Feeling Forsaken

I feel forsaken? Psalm 22:1-15

1. Separation is one of the hardest things in life to get through

• “My God, my God, why have you 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.”

• This is not the cry of a lonely person, but an abandoned one. Its awareness of an absent

• Jesus, in agony on the cross, said this Psalm: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

• Jesus of Nazareth is alone in the world, he’s been seized by authorities, forsaken by feeble friends and has spikes through his wrists and feet.

• His head is crowned with a wreath of thorns, causing blood to trickle down over his face. His pain level is 12 on a scale of 1-10, and he’s close to suffocation.

2. Jesus’s Agony was laid upon him by His Father

• He asks His Father “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Why have you abandoned me?

• You! Of all those I might have suspected of desertion, I never thought that you would leave me

• Suffering is bad enough, but when one suffers alone, it’s worse. And when one suffers in the apparent absence of a God to deliver us,

• Jesus Shortly before dying, he said, “‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (John 19:30). But he also said, “crying with a loud voice … ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ Having said this, he breathed his last” (Luke 23:46).

• Job to in his suffering seemed to have lost God Here, the old patriarch Job is not in danger of losing his faith, even though in this reading, he cannot seem to locate God: “Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling! I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments” (Job 23:3-4).

• Though losing everything, Job refuses to lose his faith. He argues with God, to be sure. His friends ridicule him, as does his wife. They are right forsaken is Job.

• But Job, when the dust settles, announces quite firmly: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth” (Job 19:25).

3. During Covid -19 Many of our folks have encountered the same feelings of forsaken-ness

• unable to attend in-person services or connect to human support systems — have felt precisely as does the writer in today’s psalm reading.

• A survey of 2,000 people led by The Harris Poll revealed that 72% experience loneliness.

• So, what do we do when we are assailed by doubts and feel forsaken by God?

4. Probably the only thing that can really help forsakenness is Relax

• WE like Job have “laid your case before him,” and we have “filled [our] mouth with arguments” (Job 23:4).

• Only God can really pulls us through the storms God who can pull us from the pit, the despair

• During our forsaken-ness one is not unscathed. Even Jacob had a limp for the rest of his life when he wrestled with the Divine opponent. But God can do something with that limp.

• Henri Nouwen alludes to forsakenness: “Nobody escapes being wounded. We are all wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally or spiritually. The main question is not, ‘How can we hide our wounds?’ so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’ When our wounds cease to be a source of shame, and become a source of healing, we have become wounded healers.”

• Remember Peter after Peter denied Him he felt forsaken: Peter after breakfast on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Peter, wounded by doubt, fear and denials, now hears Jesus say to him, “Feed my sheep.”

• At the beginning of our ordeal, you began by saying, “My God, my God, I can’t believe this!” At the end, you say, “My Lord and God, I believe!”