What do you do when you cry out to God and hear only silence in reply? This sermon walks through Psalm 22, David’s prayer, which became the prayer of all Israel and was later spoken from the cross by Jesus. Alongside the psalm come the stories of people who for years could not name their own suffering and yet never stopped speaking to God. Listen if the sense of abandonment is closer today than you would care to admit, because this psalm begins with a cry of despair, but that is not how it ends.
Discussion questions
For your small group or for personal reflection after the sermon.
- Psalm 22 opens with the cry: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What images does David use to describe his abandonment and the suffering caused by his enemies?
- David recalls how God rescued his ancestors, yet calls himself a worm, scorned by people. Why can remembering God's faithfulness in the past both comfort and hurt at the same time?
- David's prayer became the prayer of Israel and later the prayer of Jesus on the cross. How does it change the way you face suffering to know that God himself experienced abandonment and harm?
- The psalm begins in despair and ends declaring that dominion belongs to the Lord and that he has done it. How does Jesus' cry, It is finished, shape the way you see the ending of your own story?
- The stories of the missionary who worked among the Native Americans and of the man abused as a child show that Jesus can write a new ending. Where in your life do you most need that?
- Who around you might feel abandoned by people or by God right now, and how can you walk alongside them this week without brushing off their pain?
