The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
April 9, 2006 

Why have you forsaken me?
Psalm 22 

Today’s reading of the passion Gospel is so powerful that it is difficult for my words to do more than detract from what we have heard. Mark’s Gospel has just given us the earliest and starkest picture of Jesus’ suffering and death. Suffering is what the word “passion” meant at one time and what it means still when we refer to the passion of Jesus Christ. 

From the cross, Jesus cries out quoting the words of Psalm 22, “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” 

They are words of such utter despair. Mark does not tell us of Mary or others at the cross. As Mark relates the story of Jesus’ crucifixion, he emphasizes how alone Jesus was. Judas betrayed him. Most of his other disciples fled when the arrest party appeared. Peter followed close behind, but when spotted by some in the high priest’s courtyard, he denied he knew Jesus’ three times. 

The crowd taunts Jesus. Even the criminals being crucified alongside Jesus taunt him. Yes, other Gospels will record additional details. Like Luke remembering for us that one of the criminals would ask Jesus to remember him when he came into his kingdom. But Jesus was more vulnerable than powerful that day. In fact, the power Jesus did show was in his willingness to be powerless. The reality of Jesus’ crucifixion was quite stark, and Mark does not miss capturing just how bleak the scene was.  

We know he has done the event justice as those who were present went away without hope. That Friday night and the following Saturday, the only people who expected an empty tomb were those who thought Jesus’ body might be stolen by his disciples. Whatever the crowd saw that Friday we call “Good” left them believing that Jesus was not just dead, but shamefully dead. Certainly dead never to rise again.   

It is these words which so painfully underscore how helpless Jesus had become, 

At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” 

It is significant that while Jesus speaks in Aramaic here. Aramaic was the language of the people. Hebrew was the language of the learned. The difference between the two was something like Aramaic being our current English and Hebrew being Shakespearean English, or probably more like Middle English or Old English.  

The language had evolved and Jesus speaks with the words of the people. He is quoting scripture, but from no translation. It is his own rendering of the first verse of Psalm 22 in Aramaic. In that we see how Jesus had made the words of scripture his own words, words that come from the very center of his being as he cries out shamed, lost, defeated.  

The words measure the distance within the Trinity showing us how even God the Son could feel separated from God the Father. But in quoting this particular Psalm Jesus shines a small ray of hope through the midst of the darkness of that Good Friday afternoon.  

Jesus connects his death to Psalm 22. The connection is fitting and not just because of the first verse. In verses 6-8, the Psalmist says, 

But as for me, I am a worm and no man,
Scorned by all and despised by the people. 

All who see me laugh 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.” 

This sounds quite like the description of the scene around the cross as Mark gives it to us. Jesus faces the derision of those who surround him at his death. But the message of Psalm 22 is not one of despair. In this Psalm, we find very real hope being sung out from the depths of despair. Despite the shame we find in the Psalm, it goes on to say, 

Yet you are he who took me out of my mother’s 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. 

Those words, “You were my God” bring me back to the first verse. My attention gets so drawn to the phrase, “Why have you forsaken me?” that I miss “My God. My God.” From the very deepest point of hopelessness, comes the cry My God. Neither the Psalmist nor Jesus have given up claiming the one true God as their own God despite the suffering or the taunts of all gathered round.  

We only read the first 11 verses of Psalm this morning, but it continues through 31 verses. Some of the other lines of despair include, 

I am poured out like water,
And all my bones are out of joint. 

My heart has turned to wax;
It has melted away within me. 

And 

I can count all my bones;
People stare and gloat over me. 

They divide my garments among them
And cast lots for my clothing. 

But this is not all the 22^nd Psalm has to say, for this Psalm also cries loudly of hope. The Psalm also says, 

But you, O Lord, be not far off;
O my Strength, come quickly to help me. 

And 

For he has not despised or disdained
The suffering and the afflicted one; 

He has not hidden his face from him
But has listened to his cry for help. 

The Psalmists finds not just hope for himself, but for all who are in despair and sings out, 

All the ends of the earth
will remember and return to the Lord. 

And all the families of the nations
Will bow down before him. 

Even those who have died will find cause to praise God. As the Psalm says, 

All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
All who go down to the dust will kneel before him—
Those who cannot keep themselves alive. 

Posterity will serve him;
Future generations will be told about the Lord. 

They will proclaim his righteousness
To a people yet unborn—
For he has done it. 

The Psalm that began “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?” ends as a declaration of the sure and certain hope that even those who die have cause to praise God and because of what God has done, he will continue to be praised by future generation, by people yet unborn. 

This is not a song of desolation, but a song of praise sung in the midst of desolate circumstances. It is an Old Testament reminder of the Apostle Paul’s New Testament teaching that nothing can separate us from the love of God.  

The Psalm gave Jesus the words to cry from the cross as he grasped at Hope in the pit of his passion. The Psalm also gives us the words to cry out to God with when we feel that everything has fallen apart. And those words begin with the word “My.” My God, My God. Not the God of another, but the God who was with you in your mother’s womb. This is the God we are to trust when things go wrong. 

As one commentator on this passage has put it, 

Entrusting one’s life to this kind of God, as the psalmist did, as Jesus did, changes everything. For instance, life can be understood not as a frantic search for self-satisfaction and self-security, but as a matter of dependence on God.[1]  

God is with us in the heights of our joy and in the depths of despair. God is with us to redeem tragedy. And the way to find this hope is the way Jesus showed us. It comes through dependence on God. We find hope when we trust God despite the circumstances. We find hope when we acknowledge that our hope is founded on trusting God to make all things work together for the good and so we do not have to rely on our own strength, our own abilities. Instead we rely on God, trusting that nothing, and certainly not death, can separate us from the love of God that we see today expressed so clearly as Jesus willingly went to the cross in order to defeat suffering and death. 

Amen.