embrace once again. Instead, we are left seeking and crying out in our distress.
The verses from the Psalms that we read together today is the very end of Psalm 22. Those verses belie the beginning of the Psalm in which the author cries out in a way I have just described. Yes, we hear about the psalmist’s praise and how even the dead will bow down to God and deliverance is for generations and generations yet to come.
Yet hear the opening words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Sound familiar? Of course, it’s the very same words that Jesus used from the cross; the words that he was mocked for saying, in the same way that the Psalmist was mocked and felt abandonment in the first 24 verses of this Psalm. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.” (1-2)
It sounds familiar because it is familiar to anyone who’s been around a church during Holy Week and know all too well the narrative of the crucifixion. For some of us though, it rings true for other reasons. Not only is it the cry of Jesus from the cross, in his pain and sorrow and grief as he hung awaiting death, but it’s the cry that many have exclaimed when feeling forsaken, abandoned, bereft, deserted. Deserted, indeed, by the Creator, by my God, my God.
We all know the good works of Mother Teresa, the Albanian religious sister who served the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, that poorest of the poor city. If anyone who has graced the pages of the daily newspapers in our lifetimes is going to end up being declared a saint, it is, no doubt, she. She worked tirelessly to alleviate suffering, to care for those who needed care, to bring the Christ into the lives of “the least of these.”
Yet listen to her words:
"There is so much contradiction in my soul, no faith, no love, no zeal. . . . I find no words to express the depths of the darkness. . . . My heart is so empty. . . . so full of darkness. . . . I don't pray any longer. The work holds no joy, no attraction, no zeal. . . . I have no faith, I don't believe." (as quoted in The Journey With Jesus Website, http://www.journeywithjesus.net/)
These words, made public at the occasion of the 10th anniversary of her death in 1997 from her letters, surprised many. But to many believers...yes, believers...her words had the ring of authenticity and truth. They all sound too familiar; too much the truth of our own lives; too resonant with the very thoughts that have found a home in the shadowed moments of our own lives.
The Psalmist complains that
“I am a worm, and not human; scorned by others, and despised by the people...On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.” (6, 10-11)
In our yearning, we struggle to maintain our balance in the swirl all around us. As we reach out, stretching our arms into the seeming void,we hope to grasp onto something, anything that will lead us to God, to that reunion we desperately crave.
But like Mother Teresa, we all too often find need in our midst instead of God. Our yearning is overshadowed by the great deprivation which surrounds us. The work that needs to be done eclipses our own deep-seated want for God’s touch.
So we set off, off-balance as we are, to right whatever wrongs we can along the way, as we ourselves stumble along. We do right because it is, well, right; because in the absence of a God who calls, suffering must be addressed, whatever the motivation.
So the Mother Teresas and all who know too well the mood of the beginning of Psalm 22, reach out for God and in our reaching out happen upon those who cry not for spiritual food, but for real, belly-filling food. As we seek to be sheltered by God, we find those who don’t know what real shelter is, sleeping night after night in a new doorway on the street. Our thirsting for the connection with the Divine remains unslaked as we provide cool cups to those who thirst for water that quenches thirst from the lack of clean, accessible water.
If these sermon words of mine seem foreign to you, if Mother Teresa’s story is unfamiliar, if the early verses of Psalm 22 do not describe your situation, rejoice and be glad. Love the God who is your companion and your way.
If however you have noticed the nodding of your head throughout these words of mine, know you are not alone. From Mother Teresa around the globe to our community, there are many who seek God, but find God to be unreachable and remote. Continue to do the work that gives meaning to your life. God, when God reveals Godself to you again, will have been there with you as you reached out to those needing care.
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