Psalm 21 and the Elevation of the Cross: "My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?"
by Mark Mosley
Forefeast of the Elevation of the Holy Cross
Anno Domini 2020, September 13
King David
The author of Psalm 21 is Saint David. Though he is king and has more than any human can imagine, he is still tormented by feeling abandoned and defeated by his circumstances. He cries out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” And it is not just for himself that he shouts out in anguish, for he is the icon of the people of the promised land, the kingdom of heaven on earth, the royal chosen of God. The land, city, and people fall as their king falls.
Queen Esther (Esther 4-6)
For the Jewish people, Esther is perhaps one of the most important books of the Old Testament. The entire Jewish holiday of Purim is dedicated to teaching and remembering the book of Esther and its meaning. Esther, who represents all of God’s people, is subjected to a foreign power and the immediate plot of her people to be subjugated to death. She fasts for three days and three nights before meeting with the foreign king to bargain for her peoples’ lives. This is called the “Fast of Esther.” According to Jewish tradition, as Esther walks down the hall of idols to confront the judgment of her people, she feels the shekinah (i.e., the dwelling of the divine presence) of God leave her. She thus cries out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”
Israel in Exile
When Israel was in exile during the Babylonian captivity in Persia, God’s people would participate not only in the “Fast of Esther” for three days and three nights, but also in her recitation of Psalm 21, beginning with “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”
Christ on the Cross (Matt. 27:46 & Mk. 15:34)
So when Jesus is on the cross and cries out, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” this is not Jesus questioning God. Jesus remains fully God. Still, He is fully man and participates in that despair of man abandoned and defeated. He is reciting Psalm 21. He is joining His people in chanting this psalm of His people, Israel.
In His agony on the cross, Jesus does not speak out of His own personal imagination. Instead, He speaks out of the historical story of His spiritual community. He calls the world by reciting the words of an exiled people. While dying, He is singing a song—like a martyr about to be shot for his faith who begins to recite the LORD’s prayer. He embraces love by calling His mystical community in exile, agony, and impending death.
He is the image of King David who cries out for His people. He is the picture of Esther who confronts a dark foreign power for her people to be spared death. He is the icon of the “exiled” in the new Babylon of Rome chanting the vision of the heavenly city on the hill. All of the voices of Israel form a chorus that lift up praise together. God is with us even as God dies on the cross. At the foot of the cross, He knows the comfort of a mother who will never be separated from the love of God (v. 9, 10). He dies and yet he sings. The song of the cross, Psalm 21, is for us.
And while the psalm begins in a dark subterranean place of the flesh: “My God, my God why have You forsaken me?” the song turns around to face the twilight and feel the beating warmth: “But You are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel” (v. 3). Hope and courage are found to move forward, to join this procession of holy sound, to march into battle proclaiming this psalm of exile. God moves from “far away” (v. 1) to “not far from me” (v. 19). The music and the memory pull together the unmeasurable distance. The lament of Man who is planted into the earth for three days and three nights and fasts from life itself, becomes the angelic crescendo from a seed of light that births the Sun of hope.
Modern Exile
A viral pandemic, racial unrest, the explosion in Lebanon, vitriolic political hatred…these times around us make many of us feel weakened and alone. We feel separated quite literally from our people—entombed in our own flesh. The surroundings feel dark, lightless, ominous, even deathlike. The wood of this cross feels too heavy to carry through these streets. A dead silence in the womb of our heart detaches roots and begins to decay. We have lost the desire to speak even a Word. Our chest aches as if blood and water were being poured out. Our prayers have dried up in our mouth. Our heart like wax has melted. Even with those meant to guard us, everything seems up to chance. This cross has taken everything away from us. We too begin this prayer, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”
The Elevation of the Cross
In that breathless moment, a song cries from the cave of our heart. We must listen carefully and hear the rest of Psalm 21. There is a sound very low like trembling thunder. And then a slight scent of basil. The cross of Christ elevates and delivers strength to rise with it. We follow the voices of the living and the dead who sing, “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the LORD: and all the families of the nations shall worship before You” (v. 27). All of history becomes eternal. All loss becomes gain. Like Saint Helena, we are guided to discover the true cross, again. We are the poor who are satisfied not by the measure of what we are given but by the measure of our thankfulness (v. 26).
On September 14th, we gather for thankfulness. It is the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross. We celebrate this discovery and re-discovery. On this day—on every day—put the cross of Christ upon you. Let this sign impregnate your flesh. Carry it in front of you. Bear down with it. Give birth to it. Hold it to your chest. Feed it with your body. Close your eyes. Lift up your hands. Breathe deeply and release life to it. Stand facing the east. Inhale the light fragrance of flowers as if incense in the wind and sing together with Christ and all the earth as we die and rise.
Psalm 21
*All phrases in bold red
are used in the New Testament concerning Christ on the cross.
1
My God, my God, why have You forsaken me? (Matt. 27:46)
Why are You so far from helping me, and from the words of my groaning?
2
O my God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent.
3
But You are holy, enthroned in the praises of Israel.
4
Our fathers trusted in You: they trusted, and You delivered them.
5
They cried to You, and were delivered: they trusted in You, and were not ashamed.
6
But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people.
7
All those that see me, ridicule me: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head (Mk. 15:29),
saying,
8
“He trusted in the Lord; let Him rescue him. Let Him deliver him (Matt. 27:42)
since He delights in Him.”
9
But You are He that took me out of the womb: You made me trust while on my mother's breasts.
10
I was cast upon You from birth: From my mother’s womb, You have been my God.
11
Be not far from me; for trouble is near; for there is none to help.
12
Many bulls have surrounded me: strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me.
13
They gaped at me with their mouths, like a raging and roaring lion.
14
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it has melted within me.
15
My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue clings to my jaws; (“I thirst” ~Jn. 19:28). You have brought me to the dust of death.
16
For dogs have surrounded me: the congregation of the wicked have enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet (Matt. 27:31-32).
17
I can count all my bones (“a bone shall not be broken” ~Jn. 19:36). They look and stare at me.
18
They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing, they cast lots (Matt. 27:35).
19
But You, O LORD, do not be far from me. O my Strength, hasten to help me.
20
Deliver me from the sword; my precious life from the power of the dog (“take this cup from me” ~Lk. 22:42).
21
Save me from the lion’s mouth: and from the horns of the wild oxen.
22
I will declare Your name to my brethren: in the midst of the assembly, I will praise You (Heb. 2:12).
23
You who fear the Lord, praise Him. All you descendants of Jacob, glorify Him; and fear Him, all you offspring of Israel.
24
For He hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; nor has He hidden His face from him; but when he cried to Him, He heard (Is. 53:3).
25
My praise shall be of You in the great assembly: I will pay my vows before those that fear Him.
26
The poor shall eat and be satisfied: those who seek Him will praise the LORD. Let your heart live for ever!
27
All the ends of the world shall remember and turn to the LORD: and all the families of the nations shall worship before You.
28
For the kingdom is the LORD’s: and He rules over the nations.
29
All the prosperous of the earth shall eat and worship. All those that go down to the dust shall bow before Him: even he cannot keep himself alive.
30
A seed shall serve Him; it shall be recounted of the Lord to the next generation.
31
They shall come and declare His righteousness to a people who will be born, that He has done this.
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"What is it that has ordered the things of heaven and those of earth, the things which move through the air and those which move in the water; nay, rather the things which proceeded them: heaven and earth and the natures of fire and water? What is it that combined and arranged them...set them into motion and put them on their unceasing and unhindered course?..But who is the architect of these things? Or did not he who made them also bring them into being? We shall certainly not attribute such power to spontaneity." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 3 This comes after St. John of Damascus sets out to delineate between the created and the uncreated, a fact which, while at the core of existence, seems for him to be, for this very reason, the simplest to believe. Everything but God is created and, thus, susceptible to change. This means people, but this also means demons, angels, the rest of the created order across the entire cosmos. Everything is vulnerable to unrest. Except for God. If you have ever tried to explain the Holy Trinity to a child for the first time, maybe you have felt as I have the weightier, inexpressible side of God's unchangeability: how do I possibly communicate this essential fact to the person in front of me? (This is usually when my faint stutter starts to pop up again.) I like that here, like St. Patrick reaching for a three-leaf clover, St. John brings us back to earth to better understand the cosmos. Fire and water are no less mysteries than heaven and earth. And yet here we are, cooking and washing, eating and drinking, filled and sustained on what we can neither fully explain nor claim to have created. Only God is unchanging. Vice versa, God is the only constant we need. Maybe the rest is better left unsaid. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.
"Now, one who would speak or hear about God should know beyond any doubt that in what concerns theology and the Incarnation not all things are inexpressible and not all are capable of expression, and neither are all things unknowable nor are they all knowable. That which can be known is one thing, whereas that which can be said is another, just as it is one thing to speak and another to know. Furthermore, many of those things about God which are not clearly perceived cannot be fittingly described, so that we are obliged to express in human terms things which transcend the human order. Thus, for example, in speaking about God we attribute to Him sleep, anger, indifference, hands and feet, and the like." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 2 When I was studying Fiction in graduate school, one of the first methods I learned to really situate the reader in the story you were about to tell them was disorientation; if you wanted to ground them in one story, first you had pull the rug out from under their feet. So it's fitting that in the beginning of St. John Damascene's On the Orthodox Faith, before rebuilding our foundation, he first puts us squarely in limbo, seesawing back and forth between certainty and uncertainty. To paraphrase, there is no doubt (certainty) that about God some things can be expressed...but not all things (uncertainty). Some things about God are truly knowable (certainty), but some are unknowable (uncertainty). Oh, and while we're speaking about God (certainty), let's admit there's a gap, too, between what we say and what we know (uncertainty). My favorite line in this spiraling excerpt, "...it is one thing to speak, and another to know," takes me back to the final lines in Wendell Berry's poem, "How to Be a Poet," which he wrote primarily as a reminder to himself: Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. Wherever your preferences fall on the cataphatic or apophatic spectrum of theology (whether you lean more toward what we can say about God or what we cannot), Berry's poem, I think, would nod along with St. John: before we say too much, let our words be preserved by the silence from which they came. I'm thinking of the silence, that filling, restorative quiet I feel when I step into a cathedral or in some of my favorite moments with my kids in the early hours. Even before praying, can we hear the One already praying in us? Let's start there. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.
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