Lament and Praise – Psalm 22

A text – Psalm 22:19-28     

¹⁹ But you, O Lord, do not be far away!     O my help, come quickly to my aid!
²⁰ Deliver my soul from the sword, my life from the power of the dog!
²¹ Save me from the mouth of the lion!

    From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.
²² I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters;in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
²³ You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!            ²⁴ For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me but heard when I cried to him.

²⁵ From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
²⁶ The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever!

²⁷ All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
²⁸ For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.

A reflection:

In this psalm of lament, where the writer is forlorn and devastated, certain that is life is almost over, he begs God to hear him and deliver him. And suddenly, in the middle of verse 21, God has heard and answered him. “From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued me.” I have read Old Testament scholars who say that the Hebrew word in that verse is not rescued but instead answered. The psalmist may still be being attacked, but in the midst of it, he hears God answer his cries. God’s answering is enough for his faith to be restored.

The picture this psalm paints throws me back to our story from Monday, the possessed man who had been carried out to the tombs (caves) and chained there, naked, where the community still fed him but kept him safely at a distance. Surely his lament could have been like this one – he was banished from human contact and at the mercy of wild beasts and extreme loneliness. And yet God heard his cries, and Jesus came to answer those cries. He had been heard. And when he had been fully restored and wanted to follow Jesus, Jesus instead told him to go back to his village and praise God, telling of God’s faithfulness to him and praising God in the congregation.

When God hears our cries, what do we do? Do we praise God in the congregation? What would happen if we did? What if our relationship with God, our laments and our praises, were made a little more public? What if people knew how we experienced God helping or even just hearing us? Would that not be good for our brothers and sisters? Wouldn’t some other folks then speak about being heard by God as well? And if we did that often, wouldn’t verse 27 come true? “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord.” Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

A prayer:

Lord God, thank you for loving us. Thank you for hearing and answering our cries. Help us to remember to praise you for hearing us and answering us. Help us to remember to share our stories of your love shown to us so that others might grow in their faith. Amen.