By Brother Gary Pope-Sears

In November of 2000, I attended the memorial service of my father-in-law.  During the service, my brother-in-law stood up to sing Amazing Grace.  As he sang, his voice began to falter, overwhelmed by emotion.  As his voice faded, others among us took up the tune and helped him sing that great song all the way to the end.  It was a very moving moment.

On Good Friday, as he suffered on the cross, Jesus quoted a song which began, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  We often speak of this as the cry of dereliction, Jesus feeling the sins he was bearing for the whole world, questioning the very presence of God.  What if it was much more than that?

Years ago, our Bible Teacher at Ashram was the Rev. Lloyd Saatjian.  He shared that rabbis in Jesus’ time would often begin a psalm, and the congregation would join in, much as we came alongside my brother-in-law at that memorial service.  Thanks to this teaching, this new awareness, I have come to a much deeper appreciation—and love for—Psalm 22.

I invite you to look at Psalm 22 afresh, not merely because it begins with one of Jesus’ last words cried out in pain, but because of where the song goes from there—from forsakenness by God through mistreatment by others and eventually to a new awareness of God’s goodness, ending in a promised view of how posterity will praise the Lord, aware of all that God has done.  The faithful Jews gathered there—picking up the song of this rabbi—would have been led to that same awareness, that same hope.

From the top of Calvary, Jesus could see far beyond his pain and suffering to the coming triumph of God, something we can now see and share.  I invite you to join me in praising God for all that Jesus went through for us, setting our faces towards the ultimate good of God that we can embody through our faith expressed as faithfulness—all the way from verse 1 through verse 31. Psalm 22:  great hymn to an even greater God!