October 10, 2021 Sermon
Sermon title: "Deliver Me"
Scripture: Psalm 22:1-15
Guest Preacher: Drak Druella
Psalm 22:1-15
Plea for Deliverance from Suffering and Hostility
To the leader: according to The Deer of the Dawn. A Psalm of David.
1My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest. 3Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. 4In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. 5To you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted, and were not put to shame. 6But I am a worm, and not human; scorned by others, and despised by the people. 7All who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me, they shake their heads; 8"Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver— let him rescue the one in whom he delights!" 9Yet it was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother's breast. 10On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God. 11Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help. 12Many bulls encircle me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me; 13they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion. 14I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; 15my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.
So, when I chose this psalm, I was unaware of the fact that Skip was going to preach on Job the week before, which is a perfect set-up for what I am going to talk about today. If you didn’t pick up on it, this psalm is essentially a petition to God and an intense expression of anguish. Along with the anguish, the psalmist is also making a complaint. The complaint is that the Lord, the patron of Israel’s ancestors, had not rescued the person speaking, even though they had been faithful. The psalmist’s grief is so great that the psalmist says, “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast.” The significance of this line lies in its meaning at the time it was written, for back then it was believed that tears welled up from the abdomen. Tears were believed to come from the physical center of the person. The psalmist is speaking of a pain that runs deeply to the core of their being.
So, why did I choose this particular psalm for today’s sermon? As most of you know, I left my post as music director in August to start a year-long chaplain residency at Children’s Hospital LA in the fall. On a daily basis, I am confronted with the anguish of parents and children as they navigate the tenacious balance between life and death, and pain and comfort. So many parents are saying in some way, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me?” Nobody expects their newborn baby to be on a ventilator with only a few days to live or for their five-year-old son who was just skipping and playing in the backyard with the dog the week before to suddenly become ill with leukemia and be on his second round of chemo in the hospital. I am surrounded by devastation and heartbreak on a daily basis by people who simply wish they could be delivered from the pain of it all.
In last week’s sermon on Job, Skip spoke of how after Job repented, although he didn’t do anything wrong, he was given back his health, prosperity, and more children to replace the ones he had lost. In the case of the parents at the hospital, there are no new children to replace the one who has passed away or no healing for the one who is devastatingly ill. There is no renewed prosperity for the hundreds of thousands of dollars lost to cancer treatment. There are no outward signs of renewal upon which many of these parents can cling for hope. They are left with the devastatingly harsh question of why such a thing is happening to them.
As a chaplain, it’s my job to support people as they sort through the meaning of their experiences and meaning can take on so many different forms. Asking the question of why something is happening and what it means is never simple. Some parents express feeling as though God has betrayed or is punishing them because they did not do a “good enough job” at being devout or living an upright life, something Skip touched upon in his sermon last week, as well. For some parents, their sense of meaning is about punishment. Others actually express gratitude for the experience of God in their lives, despite the pain of it all. Theirs is one of gratitude and heartache. Like the psalmist, many of these parents openly complain to God while others privately share their anguish. And still, others simply express a sense of frustration, while others remember the good that God has and is bringing into their lives through their difficult experiences. All of these are ways of making meaning and coping with the experience of their child’s sickness and its impact upon their lives. It is a way to understand, as Skip mentioned last week, “why bad things happen to good people.” Remarkably, the children often seem to accept their situation more gracefully than their parents.
The truth is that we all have moments in which we say, “Why have you forsaken me God? Why me? Can’t you deliver me?” We struggle to make sense of our losses or difficulties in life – to assign some kind of meaning to our experiences that will not emotionally ostracize us from God. To avoid the existential crisis of considering God’s part in it, we might want to assign blame to ourselves or even the ones we love. Still, some of us go directly to the divine source and blame God angrily. Ultimately, we experience some form of brokenness in the moment, whether it is our heart, our pride, or our sense of identity or purpose in the world. Whatever our perception of our experience is, we are broken in the moment.
But maybe being broken is a vital part of these experiences, for alongside the journey of heartache, I have witnessed some of the most remarkable acts of compassion and creativity enacted through these parents. Parents who have lost a child or struggled with a child’s illness make the decision to donate books or toys to the hospital. Some reach out to other parents in their grief and support them, as they continue to navigate their own; but this isn’t the first time I have witnessed such acts of kindness and grace in the face of difficulties. I have witnessed many acts of compassion here at Upland Christian, long before I started my internship, where people have reached out to one another after they’ve lost loved ones or experienced illnesses. I’ve witnessed people coming together in remarkable ways – through prayer, cards, random phone calls, visits, baked cookies, quilts made for hospice, and food donations – all acts of kindness and compassion that although they will never make the nightly news, impact the meaning of our lives and the lives of others in invaluable ways.
When I consider the significance of brokenness, I think of how it was in his brokenness that Jesus was able to effectively teach us the meaning of a love that transcends the natural and healthy human need for self-preservation. In his love for humanity, Jesus taught us what it means to love something so much that it consumes one’s life to the point of breaking. Like the parents of those children at the hospital, perhaps in helping one another during trying times we are embodying what it means to follow in Christ’s footsteps. Instead of trying to fix a situation out of their control, several of those parents reached a point of simply choosing to support others through their experiences. They allowed their brokenness to expand into the awareness of others’ needs and to be enacted through acts of compassion and kindness for others.
There’s a popular song out there called, “I’m Broken and It’s Beautiful.” There is a refrain in it that says, “Would someone just hold me? Don’t fix me. Don’t try to change a thing. Can someone just know me? ‘Cause underneath it all I’m broken and I’m beautiful.” I believe the invitation to us is to allow God to hold us through those moments that challenge us, which could mean allowing a friend or loved one to somehow hold us or choosing to hold them through acts of kindness and support. This means learning to bypass the knee-jerk reaction of immediately trying to fix things, so that we can deliver ourselves from the discomfort of our difficulties. It can mean learning to pause, take a deep breath, and be present with God in the chaos.
Maybe our experiences that break us are the colored fragments of life’s stained glass that in their brokenness combine to create something beautiful that God’s light can shine through. Perhaps in choosing not to deliver us, God is teaching us how to deliver one another through our shared brokenness. This could be what it means to follow Christ’s footsteps and allow God to work through us. This is how we can embody our brokenness in service of something greater than ourselves, and in so doing, we allow God’s light to shine through us. Amen.
Drak Druella
