A few years ago we took a trip to Europe. We started in London, and then went to stay with some friends in France. To get from London to Paris, we took a high speed train through the “chunnel,” the tunnel that goes underneath the English Channel. On the English side, it’s a bit of a ride out of London towards the coast, traveling through a lot of beautiful English countryside. Gorgeous, postcard-type green landscape. But as you get close, you slowly begin to head down towards the tunnel. The train drops further and further down, until you can barely see above ground, and then you enter the chunnel.

It’s an odd feeling. Claustrophobic. Scary, actually, when you stop and consider that at some points you are 250 feet below the channel, water beating down every second, and scary knowing that you will be travel there for 31 miles. Dark. Nothing to see. You are trusting what you know is going to happen, that eventually you will start gaining elevation and come out from underneath the water. And when you do, you will come up on the other side, in a whole new land where the sun is shining, people are biking, eating at cafes and speaking a beautifully different language. Amazing. But only way you get to the new land…is by going through the dark tunnel.

This week is something like that tunnel. We’re at the front end, the beautiful England side. The kids processed, palms waving, we heard the story of Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem, we all shouted “Hosanna.” But now, all of a sudden, we transition. The choir sings “King of the Wounds,” sorrow, grief, thorns and suffering. In a little while we’ll shout “Crucify Him!” We’re entering the tunnel where we will have to deal with ourselves, and with God. We will come out the other side, into a strange and wonderful land next weekend. But there’s no getting away from the darkness before.

So it seems particularly appropriate that as we turn for the 12th time to the Psalms this morning, we come to Psalm 22, a prayer which speaks into that darkness. And YET. There’s more as well.

Reading: Psalm 22:1-11

When we started reading the Psalms back in January, we said that though it’s fairly impossible to know just who wrote these psalms, the strong tradition is that it was King David, the poet laureate of Israel. And it’s interesting to wonder, if David wrote this Psalm- at what point was he writing?

This is a prayer of great intensity. It’s a prayer of anguish and assurance. It’s a prayer that leads us to despair, and to hope. What was David’s situation when he wrote?

Did he write it as he languished as a young man shepherding in the fields, put down by his brothers, ignored by his father, wondering if he would ever have opportunity to see the world, to use his talents? My God, my God…

Did he write it before he was to fight the giant Philistine Goliath, who 99 times out of 100 would snap him in two like a tiny twig? Why have you forsaken me?

Did he write it after he realized the crazed jealousy that his mentor and patron King Saul had developed for him, repeatedly trying to take his life? Why are you so far from helping me?

Did he write it when it became clear that he could no longer be around his best and covenant friend, Jonathan? Why are you so far from the words of my groaning?

Did he write it during his years in the wilderness, evading Saul, traveling with a band of rough outlaws, wondering how this fit into his anointing as king by Samuel all those years ago, his life now seemingly insignicant? Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer…

Did he write it in grief after bringing the ark of the covenant to Jerusalem, realizing his own wife despised him? All who see me mock me.

Did he write it in the dark pit of his own sin, knowing he had committed adultery, and murder? My God, my God.

Did he write it as his family was falling apart, as his own son chased him with murder in his eyes? My God, my God.

Did he write it as he saw his own death looming before him?
My God, my God…why have you forsaken me?

There is an intensity to reading this particular Psalm, this prayer, that is like few others in this book. It’s partly because of the intensity of David’s experience. And it’s because these are the same kinds of things, one way or another, that you and I face in our lives. To go through the trials of life- of friendships lost, friends dying, children rebelling, wondering about the insignificance of your life, wondering if it really counted for anything, the pain of marital strife…those things are hard enough, are they not? Or the fear of death that so controls our lives, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Huge things. Intense cries. But even worse than these things, to feel as though you cry out to God and are not heard. Or are not answered. Or to wonder if God even cares. My God, my God…why have you forsaken me?

I want to comment on two very small words in this Psalm, and then tie it back into this week, Holy Week, for a few minutes this morning.

The first comment is on the word MY (told you they were small words). MY God, MY God, why have you forsaken me? I merely want to note that even in despair, anger, pain and confusion, this Psalm, like the others, is prayer. It is conversation with God. This is not random emotion thrown out into the atmosphere. This is not like the prayer wheel in a park I’ve been to up on Whidbey Island, that invites you to spin it and send the prayers “spinning out into the universe.” This is not anger directed at an unknown god.

This is conversation. David is not praying to a god of possibilities, he is praying to MY God. David knows God. David has walked with God. David has been met by God. This is God, the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God that we will see later reflected in Jesus, this is the God of heaven and earth, this is David’s friend, David’s maker, David’s companion, David a man after God’s own heart- MY God, MY God, why have you forsaken me?

David is in a very difficult time, a time of intensity and emotion and turmoil, whatever is going on. And the MY is critical. As long as David cries out MY God, he is still in the conversation. It’s a word for us this morning, for anyone who knows God- stay in the conversation. Be angry, be confused, cry out, be honest, but don’t try to change the God you know into the random forces of the universe. You know God and whatever your hard situation, whatever the dark night, however long the tunnel, you need to stay in the conversation, even if it feels like it’s pretty one-sided, stay in the conversation. MY God, MY God, why have you forsaken me? The first word to pay attention to is: MY.

The second word: YET. Now, today we’re only reading the first eleven verses of this Psalm. After these verses, it transitions into other things, including a very long section of praise. But just in these eleven verses, notice the two times that the Psalmist says YET.

David says “Why have you forsaken me, why far from me, why not answering me, why not giving me rest?” Huge lament. Then in verse 3 “YET…you are holy.” Enthroned on the praises of Israel. Our ancestors trusted, you delivered, they cried, you saved. YET. The Psalmist is remembering. The conversation of despair is also boundaried by remembering. “God, I don’t know why you haven’t shown up, or spoken…YET I remember how you have met me/us in the past.”

There is a lifetime, there are thousands of years of testimonies that will shout out that God, MY God, is a God who has acted, met, healed, saved, delivered, rescued. You have a story. You could write a book. When God’s people come together, it’s part of what we do, we tell stories, we sing songs of what God has done, where he has shown up, we remember, we remind- this is God, My God, I may not see him right now, we may be at an impasse in the conversation at this moment, or this year, but let us not be foolish enough to say he doesn’t act, or care, or love me, there’s too much evidence, the testimony of generations cries out, and if the voices are silent, Jesus once said, the rocks and stones themselves will cry out. All may be dark,YET. You are holy.

Verse 6 continues with a similar pattern. But instead of lamenting God’s apparent absence, the Psalmist complains about people: God, I am despised by people, I am nothing, not respected, mocked, scorned. I am personally being annihilated and what’s worse God, is they are lumping you with me, taunting me “C’mon, you who say God will deliver you, God will rescue you, let’s see it now!” (if sounds like the words shouted at Jesus on the cross, you get extra credit).

It’s terrible, it’s personal, I’m being crushed. YET. There it is again, verse 9. YET- “You took me from the womb, You kept me safe from birth, ever since I have entered the world you have been my God, you have been with me. I know it, I remember it, I’m reminded, I bear testimony to it, I lean on YOU God, you have always been with me so how can I not cling to you now?” Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help YET I know you have loved me my whole life. As part of faith, I hold up to you the worst of life.

This is prayer. Real prayer, honest prayer. No matter what- we stay in the conversation. And we remember, YET, how God has met us. The difficulty of the present does not negate the testimony of the past, nor does it obscure the light of the future.

Now. All four New Testament gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, have the story of Jesus’ passion, his death. But many people down through history have referred to Psalm 22 as “a fifth Gospel” account of the crucifixion because of how important it is in understanding Jesus’ death.

In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John’s versions of Jesus’ passion there are roughly 13 Old Testament texts specifically quoted. Out of those 13, 8 are from the Psalms. And out of those 8, 5 of the quotations are from Psalm 22. If we are to understand Jesus and his death, Psalm 22 is an important places to start.

If Psalm 22 is a crying out lament to God from David’s mouth, or from your mouth or from my mouth…what does it mean that it is exactly these words which come out of the mouth of the Son of God, out of Jesus’ mouth on the cross? My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

However intense it was in the Psalmist’s prayer, it has just ratcheted up infinitely as Jesus spits it out. Whatever pain and suffering goes on in our life, whatever sense of abandonment, Jesus has entered into it, nailed onto a cross. He has taken on suffering, joined the company of the afflicted, absorbed it into himself. He knows what it is like to feel God-abandoned. It is our sin, but not only our sin that Jesus took upon himself, but also our suffering and grief and sorrows, absorbed it all into himself. That changes everything. In fact, I think it changes suffering.

In our culture, we try everything we can to avoid suffering, don’t we?

Much of the time, we’re not actually avoiding suffering we’re just avoiding inconvenience. So we change our world. We accumulate things. We build huge houses with a/c, heat, flush toilets, we drive cars, we use cellphones everywhere. We’re not avoiding suffering, just inconvenience.

Sometimes we work to avoid real suffering. Avoid suffering of our psychological selves with counseling or medication. Avoid suffering of our social selves by keeping boundaries, or staying away from certain people. We access (some of us) incredible, almost unlimited medical treatment for our bodies to avoid even slight physical suffering and pain.

And certainly we try to avoid the suffering of death. As much as we can, we avoid death by postponing it, by wringing every minute of life that we can.

We move as far away from suffering as we can. And in a culture of resources like ours, sometimes we can stay away from it for quite awhile. But eventually, things happen. Accidents, people get sick, jobs are lost, people die. It creates grief and suffering and one way or another we are forced to deal with it. It is a form of “prosperity gospel” to think that suffering will not be part of the human experience, or part of the Christian experience. It’s a pretty shallow way of thinking.

And at whatever point we experience loss, suffering, grief, it is the most human thing in the world for us to think that God is surely not with us. Because if he was, this wouldn’t have happened, or He would fix it, right? My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

But what if in Christ God has experienced it all, taken it upon himself, changed it? What if our experience of suffering, does not mean that God is not with us? What if my suffering does not mean God has abandoned me? What if, no matter what the hole that we are in, yet God is with us? What if, in Christ, God has absorbed and is transforming suffering?

The Catholic theologian Peter Kreeft says, “Every tear we shed becomes His tear. He may not YET wipe them away, but he makes them his own.” Jesus did not bring advice, or sympathy, but Himself. It that suffering has been changed, it means God is bent towards those who suffer and grieve. This is something far, far deeper than thinking God is a short-order cook obligated to give us what makes us happy.

Do you remember Corrie Ten Boom, the Dutch Christian woman who sheltered Jews from the Nazis, whose story was in a book and movie called The Hiding Place? After years of hiding people, her whole family was finally arrested and sent to concentration camps, where they died one by one, except for Corrie. In the midst of such terrible suffering, she said “No matter how deep our darkness, Jesus is deeper still.”

In holy week, we walk with Jesus, as much as we can, into Jerusalem and up the hill to the cross. We take our sin, our brokenness, our suffering with us to Jesus. We enter into a long and dark and deep tunnel. We will come to the other side, we will come to another land, there the Son will be shining, Easter morning. But the only way to get there is through the tunnel.