“A strange sort of foreshadowing”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Friday, October 20, 2023
Psalm 22 (Forward, p. 83 CEV p. 567
This psalm, made all the more famous and noteworthy because Jesus seems to have quoted from it as He lay dying on the cross, has always struck me as rather odd. Odd, firstly, because it seems to foreshadow much of what Jesus went through that Good Friday on the cross at Calvary. Here are just a few of them:
-the jeering, almost verbatim, of what was said that fateful day, together with the ribald suggestions that if He was truly God’s favourite, then God should come and rescue Him (verses 7-8,17b);
-the description of His enemies, those encircling Him around the cross, as being like a herd of powerful and wild bulls or as ravening and roaring lions or as a pack of dogs (verses 12-13,16,20-21);
-His thirst and dehydration and loss of strength there on the cross (verses 14-15);
-the fact that they gambled for his clothes (verse 18);
-and, of course, as suggested by verse 1, that He feels deserted and forsaken by God, which is a very real sense what actually did happen as Jesus bore our sin and became sin for us.
But even more odd, to me at least, if indeed Jesus is reciting this psalm in its entirety, is His sense of confidence and faith in God that everything will ‘turn out okay’, that God is indeed there and will see Him through this and ultimately save Him. Remember: this psalm was uttered long before the Resurrection, and even with Jesus, it was still somewhere in the future. God had never ‘pulled off’ this sort of thing before, and so it was certainly an act of trust on Jesus’ part, not only to consign Himself to God’s will in the first place, but also, as this psalm concludes, to praise Him for His eventual deliverance.
To me, then, this psalm not only constitutes a kind of foreshadowing in terms of Jesus and God, but also a foreshadowing of God’s care for us. No
matter what we are going through, He is still here, still for us, and still caring for us. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Forward notes: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress?” (verse 1).
“These words may sound familiar. These are the words spoken by Jesus as he hangs on the cross. As a Jew, Jesus the psalms of the Old Testament, and in that moment, it’s not surprising that Jesus was drawn to one of the psalms of lament.
“In a way, Jesus’ words of feeling forsaken by God help us to relate to the human side of his nature. If even Jesus felt abandoned by God at some point, then it gives cover to us when we have moments of doubt and frustration” when a loved one dies, we lose a job, money is tight, a situation doesn’t play out the way we hoped it would.
“Jesus’s words give me a sense of comfort: if Jesus struggled with wondering about God’s presence during a difficult time and yet God was still present, it’s okay for me to have moments that struggle with it, too, because God will always be present.”
Moving Forward: “When have you felt like God has forsaken you? In retrospect, can you see that God was present?”