My God, My God…WHY?
Why have you abandoned me?
This coming Sunday, we’re studying Psalm 22, from which Jesus quoted on the cross, and which describes his experience of the cross — during, and after.
Of this Psalm, Athanasius wrote in a letter to Marcellinus:
In the 22nd Psalm it speaks from the Savior’s own person of the kind of death he would undergo…After teaching all these things it then adds that the Lord suffered these things not for himself, but for us.
And Dietrich Bonhoeffer reflected in Life Together :
The Psalms that will not cross our lips as prayers, those that make us falter and offend us, make us suspect that here someone else is praying, not we — that the one who…has come to such infinite depths of suffering, is none other than Jesus Christ himself. It is he who is praying here…The New Testament and the church have always recognized and testified to this truth. The human Jesus Christ to whom no affliction, no illness, no suffering is unknown, and who yet was the wholly innocent and righteous one, is praying in the Psalter through the mouth of his congregation.
Psalm 22
FROM SUFFERING TO PRAISE
For the choir director: according to “The Deer of the Dawn.” A psalm of David.
1 My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
Why are you so far from my deliverance
and from my words of groaning?
2 My God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
by night, yet I have no rest.
3 But you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
4 Our ancestors trusted in you;
they trusted, and you rescued them.
5 They cried to you and were set free;
they trusted in you and were not disgraced.
6 But I am a worm and not a man,
scorned by mankind and despised by people.
7 Everyone who sees me mocks me;
they sneer and shake their heads:
8 “He relies on the LORD;
let him save him;
let the LORD rescue him,
since he takes pleasure in him.”
9 It was you who brought me out of the womb,
making me secure at my mother’s breast.
10 I was given over to you at birth;
you have been my God from my mother’s womb.
11 Don’t be far from me, because distress is near
and there’s no one to help.
12 Many bulls surround me;
strong ones of Bashan encircle me.
13 They open their mouths against me—
lions, mauling and roaring.
14 I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are disjointed;
my heart is like wax,
melting within me.
15 My strength is dried up like baked clay;
my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
You put me into the dust of death.
16 For dogs have surrounded me;
a gang of evildoers has closed in on me;
they pierced my hands and my feet.
17 I can count all my bones;
people look and stare at me.
18 They divided my garments among themselves,
and they cast lots for my clothing.
19 But you, LORD, don’t be far away.
My strength, come quickly to help me.
20 Rescue my life from the sword,
my only life from the power of these dogs.
21 Save me from the lion’s mouth,
from the horns of wild oxen.
You answered me!
22 I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters;
I will praise you in the assembly.
23 You who fear the LORD, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!
All you descendants of Israel, revere him!
24 For he has not despised or abhorred
the torment of the oppressed.
He did not hide his face from him
but listened when he cried to him for help.
25 I will give praise in the great assembly
because of you;
I will fulfill my vows
before those who fear you.,
26 The humble will eat and be satisfied;
those who seek the LORD will praise him.
May your hearts live forever!
27 All the ends of the earth will remember
and turn to the LORD.
All the families of the nations
will bow down before you,
28 for kingship belongs to the LORD;
he rules the nations.
29 All who prosper on earth will eat and bow down;
all those who go down to the dust
will kneel before him—
even the one who cannot preserve his life.
30 Their descendants will serve him;
the next generation will be told about the Lord.
31 They will come and declare his righteousness;
to a people yet to be born
they will declare what he has done.
