1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?[1] Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.
3 Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.
4 In you our ancestors trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
5 To you they cried, and were saved;
in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.
6 But I am a worm, and not human;
scorned by others, and despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock at me;
they make mouths at me, they shake their heads;[2]
8 ‘Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver—[3] let him rescue the one in whom he delights!’
9 Yet it was you who took me from the womb;
you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.
10 On you I was cast from my birth,
and since my mother bore me you have been my God.
11 Do not be far from me,
for trouble is near
and there is no one to help.
It is Maundy Thursday. The night before the crucifixion. The night of that Last Supper. Foot washing. The institution of a meal of remembering with broken bread and wine outpoured. Close companionship yet, as darkness falls, betrayal. Tears drop like blood as Christ prays in the Garden of Gethsemane. ‘Take this cup away from me… yet not my will, but yours, be done.’ Soldiers armed with clubs and swords swoop down. Arrest. An ear cut off. An ear healed. Fear. Flight. Furtive following. Fireside questions. Friendship thrice denied. A cock crows. A fond look of such disappointment. A fisherman’s frame shaking, tears and devastation. Mocking. Questioning. Crown of thorns. A king’s raiment. Pilate. ‘What is truth’. Silence. Venomous cries. Flogging. Handwashing. Handwringing. Crucify. Crucify. Crucify. Cross-carrying, stumbling, Passover lamb. Lifted high to die. Crying out, in dereliction and in hope: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.’ And so we have arrived. Psalm 22.
This psalm is unique. It holds within it prophetic imaginings of a violent death. Hundreds of years after it was penned, its opening lines were uttered from that execution site by Jesus. Those words were scorched into the memory of those friends who witnessed the horror of it. ‘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?... then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.’ (Mark 15.34-37)
When I was studying at theological college, my biblical studies tutors taught us a course on the psalms in the New Testament. When we came to this psalm I remember Paula Gooder’s introduction: ‘When we hear Jesus speak those opening words of Psalm 22, he wants us to read the psalm right to the end.’ The whole psalm takes us through phases of bitter complaint and lament which achingly predict a particular death. But the psalm’s trajectory continues to an extravagant pronouncement of utter trust in God. It rings joyously with an expansive hope whose horizon extends beyond sight into a future world. A world, in the psalmist’s poetic imagination, defined not by this death but the birth of a life-giving community of love where the afflicted and poor of the world will find fulness of life.
The psalms, as we are discovering, teach us a theology of realism and hope, of lament that is eye-wateringly honest, yet always convinced that God has not abandoned the plaintiff. It is in the very confidence of the complaint that the hope of God exists.
In these first 11 verses, we are taken on a dark journey into despair, a despair whose darkness is made far worse by the knowledge that the desolate one once knew what it was to trust God (vs4 & 5). Now this God seems so far away as almost not to exist; except, of course, that this plaintiff still has enough trust in God to ask God where he has gone. At this point the plaintiff no longer feels human (vs6), he is mocked and scorned, he is taunted (vs8) and he becomes so lost in the agony of it all that he effective blames God for his birth: ‘It was you who took me from the womb.’ (vs9). Yet, he also acknowledges that he has been utterly dependent upon God since his birth. And this section of the psalm, the end of the first complaint, is completed with an infant-like trusting cry: ‘Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no-one to help.’ (vs11)
On Maundy Thursday, Christians around the world would normally gather in numbers at night for a service of Holy Communion which would end with the darkening of the lights, the stripping of the altar, a reading of Psalm 22, and departure in silence. All those actions together would reinforce a shared sense of bleakness and a commitment to walk the way of the cross to ‘be ready to share its weight’ while 'declaring God’s love for the world’.[4] This year we share that sense of bleakness in an untethered stripped down way. We all grieve the loss of companionship. We sense that for most of us this has never been a journey we have done alone before. Covid-19 has stripped us of that closeness, which has year by year been one of the comforts of the inner journey into something Christ’s forsakenness.
This year, this psalm speaks out about the desolation so many are suffering: the desolation of loss and the added despair of not being able even to comfort the dying friend or relative, or to be able to mourn their death with others, or even to hold their hand, touch their face or say those words ‘I love you’. At Golgotha, Christ was not abandoned, even though all were helpless. He did at least have his mother and the other women and friends nearby to care for his body. Today’s Golgotha for many is an ICU - where the cry could easily be: 'My God, my God, why have you abandoned me.'
[1] Matthew
27.46 & Mark 15.34
[2]
Matthew 27.39 & Mark 15.29
[3]
Matthew 27.42
[4]
Morning Prayer for Passiontide in Common Worship Daily Prayer; © The Archbishops’
Council 2005, p250
“I am a worm” grabbed my attention reading Ps 22 today, and so I’ve looked up some comments on it. I’m told that the usual Hebrew word in the Bible for a worm is “rimmah”, which means a maggot – but the Hebrew word Jesus used here for worm, is “tola’ath”, which means “Crimson worm” or “Scarlet worm”. The Crimson worm (Kermes ilicis or Coccus ilicis) was the worm that was used to create red dye around the ancient Mediterranean. It’s more like a grub that attaches itself to trees, generally oak trees, to feed off the sap. Jesus would have seen the Crimson worm on Palestine oaks. When the female Crimson worm would give birth she would attach her body to the tree trunk and make a hard crimson shell. She would then lay eggs under her body and the protective shell. When the larvae hatch they stay under the shell. After a few days the mother dies. As she dies she oozes a crimson red dye which not only stains the wood she is attached to but also her young. So the worm in Ps 22:6 is an insect that leaves a crimson stain on a tree, like the blood stained cross at Calvary.
ReplyDeleteOne source (https://www.discovercreation.org/blog/2011/11/20/the-crimson-or-scarlet-worm/) also describes how after three days, the dead mother Crimson worm’s body loses its crimson colour and turns into a white wax which falls to the ground like snow.
Isaiah 1:18 Come now, let us argue it out,
says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool.