Matthew 27:45-46
I want you to think about the last time you spent time with a young child. Did they ask a lot of questions? My guess is that the answer to that is a very emphatic yes! Kids are naturally programmed to ask questions to understand their world. In fact, studies suggest that kids, especially in the preschool to early elementary years, ask about 300-400 questions a day.
Imagine the average kid is up and communicating about 12 hours a day (this is factoring in a nap or screen time or just some blessed quiet moments). There are 720 minutes in 12 hours and that math breaks down to average of little kids asking about one question every 2 minutes, give or take.
Now, some of you that are in this phase of life where you’re parenting little humans are NOT surprised by this! This is every day for you!
But let me tell you something that DID surprise me...and kind of broke my heart. Do you know how many questions ADULTS ask per day? It’s obviously less than children, but it’s not just a little less...it’s dramatically less. Depending on which source you’re looking at, it’s been cited that adults ask between 6 and 20 questions per day. 6 to 20! Compared to hundreds. 2
And there are a lot of reasons for this. Kids have no filter, so they just say the stuff that pops into their heads. And adults, as we get older, sometimes we look at asking too many questions as being weak or uninformed. We worry that if we ask too many questions, too often, we might look like we don’t know what we’re talking about, or we might feel a lot of pressure to have all the answers. Or maybe we’re just a bit afraid of what answers our questions might unearth.
No matter what holds us back, asking questions can be uncomfortable and a bit risky...and this is especially true when it comes to our faith and our prayers. Some of us have actually been conditioned throughout our faith lives to NOT question God. We’ve been told that’s not faithful, that we should just accept what the world brings us and believe that because of God it’s all going to be ok. We simply have to trust God no matter how difficult, how heartbreaking, how mysterious, how complicated the situation may be. “Let Go and let God” as the old saying goes.
I think that’s kind of ironic given the Scripture that we’re looking at today. And I would actually tell you that this Scripture, this prayer, shows us just how essential it is to LET questions be part of the conversation we're having with God. 3
Over the last several weeks we’ve been exploring the prayers that Jesus prayed and today we see him praying from a place of great pain and suffering—we see him praying from the cross. And as he’s in this horribly scary and painful moment, where everything seems lost and the goodness of God seems so far away, Jesus’ prayer takes the form of a powerful question: (SLIDE)
“My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
“Why do you feel so far away?”
“Why is THIS the way the story had to go?”
“Why has a faithful, holy life led to THIS place?”
Despite the supernatural circumstances that will surround his upcoming death and resurrection, when Jesus says this prayer, it is such a human moment. Because there is not one human on this earth who hasn’t asked this kind of question or who hasn’t prayed this kind of prayer. Every single one of us, at one moment or another, has found ourselves trying to make sense of why injustice and poverty and sickness and cruelty seem to run amok. We’ve all held the seemingly unanswerable question of: WHY?
And when we can let this question become the foundation of a conversation with God, it can transform the ways we relate to God and to the world around us. If we can let ourselves 4
lean into everything that comes with asking this kind of question and being bold enough to ask it directly to God, we might just find that this kind of prayer gives us tools to get through the most difficult moments of our lives.
Because (SLIDE) "Why?” is a powerful prayer. And it’s a prayer that has been prayed throughout our history, for thousands and thousands of years. I think people have been praying some version of this prayer since people have been praying at all!
In fact, as Jesus prays these words from the cross, he is actually praying the words of what we now know as Psalm 22. The first two verses of this Psalm say this: (SLIDE)
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? 2 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night but find no rest.
The Psalms are full of this kind of prayer, called Lament, and we’re going to unpack what Lament is and what it means for us in just a bit. But this Psalm in particular is a bit unique. Because this Psalm is more than a complaint or cry for help...it’s also a declaration of the closeness that the Psalmist feels towards God. We see it in this really simple phrase: “My God”, which is not actually as simple as it 5
appears. Referring to God like this reveals a level of deep intimacy. The Psalmist is showing that they have a close, personal attachment TO God...which in many ways makes this question both more possible to ask, but also a bit higher stakes.
Because it is a really beautiful thing to know that we can trust God enough to ask these kinds of questions, but that doesn't mean the answer is always going to reveal itself clearly or the way we’d like. Sometimes we search for answers and we cry out to God...but God still feels pretty far away.
I wonder if that’s how Jesus felt when he prayed this. Because he IS so close with God...he’s connected to God the Father in a way that goes so far beyond what any of us experience or hardly understand. And I have no question that his theology of God’s presence was incredibly strong. He KNEW it. He had EXPERIENCED it. And even though that was true...this was a horrible moment. We don’t need to sugarcoat that or pretend that it was all fine because it’s Jesus we’re talking about here.
The truth is, when Jesus needs God the most, he can’t feel God’s presence. And there’s actually a lot of hope for us in that reality. Because Jesus understands what it would feel like for us to feel that far away from God. So when we pray 6
like this and when we feel like we’re at a dead end or all alone...we’re can remember that Jesus has had that experience too.
And this prayer is a powerful prayer.
It’s powerful because even in our DARKEST moments...this prayer keeps us connected to the God who loves us through it. And this prayer reminds us (SLIDE) to keep asking even when we can't see the answer.
This past weekend, my family was away for Spring break and we spent a few days in Cincinnati. One of the places we visited was the Space Exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center. In that exhibit, there was a movie that talked about just how much bigger than understanding space can be. (SLIDE) They highlighted the absolutely mind-bending fact that when we look up at the night sky and we see the stars on display...we’re not actually seeing that’s happening in real time. Because of the way that light travels, we are seeing stars that have already been born, shown, and died. There’s all this activity happening in the universe that we can’t even see yet...and we WON’T see it until it’s over!
Even though we think we see the whole picture...so often we don’t. And so even when we don’t have all the answers, it doesn’t mean that answers don’t exist. Even though we haven’t experienced something yet, that doesn’t mean that 7
God isn’t working. Even though the details seem hazy and we feel overwhelmed, it doesn’t mean that God isn’t telling a better, beautiful story that exists on the other side of the questions or the doubt or the pain.
Sometimes we can only see one limited possibility instead of the bigger scope of what God could be up to. What’s interesting about this prayer of Jesus is that while it IS very personal and intimate, it’s absolutely not private. He’s got an audience, he’s on display. And for the people in the crowd who are witnessing his crucifixion and who are sympathetic to his cause, they might be praying something pretty similar. And they might be so sure that they know what it would look like if God would just hear them and show up.
My guess is that the crowd assumes that if God is going to show up here, then Jesus is getting rescued from this cross. This makes perfect sense to me. And, had that happened, that would have been sensational. Like can you imagine? People would have talked and just been amazed!
But the tension is that if that happens...then so much of the rest of the story doesn’t. If Jesus is relieved of the cross, then the resurrection is no longer part of our story. The suffering is absolutely something that has to be walked through in order to get to the goodness. 8
Now, no one could see that in the moment. And they only had to wait three days to discover the goodness on the other side of the suffering. Sometimes we don’t see it and then we wait...for years. Or, we wait for...ever. Sometimes we are left with this question of why and we have to keep moving forward in faith even when the reasons just won’t show themselves to us.
I’ve been following Kelle Hampton (SLIDE) for a few years on Instagram, mostly for the positive content and trendy home decor. But recently, she shared that after two years of searching for answers, her teenage daughter Lainey was diagnosed with an extremely rare disease called Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia. It affects around 18 in 100,000 people and completely changed Lainey’s life. She went from living a pretty typical teenage life to having very limited mobility, especially over long distances.
Kelle and Lainey and their whole family have been really intentional about sharing her story and the love and hope they’ve found in the middle of the challenges. And what I’ve really appreciated about the way they share is that they are willing to not manufacture meaning. There are PLENTY of “whys”...but there aren’t that many answers. As HARD as that is, they keep telling the truth about the hard days and 9
celebrate the good days. They’re living in the tension and letting it be exactly what it is.
And when we think about our own stories, here’s what I want us to understand: (SLIDE)
Asking “why?” can be a spiritual practice.
Because what “Why?” really does, is it opens the door to lament.
Soong-Chan Rah, (SLIDE) author of the book “Prophetic Lament” says that the American Church, in particular, really struggles to engage in lament as part of our prayer and worship rhythms. We have a tendency to orient ourselves towards triumphalism and problem solving; of making concrete meaning and out of every hard thing we go through and finding a neat and tidy resolution along the way.
But lament slows us down from that and it forces us to tell the truth. It invites us, it gently beckons us, to sit with God and to bring our questions and our sorrow and our unknowns and let them be exactly what they are. It’s not necessarily PLEASANT, but it is HEALING.
Lament connects us to other stories, it connects us to history, as it gives us the bigger picture of suffering and redemption and God’s faithfulness. And as we lament we are reminded that healing has happened before...and it will 10
happen again. Maybe not on our timeline. Maybe not in the ways that we anticipate. But as we pray “why, God?” we let ourselves acknowledge that God IS with us and that God’s faithfulness will have the final word. Because it always does. And it always will. Even in the bleakest moments.
(SLIDE) Lament unlocks the possibility of hope. We see it in this Psalm that Jesus quotes. It’s 31 verses long and 21 of them are just straight up desperate complaints and cries to the Lord. It gets very dramatic and the Psalmist holds NOTHING back. BUT THEN we see the shift. We see the Psalmist remember the stories of their people. We see them remember the goodness that they’ve experienced. And all this remembering makes it possible for them to say that YES, I am in this terrible moment. AND. God you’re still faithful. You’re still good. You’re still with me.
I’ve been asking why a lot lately. I’ve been lamenting so many things I’m seeing in this world and I’m probably about as dramatic and long-winded about it as Psalm 22, wondering where God is in the middle of all of (gestures) THIS. And so I’m grateful for the fact that Jesus knows what it’s like. I’m grateful that the Psalms teach us how to pray like this. And I’m grateful that we can share in this prayer practice as a community, that even if we feel alone...we’re simply not. 11
And so today as we get ready to go to the Communion Table, know that whatever YOU are lamenting...whatever answers you’re seeking...whatever suffering you’re beholding, this table invites you to do all of THAT as one body. We’re here for each other. God is present with us. And we get to experience that presence now through bread and cup.