My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
These are the words of scripture from Psalm 22 Jesus cries out, shouts out from the cross as he breaths his last breath. It is a lament from scripture of human nature prone to violence and destruction.
God sent Jesus to offer hope, grace, and new life. He was met with violence and death. The horror of the cross is repeated every day as we turn on and watch the news of hate and violence that gets sensationalized by every news media outlet.
Will we ever learn? I know Jesus cries out daily watching the horrors of our world.
The issue isn't one that can be won, only lost.
We politicize everything. We place blame on the other. We find ways to divide in the midst of tragedy rather than unite. We take horror and turn it into a battle, rather than a mission to conquer.
What if our outrage and disgust brought us together for a greater good. What if our rage was used to find ways to overcome division and offer hope and peace.
Instead of words of division and diatribe of hate for inaction. Instead of saying thoughts and prayers aren't enough, let's come together. Have the difficult conversations. Know how much pain we are all in. Know that we weep, mourn, and wail together.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?
One side says we need to focus on gun control. The other says we need to focus on mental health. I say why can't we do both. We need to do both! Why can't we be so shocked and disgusted that we cry out to God? Cry out like the psalmist, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
Psalm 22 is a psalm of lament. A psalm full of anger, anxiety, pain, struggle, but eventually assurance, promise and hope in the Lord.
Why can't we come together in righteous anger and start looking for ways to keep guns out of the hands of people who are unstable. Why don't we start using our pain to look at the mental health crisis, why don't we use the events in Buffalo, NY a few days ago, Uvalde, TX yesterday, and all the other horrors that have happened to decide enough is enough. Let us come together in the love of God and neighbor.
Get on our knees together to pray. Let's wrap our arms around each other in grief and dismay. Let's bury our babies, our wives and husbands, our daughters and sons, our parents and grandparents. Then let us move. Let us move to scripture to know the promises of God.
Let us move to the message of unity in Christ. Let us as prayer partners and sisters and brothers in Christ walk to every city council meeting, every statehouse, and to Washington DC and demand those with the ability to do so, stop placing blame and start doing the work that is required.
The other part, when Christians and people of faith, of all faith backgrounds, come together to show the grace of God, maybe broken families can be healed. Maybe those with tormented souls may find some hope.
This 18-year child living estranged from his mother shot the grandmother who cared for him. We don't know and probably never will know the pain and anguish of his soul that would lead to such horror.
Instead of us saying someone else has to do something, we stop being people of indifference and instead be the vessels of hope and love that we have been created to be.
It starts in every home. It starts with each of us.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Acknowledging lament leads to action, change, and assurance of a future hope.
Join me, in lament and the strength of God who will lead the change. Love God and love your neighbor. Jesus "go and do likewise." Find your go! Move!
In Jesus’ name!
Pastor Mike
