Readings:
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16;
Psalm 22:23-31;
Romans 4:13-25;
Mark 8:31-38

Collect:
O Christ, Son of the Living God,
who for a season laid aside the divine glory
and learned obedience through suffering:
teach us in all our afflictions to raise our eyes
to the place of your mercy
and to find in you our peace and deliverance.
This we pray in your name. Amen

 Reflection  

When I saw that Psalm 22 was set for today, my heart sank. This is the one we read on Good Friday and begins, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This wail of despair is hard enough just to read on the day, let alone prepare a reflection on it.

Obviously, I accept this is a Lenten psalm, and we are now into the second week of Lent already, so it’s good right and proper that we should be thinking about just this sort of thing. But this Lent, I’ve been thinking differently. I’ve decided that this is not the Lent to be reminded about my own suffering and affliction, about the discipline I need and deprivation I might suffer. Seems to me we’ve had quite enough of that, thank you. This Lent I’ve been reminding myself, and anyone who will listen to me, that this is preparation for spring, the season of new growth, of new beginnings, of awakening. After all, the very word “lent” originally meant just that, the season of spring.

And then I went and read the portion of the psalm set for today again. Always good to actually read the readings of the day, or at least remember them well. The beginning of the psalm is indeed etched with deep pain, and this influences our way through the story of Lent. But more than one commentator reminds readers of the gospels that Psalm 22 is a psalm of praise as much as a psalm of lament.

As with so many psalms, this psalm does not hide from God the pain and struggle, the feelings of abandonment we may experience. This is an honest psalm and the Common English Bible’s translation of the opening words are spot on: “My God! My God, why have you left me alone?” There are a lot of people who have felt left alone this last year. People have lost jobs, work has dried up and some people have not even been able to open their businesses. Friends and family have been sick and when people have died, the grief has been compounded that we’ve not even been able to meet up to comfort each other, to cherish the memories and tell the stories of that person’s life. It’s not right. It’s not fair. So, with the psalmist we lament our grief, our loneliness, our brokenness.

But there is more to this psalm. There is a change at verse 19 which is complete by verse 23. The psalmist has shouted at God, angrily appealed to God, but now calls out, even pleads: come and rescue me, come deliver me. And finally, the psalmist discerns God’s answer. This is not a clever answer, nor is it an answer that solves the riddle of pain and suffering. It is the simple answer of God’s presence in suffering, even in death. And this is the story we tell all the way through Lent, the story of presence. The story of Easter and Pentecost … in fact the story all through the Christian year.

There is no time, there is no event, there is no place from which the presence of God is absent. We readers hear the psalmist’s abandonment, and some of us have felt that abandonment ourselves. The Lenten story tells us that this abandonment is even known by God, because Jesus knew it too. So, even out of the depths of despair comes praise to God, for God is not hidden, but very present: Lord in life and in death.

Barry Lotz