Forsaken?

 Forsaken?

Psalm 22[1]

On Sunday we talked about the prayer that Luke’s Gospel places on Jesus’ lips as he was dying: “into your hands I commend my spirit” (Ps 31:5). I mentioned how hard it is for us to understand that as a prayer entrusting all of life into God’s hands because it has become associated with Jesus’ death. Our Psalm for this evening, Psalm 22, is equally difficult for us to hear for the same reason. Matthew and Mark recount Jesus’ final cry with the words of Psalm 22: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 26:6; Mk 15:34). They actually report variations of the Aramaic words Jesus used: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” But because Matthew and Mark associated those words with Jesus’ death, we tend to hear them as a cry of desperation, not a cry of faith.

I’ve chosen this as the final Psalm in our series on “Faith in the Psalms” for this very reason. Because while the cry, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” in Psalm 22 clearly express the anguish of the psalm-singer, it is not a cry of desperation, but most definitely one of faith. The same person who asks at the outset, “why have you forsaken me?” can also affirm that God “has not forgotten those who are hurting. He has not turned away from their suffering. He has not turned his face away from them. He has listened to their cry for help” (adapted from Ps 22:24, NIRV). And yet, I think that initial cry, “why have you forsaken me?” haunts us all at times. We wonder whether God might actually abandon us in our time of greatest need.

Again, I would say that fear is actually engendered by the way we’ve heard Jesus’ cry from the cross. The prospect that God abandoned Jesus at the moment when he fulfilled his commitment to God’s purpose most completely is hard for us to process. I think Jesus knew he had to give up his life. And yet he cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” I think Jesus trusted that God would raise him from the dead. And yet he cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” What troubles us about all this is the question where God was while Jesus was hanging on the cross and crying out in anguish.

I know the standard response: “God had to turn away because Jesus took all the sin of the world on himself, and God cannot look upon sin.” That just doesn’t cut it. It never has for me. How can we find any meaning in the promise elsewhere in Scripture that “I will never abandon you” (Dt 31:6; Josh 1:5; Heb 13:5) if God abandoned Jesus on the cross? And yet the question still haunts us: where was God during the awful silence that followed Jesus’ prayer, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me”? It is a prayer after all, addressed to God. Jesus wasn’t just acting out some sort of elaborate play. This was the real thing. And when the agony of the cross overwhelmed him, Jesus cried out one of the most heartbreaking prayers of the Bible. And God’s response was … ? Actually that’s precisely the question. What was God’s response? Did God really forsake Jesus on the cross?

Maybe we’ve been looking at this in the wrong way all along. We tend to equate silence with abandonment. But maybe that’s not what’s going on at all. Sometimes we’re silent with those who are suffering because we’re suffering with them. I believe that’s where God was; rather than abandoning Jesus, God was right there, experiencing all the anguish that heartbreaking prayer expresses.[2] God was silent because God was suffering with Jesus. To some of us it might seem even more deeply unsettling that God would allow himself to become so apparently powerless and weak.

Again, I think it depends on how we look at it. The Scriptures tell the story of how, time and again, God reveals his power in precisely in weakness.[3] This is a mystery as deep and as hard to explain as any in the Bible. In the moment when Jesus uttered that heart-rending cry, God made it clear once and for all that his suffering has become our redemption, that his apparent weakness was actually his powerful love transforming all creation. Yet it also communicates the absolutely essential truth that God suffers with us. Especially when God is silent. Especially when we may think God has abandoned us! In fact, I would say that’s one of the lessons of Psalm 22: God is with all who suffer. He never abandons anyone. And his presence with us, his support for us is so real that God actually suffers with us when we’re suffering. I think that’s what Jesus’ cry on the cross teaches us. I think that’s also what Psalm 22 teaches us.

I think it’s also important, however, to notice that the psalm-singer expresses his faith in God in the form of a question. And it’s certainly not a question we might use in prayer to God! It has an edge on it: “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” (Ps. 22:1-2). That’s quite a question to put to God in prayer! Most of us probably wouldn’t feel comfortable being that “in your face” with God. But not only did the psalm-singer ask that question, so did Jesus! And they’re not the only ones. Prophets and sages and spiritual guides from Bible times to the present day have expressed their faith in God by asking what we might consider to be “impolite” or maybe even “irreverent” questions. It might seem like “expressing faith” and asking “irreverent” questions of God couldn’t possibly go together. But I think that’s one of the lessons of Psalm 22: when we feel abandoned by God and we wonder where God is, it doesn’t threaten God at all to be that honest with him in our suffering!

But the psalm-singer discovered what Jesus knew when he made that cry: God is with all who suffer. Prophets and sages and spiritual guides throughout the ages have discovered the same truth: God is the one who’s on the side of those who suffer, all who suffer. Again, the psalm-singer says it this way: God “has not forgotten those who are hurting. He has not turned away from their suffering. He has not turned his face away from them. He has listened to their cry for help” (Ps 22:24).[4] I particularly like the way Gene Peterson puts it in The Message: “He has never let you down, never looked the other way when you were being kicked around. He has never wandered off to do his own thing; he has been right there, listening.” And I would add: “and suffering every bit as much as you, maybe even more”!

As we bring our discussion of “Faith in the Psalms” to a conclusion, it seems to me one of the most important lessons for us to learn is that God is always “God-who-is-with-us.” Most particularly when we are suffering. God is always the one who is giving us the strength to go on, always the one who is comforting us in our sorrows, always the one who raises us up when we fall, always the one who hears our every cry for help. That is the lesson of the Psalms. God is the one who never abandons us, even and especially in the worst of the pain we may have to undergo in this life. And his presence with us, his support for us is so real that God actually suffers with us. The lesson of the cry that opens this Psalm, the lesson of Jesus’ cry from the cross, is that we are never, ever forsaken by God!

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[1] © 2025 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm Phd on 4/17/2025 for Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.

[2] In several of Jürgen Moltmann’s works he holds in tension the idea that Jesus died a “God-forsaken” death together with the idea that Jesus was never more closely aligned with God’s will than when he died on the cross. He resolves this tension in different ways in several of his works, but in The Way of Jesus Christ, 173, he says that far from being unconcerned about what was happening, far from abandoning his Son, “in the surrender of the Son the Father surrenders himself too.”

[3] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV:244-48. Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 205: “God is not greater that he is in this humiliation.  God is not more glorious than he is in this self-surrender.  God is not more powerful than he is in this helplessness.  God is not more divine than he is in this humanity.”

[4] Cf. J. Clinton McCann, Jr., “The Book of Psalms,” New Interpreters Bible IV: 764: “The affliction is still very real, but the affliction itself has somehow become an answer (v. 21b). What the psalmist now affirms is that God is present with the afflicted.”