April 06, 2025
• Rev. Rob Fuquay
St. Luke’s UMC
April 6, 2025
Lent 5
The Prayers Jesus Prayed
“Why?”
Matthew 27:45-56
I begin this morning with a story. It is about a man who had it all. He had wealth. His family business did well. He had health. Never been sick a day in his life. He also had a great and loving family. And, he was a man of great faith, until…
All on the same day this man got reports of catastrophic weather and attacks by people that killed his family and destroyed his possessions. Eventually he lost his health in the process. He becomes sick, poor, and alone. That last part might be the worst. He had so called friends who came to comfort him, but they just offered the words that were popular to say; words that were popular at the time to explain misfortune. “Their must be a reason for all this. God must be punishing you. Just confess.” It might be like people say today, “Oh, your loved one is in a better place.” “This too will pass.” These words might be true but they don’t necessarily help in the moment.
Well, back to the story. This man realized how isolated he was when his own wife says to him, “Why don’t you curse God and die!” So much “for better or worse,” huh? The man realized it is just him and God, and he wanted an answer from God to a very simple question, “Why?” God answers…
Cliffhanger! We will come back to that later!
You might recognize that as the story of Job in the Old Testament. The story was meant to help with the conundrum of suffering, something people have struggled with since the beginning of time, especially people of faith. If God is all-powerful, how can God allow suffering. And if God allows suffering, how can God be good? One of those has to bend doesn’t it? Either God isn’t all that powerful, or God isn’t all that good? Or so it would seem.
Last week in my Lenten group, my table got into a conversation about our feelings about God. One woman in her early 90’s confessed that she’s dealt with a lot of guilt over something she prayed when she was a little girl. Her father tragically died. She remembered standing in front of his casket at the funeral home and praying to herself, “God I hate you.” For her whole life she has wondered if God holds that against her. I guess when you are 92 you realize you are closer to finding out.
Now what was that little girl praying? She was actually praying a one-word prayer, why? Why God did you let my daddy die? And without a clear answer it just leaves one logical conclusion: God must not care. And if you need a logical answer that explains suffering in order to find peace, then the Bible is not a lot of help. However, here is what the Bible does. It shows a God who is willing to endure the very experience from which such a question comes.
On the cross Jesus asked the same question, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This was the ultimate incarnational moment. Incarnation means God becoming flesh. This is what God did in sending Jesus to the world, God became flesh to identify with us. On the cross is the ultimate moment of Jesus identifying with the human experience. In pain and agony he asks, “why?”
We’ve all had times when we have asked that question haven’t we? Times when our world got turned upside down by a tragedy, or the death of a child or loved one, or an ailment or physical malady? You know what it’s like, don’t you, to ask God why?
Of course, Jesus wasn’t really asking why did this occur. He wasn’t asking why this happened? Why was he put on the cross? No, it’s deeper than that. He is asking God, “why have you forsaken me?” The tragedy is bad enough, but what makes it unbearable is to lose the presence of God in it.
This is confusing when you read verses like in John where Jesus said to his disciples, “A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.”(16:32) Maybe this is why John doesn’t include Jesus’ prayer of abandonment from the cross. It wouldn’t have made sense. It was perhaps too hard too imagine Jesus feeling such a thing. But Mark and Matthew wanted us to know, “No! He prayed it! He said it! Why, God, why have you forsaken me?”
As the pastor who conducted Susan’s and my wedding, Dr. Leighton Ferrell, once wrote, “No one misses the presence of God like one who has been keenly conscious of that presence.” (Cries from the Cross, p42) That was Jesus for sure. He had been keenly aware of the presence of God with him. Yet in his greatest agony he feels abandoned.
Maybe it was the agony of the cross that made Jesus feel that way. Pain can do that, you know. Pain can cause you to be unlike yourself. I knew a retired pastor and his wife. In his career he had cared for people. He lifted up others. But in his last years he developed chronic pain. There wasn’t anything that could be done. He just had to live with ongoing discomfort.
After his death his wife confessed to me that in the last years of his life he was hard to live. He was constantly unhappy and often took out his pain on her. She said, “I got through it by reminding myself, this isn’t him. Pain changed him.
Pain can do that, I know, but is that what happened to Jesus? I don’t believe that fully explains it. Jesus talked too much about the pain and suffering he would endure. His prayer of abandonment seems deeper than just to say, “Oh, his pain changed him.”
Some have explained it more theologically. They say that the reason Jesus felt forsaken was because he was. In that moment on the cross, they say, Jesus took upon himself the sin of the whole world, and because God detests sin, God had to look away…
There is perhaps one aspect of that idea I can accept, that sin is separation from God. That is what sin means. And in taking upon himself the sin of others it cause Jesus to feel removed from God, I can accept that because it is something God would do. God loves us enough to do just such a thing.
But I still believe there is more to this prayer, something even deeper. That in the moment when Jesus needed to experience God’s presence the most he did not. And that is actually hopeful, because I don’t believe God did forsake Jesus. I believe Jesus was faithful to the point of feeling forsaken, and he shows what faith looks like even in forsakenness.
From the cross Jesus still turned to God. He prayed, and not just any prayer, but Psalm 22. That Psalm opens with these words:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest.
Notice the word anguish. That one word was life-saving to the Reformation leader, Martin Luther. He struggled spiritually and emotionally as a young man. He believed he had to earn and merit God’s grace and acceptance but he was continually frought with guilt and shame as if he hadn’t done enough. These struggles took on physical manifestations in the form of tremors he called anfechtungen, a German word that doesn’t translate well into English. For Luther it described the tremors that would come over him because of his inner struggles.
What changed? Bible Study. Luther was on faculty at the seminary in Wittenburg and his dean assigned him to teach a course on the Book of Psalms. He didn’t want to teach the Bible. He had gotten discouraged because the Bible didn’t seem to help his problem, but his dean realized that might be the very thing Luther needed. So he insisted, you will teach a class on Psalms. So Luther got to work, and when he came to Psalm 22 something seized him. The opening words felt like his own prayers some times. And he puzzled over that word anguish. He realized it was just a feeling. It was describing something physical, like an outward result of inner turmoil. And he discovered this was his word anfechtungen.
And he connected this psalm to Jesus’ prayer on the cross. Jesus was in anguish. It came to him that Jesus experienced anfechtungen. Jesus understood his struggles and times when he felt abandoned by God. This was revolutionary to Luther. He suddenly had hope. For the first time his turmoil, rather than being something caused him not to feel God’s presence, was the very place he experienced God’s presence.
But the hope that Jesus gives is not just that he can relate to our abandonment. There is even more. We have to understand the whole of Psalm 22. It is amazingly transformative. This will take a few moments to read through, but I believe you’ll find it worth it. Listen to the path of change you go through in this psalm…
2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
3-4 Yet…you are the one Israel praises. In you our ancestors put their trust;
7-11 But…All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
for trouble is near
and there is no one to help.
18 They divide my clothes among them
and cast lots for my garment.
19 But you, Lord, do not be far from me.
You are my strength; come quickly to help me.
24-25 For (God) has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;
before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows.
30-31 Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn:
He has done it!
Do you feel the back and forth of that prayer? Its as if the psalmist is working through his own faith. I feel abandoned, yet I can’t let go of you God. I feel like giving up, yet I believe you are there. And eventually, the psalmist comes to a place where he says, to a people yet unborn, he has done! He got to a place where he could say, “God came through.”
Those who say with greatest conviction that God comes through, are usually ones who have taken this trip. They know the journey through pain. The journey that leads you to peace with God doesn’t bring you to a place of easy answers and explanations that make sense of it all. You might not get that. You don’t have to. But the journey will take you to a place of experiencing God in a way that brings peace.
That is what Job found. He wanted an answer from God to his question why? And when God appeared God said where were you when the world was made. Can you begin to fathom the details of the universe? You think you can change the course of events and still have life work well? And in the end Job had peace. Not because he ever got an answer to why, but because he knew God was with him in his pain. And God’s presence became enough.
Mike and Patty Miller in our church experienced a tragic event in 1997. Their son, Adam, who was 26 years old was in the gym at the Jordan Y on 86th street. A car driving on Westfield Blvd lost control, went through the parking lot and right through the wall of the gym killing Adam. Their world was instantly turned upside down. Patty said when she drove in the driveway that day and there were police officers and a priest waiting for her, she knew this couldn’t be good.
In the days following, they said they went through their times of asking “Why?” Why did this happen? Why did God let it happen? Mike even admits feeling let down by God…
But the way the pastors and their church family here at St. Luke’s surrounded them, kept them going. People didn’t try to offer simple answers to that question, they gave room to ask. Eventually they began asking different questions. How? What? How will we respond to this tragedy? What can we do? They started a foundation through the Jordan Y, the Adam Miller Foundation to provide funds for disadvantaged children… To date this fund has provided more than $100,000 to children.
One Sunday, just a couple months ago I was walking to the sacristy before the 9:30 service. It was just a little after 9 so not too many people were in the room yet. The choir has just finished rehearsing and gone back to the choir room. ** (Show the picture of the lamb stained glass window when Rob tells the story of his conversation with Mike that Sunday morning and Mike mentions the at the top of the cross.)
Jesus asked why too. I believe the power of his prayer from the cross means he knows what it’s like when we ask that question too. But more than that, he joins us in the asking. He meets us in the pain, and he can bring us one day to a place of peace.
Amen.