Psalm 22:1-31

In an article published a few years after the death of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, we learned that although Teresa received a clarion call from God to become a nun and serve the poor, after that the phone line with God seemed to go dead. She seems to have endured the proverbial “dark night of the soul” most of her long life. She begged to hear more from God but mostly did not, apparently. Yet those who knew her said that Mother Teresa radiated joy. She was by no means a dour person to be around. Something about that combination of a troubled soul and an outward joy expressed in testimony and work and service and worship seems to mirror Psalm 22. Out of desperate struggle emerges the joy of the Lord.

In her book Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved), Kate Bowler talks a lot about her research into the prosperity gospel and its incessantly sunny promises that God will shower rich blessings on all true believers if only they are faithful and devout enough. She wrote a whole book on the subject and was pretty jaded on this school of theological thought. But that was before she was diagnosed with a possibly fatal Stage 4 cancer at the age of 35 not long after she had at long last become a mother after a long struggle with infertility. Suddenly Bowler understood why the prosperity gospel has such appeal. Because she found herself thinking “I do not deserve this. I am a good person. God owes me better than this.” Deep down we all want this for ourselves, and if those who pedal the prosperity gospel are theologically and biblically wrong to promise such things as a kind of divine blank check, they are not humanly wrong in knowing that this is a deep vein of desire that can easily be tapped in most every person...

In the film The Shawshank Redemption the wrongly accused and wrongly imprisoned character of Andy DuFrense escapes prison after nearly 20 years of incarceration and misery. But before he can enter into the freedom of the outside world, his escape plan requires him to crawl nearly half a mile through one of the prison’s sewer waste pipes. There was no achieving freedom without first crawling through the foulness of human feces. There was promise on the other end of the pipe but in the meanwhile, there was no denying the awfulness of the pipe. It was putrid. Andy hated it. He threw up until he could not throw up anymore. But that undeniably horrible experience—as well as two decades of many hellish traumas inside the prison—only made his eventual freedom sweeter. You could not have one without the other. Which is what we have been saying about the genuineness of lament even in psalms that turn the corner to more hope. The hope shines brighter when we do not dismiss the awfulness of what came before.

In a scene from the film version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Hermione Granger attempts to tell her friends Ron and Harry why a fellow student of theirs is so conflicted. (You can watch the scene here). After piling up at least a half-dozen disparate things this young woman is experiencing and that caused her to cry in what should have been a happy moment, Hermione then listens as Ron exclaims, “One person couldn’t feel all of that. They’d explode.” Hermione then rejoins, “Just because you have the emotional range of a teaspoon!” But Hermione is right: each of us can at any given moment be a boiling mix of all kinds of conflicting and conflicted feelings. We can be simultaneously grateful and angry about something. We can be at once excessively sad over some loss in our life and yet feel profound happiness in another area of our lives. The psalmist who penned Psalm 22 definitely had a much wider range of emotions than a teaspoon. Here was a person who could hold in fruitful, faithful tension a wild variety of experiences and attendant emotions and yet somehow weave them together into a single poem that—if we are honest—is a pretty good reflection of where a lot of us are on any given day.

One of the darkest and most heartfelt expressions of rage against God’s hiddenness is a in a novel called “The Blood of the Lamb” by Peter Devries, who happens to come from my own Dutch Calvinist tribe, and was an alumnus of my own Calvin College. Known mostly as a comic writer, he wrote this one uncharacteristically autobiographical novel sometime after the tragic death of his young daughter from leukemia. The blood of the lamb refers this to Christ’s blood, and the tainted, diseased blood of Devries’ little lamb, his daughter. Here’s the central scene as described by blogger Jonathan Hiskes: For all of Wanderhope’s (the main character) Job-like arguing with the divine, his climactic action is a wordless gesture. At the false hope of Carol’s last remission, he brings a celebration cake with white icing. Then he learns of the infectious outbreak that finally takes his daughter...

In her recent book Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved), Kate Bowler talks a lot about her research into the prosperity gospel and its incessantly sunny promises that God will shower rich blessings on all true believers if only they are faithful and devout enough. She wrote a whole book on the subject and was pretty jaded on this school of theological thought. But that was before she was diagnosed with a possibly fatal Stage 4 cancer at the age of 35 and not long after she had at long last become a mother after a long struggle with infertility. Suddenly Bowler understood why the prosperity gospel has such appeal. Because she found herself thinking “I do not deserve this. I am a good person. God owes me better than this.” Deep down we all want this for ourselves, and if those who pedal the prosperity gospel are theologically and biblically wrong to promise such things as a kind of divine blank check, they are not humanly wrong in knowing that this is a deep vein of desire that can easily be tapped in most every person...

As I write this, the famous Davos Conference has concluded. That is the annual gathering of the world’s glitterati at a Swiss ski resort. As someone said, “It’s where the billionaires gather to talk to the millionaires about the middle class.” Once a year the world comes together to sing the praises of Mammon and discuss what that great god can do if we only apply ourselves better. What a different picture is painted in Psalm 22. But thanks be to God, even the rich, saved by the impossible grace of God, will one day “feast and worship” the God who became poor so that we might become rich.

You simply can’t end this sermon or the service in which you preach it without some reference to the old hymn by Horatius Bonar, “Not What My Hands Have Done.” It moves us away from traditional Lenten disciplines to a laser-like focus on the work of Christ. Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul; Not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole. Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God; Not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load. Thy grace alone, O God, to me can pardon speak; Thy power alone, O Son of God, can this sore bondage break. No other work save thine, no other blood will do; No strength, save that which is thine own, can bear me safely through. I bless the Christ of God; I rest on love divine; And with unfaltering lip and heart I call this Savior mine. ‘Tis he that saveth me and freely pardon gives; I love because he loveth me; I love because he lives.

Time magazine tells the story of the power of faith to make for deep satisfaction and joy in the life of one Karen Granger, 41. Last year, her husband Eric was laid off from his telecom job. Then in March, finally pregnant and eager to start a family, she had a miscarriage. One month later, her closest cousin, Sharon received a diagnosis of advanced breast cancer. No sooner did Granger return from visiting Sharon in Tower Lakes, Illinois, than two hurricanes smacked her hometown of Boynton Beach, Florida. Finally, in early December one of her best friends died at age 50 from a brain tumor. After that she quite naturally found herself asking, "Why, God? Why?" But Granger, a devout Christian who attends Presbyterian services weekly and prays daily, doesn't allow circumstances to get her down. "We're not in heaven, yet," she says, "and these things happen on this earth." Granger credits religion with helping her cope and giving her a feeling of connection and purpose. "We're putting our lives in God's hands and trusting he has our best interests at heart," she says. "I've clung to my faith more than ever this year. As a consequence, I haven't lost my joy."

(On Healing After Oklahoma City)

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