Psalm 38 – When God Is Gone

Last week at Old Union Church we celebrated two baptisms. It was my favorite kind of baptism ceremony, because it included both an adult and an infant. The infant’s baptism reminds us that God claims us to be members of his family and recipients of his grace long before we even have an inkling of what any of it means. God takes the first step in forming a relationship with us. And the adult’s baptism reminds us that God’s claim on our lives demands a response from us: to accept his gift of love, redemption, and new life with gratitude, and to commit ourselves to walk the path of discipleship and fellowship.

(You may be wondering what all this has to do with Psalm 38, but don’t worry: we’ll get there!)

At the beginning of our baptism ceremony, I always read three Scripture passages to remind us why we share this sacrament and what it means in our lives. The first is Matthew’s version of the Great Commission: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” That’s pretty powerful stuff, but for now I’d like to focus primarily on the end of the commission: Jesus promises that he will be with us until the end of time. Baptism is a reminder and a sign for us that God is always with us. It’s a confirmation that Jesus’ promise of John 14 has been fulfilled. Matthew 28, John 14, and Psalm 139 are three of the most powerful reminders in Scripture that we are never alone: God is always with us.

But the truth is, we don’t always recognize or feel God’s presence. Sometimes we flippantly talk about a “God-forsaken” place: usually someplace desolate that doesn’t appear to have any redeeming value. We know better, of course, because there’s no place that is God-forsaken. Isn’t that the promise of baptism, and of the gift of the Holy Spirit? God never abandons nor forsakes us.

Well, there was this one time….

Before Jesus offered the promise to his disciples that he would always be with us, he endured the experience of being abandoned by God. As he hung on the cross in agony, he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” A lot of theological ink has been spilled over this outcry: how could Jesus, who is God incarnate, be forsaken by God? It would be like someone forsaking themselves. How is that possible? This isn’t the time to jump into Trinitarian explanations, but follow me just this far. As Jesus hung on the cross, he took on all the sinfulness of the human race. Not just the nasty stuff that we do, but the very condition of being sinful. And that’s not a pretty picture: all of the horrible, cruel, mean, vicious, selfish, prideful crimes and misconduct of all of humanity. God, being utterly holy and perfect, cannot endure the presence of evil and sin. He abandons it or destroys it. So God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, the other two Persons of the Trinity, broke their intrinsic bond with God the Son which had been in existence before time began. For the only time in all of eternity, Jesus the Son of God had been abandoned by God.

And that is the experience which the author of Psalm 38 went through as well. (See, I told you we’d get back to it!) He felt the anguish of God’s response to his sin, and this psalm is his prayer to God for mercy.

Verses 3-8 are a powerful description of the effects that sin can have upon us. In this case, it’s the physical consequences of sin. I’m not talking about something like “if you practice unsafe sex you’ll get nasty diseases,” although that can be true also, of course. Psalm 38 describes a different kind of physical consequence. Sometimes we think of ourselves as having these different distinct parts: our physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual selves. We act like they are compartmentalized and separate, each in their own plastic packaging to protect them from each other. The reality, however, is that we are a unity. What happens to us emotionally affects us physically, and what happens to us physically affects us spiritually, and so on. We know it’s true on some level: people tend to get sick when they’re stressed out, for example. In this case, the unity of the human being comes out in a different way. When we are sick spiritually, it affects all parts of us. That’s why the psalmist offered such graphic descriptions of his physical anguish: his damaged spiritual state was affecting all parts of his life. In fact, verses 11 and 12 point out the fact that his sin also damaged his social interactions. The bottom line is that when we are messed up spiritually (which usually happens because of sin), our entire lives are out of whack.

Some insightful people have questioned a commonly assumed aspect of typical Christian belief, and it’s an assumption which the opening lines of this prayer seem to confirm. It’s the assumption that God punishes sin: the old image of God up in heaven heaving thunderbolts at the bad people. And it’s the concept of God preparing a horrible eternal doom of torment for people who have not set themselves right with him. Some people ask, “How could a God who is the embodiment of love do this? Doesn’t this go against his very nature?” Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. I’m not prepared to say that God never punishes sin, because there a lot of Bible passages we’d have to contend with before we can accept that conclusion. But here’s what I do believe: much of what we believe to be God’s punishment is actually what we do to ourselves. The worst things that we experience are things that we do to ourselves. As Psalm 7:15 puts it, “He who digs a hole and scoops it out falls into the pit he has made.” Of course, there are times that someone else has to face the consequences of our sin, like the people who get cancer because they live downriver from the company that dumps toxic goo into their drinking water.

One of the most excruciating things that we do to ourselves, however, is destroying our relationship with God. Just as God couldn’t look at his own Son as he hung on the cross, he cannot endure our company when sin is dripping off of our souls. It feels to us as though he abandons us, and that we have become “God-forsaken.” The sad reality, however, is that we’ve made ourselves so distasteful to God that he turns aside from us. But it’s not God’s doing: it’s what we do to ourselves.

The psalm ends with a pitiful plea: “O LORD, do not forsake me; be not far from me, O my God. Come quickly to help me, O Lord my Savior.” This is the prayer of a soul that recognizes the sources of its agony. What appeared to be God’s wrath and discipline in verses 1-2 was actually the damage that he had done to himself by removing himself from God’s loving care and support. This recognition is the first step toward receiving the healing which God offers and wants us to receive. In other words, until we recognize our need for God’s presence in our lives, we’ll never be able to enjoy it. Until we realize that the source of our troubles, frustrations, and sorrows is the fact that we have moved ourselves out of God’s sustaining presence, we’re doomed to feel that pain forever.

But the really good news, in fact the news that’s so good that we give it its own name (the “gospel”) is that God hears prayers like Psalm 38, and especially the ending lines. God wants nothing more than to heal the damage that we’ve done to our relationship with him. And he has gone to incredibly great lengths to do it: the incarnation and sacrificial death of his Son, whose resurrection proves that it worked. The power of God’s redeeming work is greater than the power of our sin. That which separates us from God has been undone by God’s work to return us into his loving presence.