Bad Things Happen
Psalms 22:1-22:31
Where have you heard the first words of our scripture this morning? Jesus uses them doesn’t he?
How about you, have you said similar words or thoughts when things are not going right in life….how about when Everything is wrong?
When the baby dies, when a parent, or child or loved one dies. When our health fails. When there is war or a horrible storm.
Life isn’t fair. There is not real justice is there. Come on Gas prices, murders, fraud child abuse…You name it. BAD STUFF happens and we can feel so helpless.
People treat other people badly. It’s not right.
Maybe, I am just in a bad mood this morning, but it seems to be that nothing really changes. We sort of take it all for granted.
Some become cynical, I was talking to a young guy this week and he felt taken advantage of because his in-laws claimed he Grand Child as a tax deduction instead of him. Just because they lived with them almost all year, did not seem right to him. Perhaps he is not being objective of his situation.
We can get a real since of why me perspective and sometimes loose touch with reality. And some time is can be real pain and real loss that drives us to despair.
Now you can either get frustrated with that, or you can shrug it off. You can either become a bitter and cynical person, who gripes that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; or you can accept reality and go on.
But what you cannot do, what is unacceptable, is to stuff down inside forever the feelings that go along with injustice with loss, with pain with unfairness in your life.
You have the choice of being bitter and gripping OR you can try to something to make it better. The feeling have to of some where because, no matter how hard you try they are going to come out in some way in your life.
So, let me help you with a little perspective: You can never think that bad things don’t happen to good people. You need to understand that it is not if they will happen but, when they will happen. That is just a fact of life in this world.
It is a law of nature and the laws of nature are almost never suspended for anybody. Not even for Christians.
Bad things happen to all kinds of good people. Bad things happen to everyone I know and I know a lot of good people.
But when they happen to you, or to someone close to you, what will you do with that? How will you speak and where will you take your complaint?
Do we have to just sit and take it?
We Christians have all the answers don’t we? We can spout them almost without thought.
Maybe we quote scripture perhaps the 23rd Psalm where we are reminded that God is with us and watching over us. Or what about some of the hymns, "What a fellowship, what a joy divine, safe and secure from all alarms."
But the main tactic we fall on is prayer, right? Pray about it. Put the problem in God’s hands. That makes us feel all better right? Pray , pray and pray some more, and get others to pray with us and for us…PRAY.
But what if nothing seems to happen. What if we feel like no one is hearing what we say? What if it is obvious that our prayers are not helping at all?
When it feels like our prayers bounce off the ceiling, we are just talking to hear ourselves talk. What if prayer feels like my phone call the other day, I was talking to Renee on the cell and after a couple of minutes I expected a response…nothing. Hello Hello can you hear me now?
Nothing. Cut off. I haven’t figured out yet whether we actually lost our connection or if she got tired of listening and just hung up.
What if it seems like heaven itself cuts you off. The ultimate cutoff is to pray and feel no response, no answer, not even a presence.
That brings us to the setting of our scripture this morning. It is a cry to God, it is a call in anguish and loss. It is about the feeling of being abandoned that can be felt just as easily to day as it did thousands of years ago. For me it felt uncomfortably familure and I remember the times of torment in my life. It is a song of lament. Which is a type of psalm where the writer makes a complaint to states a need to God?
Psalm 22 starts with: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, and am not silent.
They credit the author as being King David. That sounds so lonely doesn’t it? He sounds like he feels so lonely doesn’t he? While David had some bad things happen in his life God said David was after his own heart.
He was a good guy and this lament is indicating a broken heart, loneliness ….He feels distant from God, Do you think he thinks God is hearing his cry…or do you think he thinks he is speaking to the air?
- If David had moments like this then I should not have any wonder that I get this way sometimes.
Let me add to the perspective, a prayer of lament is not a bad thing. When a Christian is in anguish and pain and reached out to God in prayer it is a good thing even if that prayer contains verbalization of the pain, the complaints, the frustrations and the fears.
Here is an important fact, tt is not wrong to have negative statements in you communications with God.
When I talk with someone that is in the beginning of their loss of a loved one I ask them if they have yelled and screamed at God. Sometimes they are shocked and sometimes they whisper yes.
God is big enough to receive all your prayers. He can handle the statements of pain and suffering just as well as your praise. He knows what you feel and when you come with genuine raw emotions he already knows your heart, He can see your faith because you are not turning away when you come to confront him.
The Psalmist comes through in this prayer with his worries and his woes. How up and down he is! He complains, and then he remembers God’s goodness. He complains again, and then he remembers how God brought him up as a child. Then right back to complaining once again, before he cries out in sheer desperation.
-Three times in one psalm he lapses into extravagant descriptions of his plight. ---Three times he cries out in the darkness of his situation. He just keeps at it. He voices his heart. He won’t shy away from his hurts.
That’s the first lesson some of us need to learn. What we feel, we feel, and God can take it. God can handle it. God is big enough. Don’t edit your prayers. Don’t protect God from your gripes and your grumbling. God wants your honesty.
Why do we feel like we can’t communicate with God about how he really feel… Why do we think we can’t be honest? IS it that we somehow feel lie God doesn’t understand. That he doesn’t care?
Do we for get the things that he has already done.
It is very natural for us to have the memory of a two year old. Very focused on this moment this problem, this event and loose sight of the big picture.
Our relationship with God doesn’t make our lives perfect. It simply assures us that there is something more than the deepest pain and suffering we experience here.
We do need to air our grievances before God. We do need to get out the bitter with the sweet. If you feel it, say it, say it to God. God is big enough to handle it, your heart needs to let go of it. When bad things happen to good people, cry out, scream it out, pray fiercely. Insist that God hear. God wants your honesty.
But now, let’s also learn that God has given us some reserves to go on when it feels as though He is not listening. When bad things happen to good people, they find that God has given them experiences and memories to keep them going.
I asked you to read this Psalm with me in a particular way. I read the downers, you read the uppers. I read the words of despair; you read the words of memory and of hope. Several times we went back and forth, up and down, the Psalmist first feeling so bad and so alone, but then, as you read them, these passages when he remembers.
He remembers that God was there for the people of Israel in the past.
He remembers that God brought him safely through his childhood.
He remembers that God rescued him from other dangers.
And so every time he goes down, there is something planted deep down in his memory that brings him back up.
Every time he is tempted to give up on God, he thinks of a moment when God didn’t give up on him.
All too often our problem is that we live in the here and now. We live in this moment. We want things to be the way we want them, now. Right now.
We don’t remember what God has done in the past, and so we don’t trust him for the future.
You know the old saying that God answers prayer in three ways?. You know this one. It’s an old truism. That God answers prayer with "Yes" or "No" or "Wait." Well, I heard the other day a little take-off on the idea of waiting.
What if prayer was like those voice menu systems you get on the telephone when you call businesses?
"You have reached heaven’s prayer center. Your call is important to us.
If you are calling to praise the Lord, press 1.
If you are calling to confess your sins, press 2.
If you are calling to intercede for a sick friend, press 3.
If you are calling to ask for something for yourself, press 4."
All right, let’s press 4. "If your call is for a spiritual gift, press 1.
If your call is for guidance, press 2.
If your request is for patience, press the Q.
Well, you get the point. Sometimes God says wait.
Sometimes God says wait and clarify what you really need.
Wait and see what God will do. Wait and remember what God has already done. When bad things happen to good people, good people draw on their reserves their knowledge of what God has already done to get them through.
Finally, let’s recognize that spiritual torment is like many other forms of sickness. You may have to hit rock bottom before you can start back up. You may have to deteriorate to a frightening extent before you can begin to heal. And it may be that sometimes God appears not to hear us, God stays at a distance from us, in order to force us to know how much we need Him.
Did you notice, as we read this Psalm together, that the Psalmist seems to get a little more desperate, a little more frantic, with each speech?
The more he cries out, the more he deteriorates. If I were doing a psychological profile on this man, I would say that he is falling off the deep edge. He began by complaining to God that God seems very far away. But then his next word is much worse:
But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads:
Just when you think it couldn’t get worse, it does. As a three-year-olds might say, It gets worser.
First the Psalmist felt unheard by God; then he felt scorned and despised by everybody; and then his anxiety gets so bad that he has physical symptoms.
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me.
Do you know what that feels like? How the load gets so heavy that you just feel all poured out and wasted? Exhausted, drained, your get-up-and-go has already got-up-and-gone? Despair is physically draining. And, in fact, if you’ve been hit by a load of bad stuff, you will get so tired that you will be vulnerable to almost anything.
But the point is that sometimes we have to hit rock bottom before we can start back up. Like the alcoholic or the drug user who has to get so needy, in so much trouble, before he will admit that he needs help ... in much the same way, God answers us with silence until we find out how much we need Him.
I am persuaded that God’s silence is a part of His strategy to reach us. God may in fact send us to the edge of hell ... that’s what hell is, you know, separation from God; hell has very little to do with licking flames and demons with pitchforks ..
God may send us to the edge of hell, the edge of separation, because He sees that we are so convinced that we can do for ourselves. We have never admitted that we need Him. When bad things happen to good people, it may be that it is precisely because they are good, and they have trusted so much in their own goodness, that they need to find out who is in charge.
When bad things happen to good people, God is waiting for them to get off their goodness kicks and to come to Him in sheer faith.
But our reading of this Psalm would not be complete if we did not see that finally, in God’s own time and for God’s own purposes, God hears the cries of the desperate. God listens to the prayers of the anguished; in His own time, for His own purposes, He brings relief.
Finally the Psalmist is able to say,
For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.
God brings relief. He hears our cries.
How do I know? Where is my evidence?
I know because of someone else who spoke this Psalm, and spoke it in the most terrible moment in human history.
I know because of a bad thing that happened to a good person. He hung on a Cross, the best of us done in by the worst of us.
Talk about bad things happening to good people! Nothing surpasses this: that the son of God, who knew no sin, was made to die a criminal’s death! What did he pray? What prayer came from his heart?
This very psalm, these pointed words, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Even Jesus Christ suffered the estrangement, distance from God, just as we do! Jesus Christ, at the very side of the Father, knew the awesome, terrible, complete, and utter loneliness of not being heard by God.
But ... but ... three days later he saw the torment of his soul and was satisfied. Three days later, God heard His cry and brought him to life. Three days later, His anguish was heard and was turned into victory. God heard His cries and brought Him through.
Whenever I read the 22nd Psalm, a little scenario plays out in my mind. I think of Jesus, speaking that word from the cross.
I see the image of suffering by Jesus in my place and I am so insolated from the pain that he feels…I wince and I imagine what he went through…But I can’t claim to actually feel it.
Then I wonder what the pain f separation was like for him. Going from complete communication to severed communication. One way cries with no response and no assurance.
Folks we are in the season of Lent when Christians review their journey toward a perfect relationship with God. We look at our lives and review our choices and all to often we need to cry out because of the separation we have created.
We need to ask for help in making out way back into a better relationship. We can only do that if we recognize all that God has already done. The sending of His son, the moments of personal grace that happen everyday if we will only open our eyes and look.
When bad things happen to good people, if they will go ahead and complain; if they will draw on their memories, and if they will wait, they will be satisfied with the Father’s presence. When ever we communicate with God he hears our faith especially when we cry out in human suffering with an expectation of being heard by God.
All Glory be to God!
