How deep the Father's love for us: Does God turn his face away? ~ Psalm 22

How deep the Father's love for us,
How vast beyond all measure!
That He should give His only Son,
To make a wretch His treasure.
How great the pain of searing loss!
The Father turns His face away;
As wounds which marred the Chosen One
Bring many sons to glory

We’ve sung this song so many times. But is it true? Is it true that in the pain of searing loss, the Father turns his face away? Was it true for Jesus? Is it true for me and you?

In this journey of suffering, we keep finding ourselves back at two fundamental questions – what is the love of God and why do we suffer? Where is God when life explodes into pain and misery? How does God love me in my poor choices, my reckless behavior, my arrogant ignorance, my senseless suffering? Where is God when evil falls and wrecks everything – the Holocaust, 9/11, a tsunami, a school shooting? Where is the God who is supposed to be good? This is the question of suffering at the deepest level – are we abandoned? This is suffering at its very worst – am I truly all alone? Does God turn his face away because I am a terrible, no-good, posturing, hypocritical, wicked mess? Do sin and suffering turn God’s face away?

On the cross Jesus is the God-man co-suffering our abandonment.

On the cross, Jesus makes the terrible cry: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Theologians refer to this as the “cry of dereliction.” Dereliction refers to the state of having been abandoned and the shameful failure to fulfill one’s obligations. It’s both a cry of grief and an indictment of God’s absence and failure – to answer, to help, to hold.

Here, in an act of co-suffering love, Jesus unites himself to all of us who’ve despaired of rescue and internalized our abandonment when the presence of God cannot be seen, heard or felt. Jesus experiences the terrible reality of a seemingly God-less world, and our cry becomes his. David’s cry, our cry, even indictment of God, becomes God’s words – from the word of God - Jesus himself. 

 
At some point, senseless and terrible loss knocks on our door. Life happens, tragedy strikes, death overtakes us, or even worse, those we love most suffer in ways that are meaningless, horrific, and faith-shattering. And the cross reveals that in that place of desolation and dereliction, God doesn’t teach us or chide us but fully participates with us in our fragility, frailty, and pain.

Listen to the theology of participation in the book of Hebrews:
14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. . .17 For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Where is God when it hurts? He is with us in the heart of the hurt. He identifies with our pain. He co-suffers with us, even our experience of his absence. Jesus’ experience of the cross and use of Psalm 22 reveals that in the worst place of abandonment God is there. How deep the Father’s love for us!

And yet . . . is the abandonment real. There’s no denying that we feel it – that Jesus felt it – as he cried out to God. But, because of sin, did God turn his face away? Does God abandon us?

On the cross Jesus is the God-man who validates our hurt and reveals a never-abandoning God.

In Psalm 22:1 and 6, is Christ saying he is literally a God-forsaken worm? Is Jesus’ cry a declaration that Abba has abandoned and turned on his own son because of sin? That’s what I was taught. Were you? And yet all of Psalm 22 provides the context for why Jesus prays this prayer on the cross. The whole of it, is more than a cry of dereliction but a revelation of where God is at when we feel utterly lost in our deepest suffering.

When we read it in its broader context, Psalm 22 is both a painful prayer acknowledging the all-too-real feelings of abandonment but also the Father’s loving response. And what is the Father’s answer to the cry of dereliction? Let’s keep reading. We get to verses 22-24, where the Psalmist prophesies the praise of the supposedly abandoned Messiah:

22 I will declare Your name to My people; [why?]

In the assembly I will praise You. [why?]

23 You who fear the Lord, praise Him! [why?]

All you descendants of Jacob, honor Him,
Revere Him, all you descendants of Israel! [why?]

HERE IT COMES . . . !


24 For He has NOT despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; He has NOT hidden His face from Him; but heard his cry for help.

So how does Psalm 22 help us understand what is playing out on the cross, where sorrow and love flow mingled down? What do we gain by unlearning God’s supposed absence in the face of real suffering and the tragedy of sin?

On the cross, we discover the true heart of God, the true mystery of suffering, the truest expression of who God is. Our God is a loving, suffering, cruciform God and not one who makes us suffer, not one who turns his face away.

The witness of Scripture is that God was “in Christ Jesus reconciling the world to himself and not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Cor. 5:19). So on our behalf, the cross is God crying out to God, God suffering in God, God dying within God in order to reconcile us to God [God didn’t need to be reconciled. We did.] God doesn’t sit in the corner while an adult harms a child – he hangs on a cross. He doesn’t watch and do nothing; he endures and transforms and he will have the last word – “all the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord” (Psalm 22:27).

We don’t get an answer as to why horrible suffering overtakes us and undoes us. The great Reformation theologian Martin Luther said that we cannot reason our way through the mystery of a God of love and the plain evidence of evil and suffering in our world and we shouldn’t. We must never call evil good. Rather, our only hope is that the revelation of co-suffering, cruciform love that encompasses both realities – human affliction and God’s solidarity. The only true answer we have for suffering and evil is that on the cross God steps into a mysterious paradox – love and suffering, powerful and powerless, utter abandonment and faithful solidarity, utter defeat and final victory. In bewilderment, Jesus, fully God and fully man, cries out, “God is good but all is not well! Where are you?” On the cross, we see that God is neither the triumphant intervener who controls everything nor a passive non-mover who does nothing and not the one who turns his face from us - ever. This is the gospel: In love, Jesus, the God-man, suffers our suffering, even takes up our cry of God’s absence, and unites with us – so that he might become the savior of us all. Amen.