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Psalm 22:24-30 24 My praise is of him in the great assembly; 25 The poor shall eat and be satisfied, 26 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, 27 For kingship belongs to the Lord; he rules over the nations. 28 To him alone all who sleep in the earth bow down in worship; 29 My soul shall live for him; my descendants shall serve him; 30 They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn the saving deeds that he has done. This year, Monday Matters will focus on wisdom conveyed in the treasures of the book of Psalms. We’ll look at the psalms read in church before Monday Matters comes to your screen. |
Beyond forsakenness
We read Psalm 22 a lot in church. Well, let me qualify that. We read the first 21 verses of Psalm 22 a lot.
The first part of the psalm appears several times in Holy Week, and comes up in the daily lectionary, usually on Fridays, a weekly reminder of the events of Good Friday. The psalm begins with the plaintive prayer: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It’s a prayer Jesus offered from the cross. The following verses in the psalm describe the deepest kind of suffering, including a break in relationship with God, a profound sense of isolation.
On those days when the church seeks to recall the passion, the suffering of our Lord, the first 21 verses capture that pain. The remaining verses, which were read yesterday in church and which appear in the column on the left, mark a shift in tone. That says something important about our life of faith. It says something important about Easter faith.
When I began parish ministry, the learning curve was steep. I started in a church in a university town. The congregation was filled with some of the smartest, most put together people I’d ever run across. I saved a New Yorker cartoon which captured my feelings at the time. It shows a young man entering a swell cocktail party. The bubble over the young man’s head reads: Yikes! Grown-ups! That was kind of how I felt.
But a memorable lesson of this season of steep learning curve came as I began to get to know members of the congregation. Perhaps because I was newly sporting a clerical collar, they would open up to me about what was going on in their lives. I came to realize that you can scratch the surface of the most put-together person and you will find some area of brokenness, a need for healing of body, mind, spirit, relationship, memory, some acute sense of the suffering of the world. It led me to believe that healing ministries are some of the most important ministries of the church.
I later served for a number of years at a large church in Washington, DC, a church with an active healing ministry, offering prayers for healing and the laying on of hands right after people had received communion. The lines were long. As some of Washington’s most powerful people came to kneel, asking prayers for healing, I confess I would sometimes think: What on earth do you need healing for?
What I’ve learned is that we all come to church bearing the experience of brokenness, an encounter with suffering, a need for healing, the sense that we may have been forsaken.
But that is not the last word. We can turn the corner. We can move beyond forsakenness. We can find a way forward. (I’ll repeat a reference to two books that capture this possibility. Uncommon Gratitude: Thanks For All That Is, by Rowan Williams and Joan Chittister, and Hallelujah Anyway: Rediscovering Mercy by Anne Lamott.)
The concluding portion of Psalm 22 is read in Easter season as a reminder that we are never promised that we can skip the challenges. They are part of life. But those challenges are not the last word. They need not define us or determine our destiny. In many of the resurrection appearances, Jesus makes a point of showing the disciples his wounds. His new life bore those marks. And perhaps those marks only made the joy of resurrection richer. When the psalmist says that his praise will rise in the great assembly, that signals the hope of the Easter season.
As we continue our journey through the Easter season, may it be a reminder that resurrection literally means we can stand again. All will be well in the end. If all is not well, it’s not the end. How can you savor that possibility, that promise this week?
-Jay Sidebotham
