Psalm 22:1-2

Psalm 22:1-2

B.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?  O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.”

Religion is a necessity in the heart of man.  It is the function of how he reconciles his heart, which desires goodness, with a world, that though it advertises goodness, does not follow through with any version of it that satisfies.  We are born with a desire for life, and yet, from the moment of our birth, we begin the slow advance toward the moment of our death.  Despite all of our efforts to fulfill the desires we have, to defend the life we live, to protect the life of the ones we love, the knowledge of our inevitable end pronounces the ultimate failure in whatever end we seek to achieve with our lives before we even begin.  There is nothing gained that will not be lost, nothing built that will not eventually be torn down.  It is as if life is an elaborate hoax that whets our appetites for some grand treasure to be found, and we spend our entire lives digging deep below the surface.  But at the end, we find we have created nothing more than a big whole in the ground, to which we finally surrender our own bodies—spent, demoralized, and defeated—welcoming death as the only comfort to a life unfulfilled. 

In this way, we see that death, for us, is the great evaluator of life.  It is God’s intervention into our selfishness to re-teach us about the value inherent in life.  It is only because of death that we even bother about what is good.  Because of death, our life becomes a limited commodity, and by consequence, of precious value. We are forced to decide what is worth most in life so that we may spend the little time we have living for what has the greatest value.  But, the degree that man is able to perceive value in life is the degree that he is able to perceive the profundity of the inevitable loss that awaits him in death.  The height of his ability to cherish life becomes the depth of his despair in his efforts to protect what he wishes to keep.  And so, man, in his despair, turns to God, crying out, “Why have you forsaken me?  What is this life that exists to arouse my desires only to extinguish them?  I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.”  Man needs religion, because man needs hope.  In order to sustain his life by pursuing his desires, man must have a reason to believe that his desires are worth pursuing.  In a life that is ruled by death, he has no reason to believe that value exists unless he believes that life is somehow greater than death—that goodness prevails over evil in spite of our ability to experience it.  Therefore, mankind has filled the world with his own varied interpretations of this existential necessity of religion.

Jesus Christ is one among many who have proclaimed to have the truth that every man seeks.  Jesus Christ, however, is different in one regard: He faced our enemies—sin and death—clothed in the humility of human form, and rose victorious, making a public spectacle of them in His triumph.  Jesus Christ did not merely tell us what was true when He told us He is the Son of God.  He demonstrated the word He spoke, and through the Spirit of holiness, was declared with power to be the Son of God.   Jesus Christ not only taught us what was good, but he bore the evil we bear.  He suffered the hopelessness and futility we suffer, and in His greatest moment of desperation, when it seemed like the Father had abandoned Him, He cried out as we cry out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” 

The story of Easter is not only a story of our redemption in Christ’s conquering death.  It is the story of how He saved us by becoming like us.  He proved to us that no matter how hopeless it seems—there is always hope.  He has shown us that the unbearable can be born, and even though the world seems like darkness, the Son of Righteousness has risen with healing in His wings.  For, in Christ, we see suffering conquered through suffering, death overcome through death, weakness by weakness, and strength in surrender.  For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering, so that we, too, may learn to battle weakness with weakness, suffering through suffering, and death by death.  If Jesus gave Himself willingly to death, with trembling, trusting absolutely in the power of God, then we must live earnestly for our captain, with much trembling, trusting in the same—for both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all one, and because one died for all in the same manner in which we live, our weakness becomes our strength.  All who live in Christ no longer fear death or live for this world which passes, but now find their value in this same death, which is to live for Him who died and was raised again—for to live is Christ, and to die is now our greatest gain.

The Lord is risen!

Happy Easter!