The Unspoken Pain Beneath the Spoken Word
A Sermon preached at St. Luke's Church
by The Rev. Anne E. Hodges-Copple
 on the Second Sunday of Lent, 12 March 2006
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Psalm 22:22-30
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38
   
    Okay: pop quiz. If I asked you to say without looking what the message of today’s Psalm reading is? How would you do? Initially you might panic, because, frankly, it sped right by you. On the other hand you might make the safe guess and throw out an answer: “Praise and glory!”  And you’d be right.
    Sounds like things are going pretty well for the psalmist; sounds like maybe composed in the spring time. Good times.  Maybe the Psalmist is having a particularly grand day: “Praise the Lord, you that fear him….Stand in awe of him.”  Things must be going well.  So it might surprise you to learn that these verses are actually the conclusion of a Psalm of lamentation. You might not have guessed that the opening verses of this Psalm, the verses we did not read, speak of abandonment by God, derision by enemies, relentless physical pain.
My God, My God: why has thou 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.
    You’ve heard these verses before. Remember where? The composer of this lament, perhaps King David, is experiencing acute pain of body as well as mind and heart……
I am poured out like water,
   and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
   it is melted within my breast;
my mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
   and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
   you lay me in the dust of death.
For dogs are all around me;
   a company of evildoers encircles me.
My hands and feet have shriveled;
I can count all my bones.
They stare and gloat over me;
they divide my clothes among themselves,
   and for my clothing they cast lots
    This Psalm was so well known by Jews that it was the prayer he offered  as he hung from the Cross.  It is the cry that comes from every human soul at some point: a cry of pain; a cry of abandonment, a cry of desolation and unbearable misery. Misery not just from the presenting issues of disease …..but the pain of thinking/feeling that on top of it all, even God is silent. Even God is absent. Even God seems either not to care
    Rarely do we want to spend much time in the valley of such despair and lament. Maybe on Palm Sunday and on Good Friday, when we recite beginning of Psalm 22.  But why call attention to a portion of the psalm that is not included in today’s readings? Why mention the things that are better left unsaid?
    Well, I guess I find it all the more compelling, all the more challenging that the voice that is raised from the middle of the congregation in praise of God, with complete and utter trust in God is also the voice of one who has known incredible, almost unbearable pain; including the final insult upon injury that God had abandoned him? That sounds like a kind of faith I need to know more about. A kind of faith I need more of.
    In Lent we give ourselves all kinds of permission to think about our sins. We are challenged to examine our lives for the areas we are failing God and failing one another. We ask for clean and contrite hearts;  conversion of life; forgiveness for our failings.  But where/when do we get permission to say: I am suffering! I am in pain! I am distraught. Pain and disease and betrayal and loss have been inflicted upon me. Where do we get the chance to shout to heaven a piercing disappointment with life that is not in any obvious way a result of our sin?
    The liberating Word of Jesus, the healing touch of Jesus for those in great pain revealed the cold heartedness of the religious leaders who rationalized keeping a distance from the pain and suffering of others. Instead, Jesus went to the diseased and the unclean (all sinners of course) and embraced them not with judgment but mercy. Jesus did not admonish the blind and the lame for a lack of faithful adherence to the purity codes of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus pitied them for their lack of faith in a loving, healing and merciful God.
    But that would never happen now, would it? We who gather in the name of Jesus would never try to avoid people who are experiencing a time of great hardship and suffering. Nor would we ever try to hide the pain in our own lives; pain that sometimes creeps up from the ocean floor of our souls and threatens to pull us back down to cold depths of despair.  We have never greeted someone with a jolly “Hey, how are you?” and then quickly back pedaled out of the conversation when the other dared to give us an honest answer: "Things are not well. Life is not good. Prayers are not being answered.”  We would never back away from such a sudden and unexpected response, embarrassed that someone would not know that the question “How are you?” is merely rhetorical; a polite formality and tacit agreement of  “I won’t tell you my troubles if you won’t tell me yours.”  That has never happened to any of us, has it?
    Just because pain and disappointment aren’t always spoken aloud, doesn’t mean that they are not here.  Just because coffee hour may not always be the best place to give voice to our pain, doesn’t mean that we don’t need some place to shout our frustrations to heaven.  A Psalm of lamentation is our permission to say in front of God and in front of God’s people: “Things are not okay with me. My enemies are about to overwhelm me and I don’t see any hope on the horizon.  My longest, fondest hope is to have a child and I am still barren and now in advanced age.  My doctors tell me that bipolar disease is just something I will have to learn to live with along with a lifetime of medications.   My best friend, my soul mate, has betrayed me and there is no one I can turn to; no one I can trust because I no longer even trust myself.”
    Sentiments like these abound. They are here this morning. They are in our homes and our wider and overlapping communities.   Sometimes they are spoken out loud. But most often they are left unsaid. But our lamentations are here. And they belong here. Though we may rarely speak them aloud, we are invited to bring them forward; with the bread, the wine, the gifts, our confession and our hopes, we also bring forward our sorrows and our longings.
    I think one of the reasons so many of us are actually quite fond of Lent is that it is the one time of year where the Church gives explicit expression to just how hard, just how plain hard life can be.  Lent teaches us the disturbing but strangely comforting truth that discipleship is not, in its final sense, about happiness and success. The way of Jesus, the way of the cross gives the lie to the notion that wealth and prosperity are the rewards for an unwavering faith in God.  Lent prepares us not only to walk with Jesus through his suffering, but to welcome him to walk with us through ours (our suffering. )
     Despite the beautiful and early spring we are enjoying, I know there is still a winter of sorrow in many hearts. Despite how happy some are to be at church, there are others who couldn’t bring themselves to get here. Despite a culture that worships success and shuns failures, we gather this morning to worship a God who died on a cross: a seeming failure to the community disciples who could never quite understand him.  Despite our prayers that life be just a little easier, we know that we may have to go on for awhile, like Abraham and Sarah, trusting that God’s plans for us take time, take a long time.
    Each of us has parts of our lives not explained in words; not so much hidden, although that is true in some cases, but just not needing to be spoken today. Still, those laments are here. We each have them. God hears them; knows them and….welcomes them.  We carry on. And we take courage and heart that others around us carry on. And on the days we can’t get beyond the first verses of lament, we are grateful that someone else stands up in the congregation and reminds us of how it all ends: in praise. in hope. in trust in God.
    So where is the comfort in all that? Well it is right here! It is all around you.
I see examples of complete Psalm 22, verses 1-23 faith all around me in this parish.  On Sundays in public worship, we mostly share the later verses with one another: the praise and thanksgiving parts of life. But most of us have those early verses some where in our lives ; maybe present, maybe past, but its there. And so many of you carry this so gracefully, so faithfully, so patiently that it bolsters my faith. Your witness of discipleship to endure loss and pain and yet praise God makes me want to praise God all the more.
    It is in our times of lamentation that we find our trust in God most important. Not because it immediately solves the problems of the short term, but we believe and trust God’s promise that all will be well in the long term. That’s the promise: we are part of something bigger. Even when we can't see it or understand it, God is good all the time. Whether we are praying the beginning, the ending or the entirety of  Psalm 22,  millions upon millions of voices join us in our hour of need. Others have felt this way. Our savior, Jesus, felt his way. And somehow, the savior who has traveled this way before will show us the way today: through the dark; through the despair; through the disappointment and into a new life.  Amen

This page updated 05 April 2006