Psalm 22: Bulls and Lions and Dogs, Oh My

Different churches read different parts of this Psalm for April 1; I will comment on all of it (up to v. 24), but will only reproduce here, from the NRSV, the verses which shall be my focus.

12 "Many bulls encircle me,
strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
13 they open wide their mouths at me,
like a ravening and roaring lion.
14 I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
it is melted within my breast;
15 my mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death.
16 For dogs are all around me;
a company of evildoers encircles me.
My hands and feet have shrivelled;
17 I can count all my bones.
They stare and gloat over me;
18 they divide my clothes among themselves,
and for my clothing they cast lots."

Introduction

I really don't understand why the "Common" Lectionary has so many different readings in so many churches, but so be it. The Psalm text this a.m. is either from Ps. 31 or Ps. 22, and if it is from the latter, well, some churches emphasize the first half and some the second, and some seem to take a chunk out of the middle. Confronted with this situation, I will focus on what I believe are the theologically most significant verses of the Psalm--those which describe the Psalmist's suffering. More specificially, I will divide my consideration into two parts: the cry of the suffering Psalmist (vv. 1-18) and the cry for deliverance (vv. 19-24). Suffering will receive a disporportionate share of my attention.

A Theology of Suffering for 2007

Suffering is a scandal. It causes difficulty for the one who experiences it, difficulty for those who want to maintain religious faith in the midst of it, difficulty for those who leave faith in God because of suffering. One person will respond to deep anguish by reaffirming faith; another will see suffering as an indication that God is either not good or all-powerful. A theodicy tries to "justify" the ways of God to humans; the Book of Job is the most sustained Biblical reflection on the "problem" of suffering. Even though one might try to respond to someone who brings up the "problem of suffering" with the "problem of goodness" (i.e., why should there be good in the world unless there is a merciful God?), suffering remains. You don't have to go very far to see it etched in the lines of faces old and young, domestically and internationally.

If I were to write a theology of suffering in 2007, I would do so by mentioning three points. First, I would survey the extent of loss and suffering in our world today. This couldn't be a complete exposition, of course, but I would mingle physical and psychological data, interlaced with interviews and first-person narratives, to convince everyone that things are not just as bad as we think but are actually worse than we think. Suffering lies at the heart of what many people face each day.

The second point would be that suffering, if you give it long enough and let it teach you its lessons in the silence of your anguish, imparts wisdom. We are a people with a short supply of wisdom these days. We seem to have all the knowledge in the world, more and more of which is being posted daily on the Internet, but there is a relative famine in our culture today for wisdom. Wisdom may be defined as insight into how we "go" from here. That is frightfully broad, but I think it is where I would start in this "book" I would write on suffering. How does suffering give you wisdom/insight? In two principal ways: (a) by forcing you to look at the realia of your life wihtout sugar-coating them; and (b) by removing fear as an operative principle of your life. We live in fear, and we live in self-deception. We deceive ourselves because we secretly want life to be different from the way it is now, and so we tell ourselves a narrative to try to make things different in our mind. But by continually telling ourselves another story about life we begin to lose a sometimes tenuous grip on reality, on life as it actually is. Suffering brings into our life a way of confronting the real facts of life. Of course, one might continue to run from those facts; one might burrow deeper into our hole of denial, but suffering, in fact, gives us a chance to confront real things. In that connection, suffering can be seen as a gift of sorts. The Book of James tells us to "count it all joy" when we experience various trials. This advice is written from hindsight, of course, but it is inspired hindsight, I believe.

And, with respect to fear--once we have been through a very deep valley, a life-threatening valley, we are not so worried about the next hillock or slight depression that comes our way. We know that we are people who have been shaped by the deep crevasses of life, the deep fissures of existence, and thus don't have to fear the arrow that flies by day (Ps. 91) or the pestilence that stalks at noonday.

Finally, if I were writing a "book" on suffering today I would stress that suffering makes us actually blessed because it permits us to enter into the experience and heart of God. Some may say, and I think they say it with great conviction and eloquence, that love is the last word in the Universe, that under all things and surrounding everything is a gracious God who will envelop creation in God's arms and dry every tear from our eyes. But I am not ready to go there yet in my own mind. I think, in fact, that the last word in life may be suffering. And, in further fact, I think that this may be nearly the last word in God's experience, too. Suffering coats and infuses life, and the one who suffers gets special insight into what it is like to be God. Why? Because God spends most of the divine existence suffering.

It is here that I will argue for a more Hebraic than Greek understanding of God; that is, the impassibility of God, celebrated in Platonic philosophy and bequeathed to the Church through Augustine and other Greek-influenced thinkers, is not a doctrine that I recognize today. It is a mockery even as it attempts to praise God by tagging God with impassibility.

I could go on and on, but I am actually writing this essay as a sort of introduction to Ps. 22. Now we are ready, in the next essay, for a few comments about the Psalm.

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