Dr. Ron Sumners
January 29, 2006
There is no more plaintive or heartfelt prayer than the cry of Jesus, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46) Jesus' experience on the cross was, of course, utterly unique, and unrepeatable, for He was taking onto Himself the sin of the world. But in our own way, you and I will pray this prayer of the forsaken if we seek the intimacy of communion with the Father. Times of seeming desertion and absence and abandonment appear to be universal among those who have walked this path of faith before us. Sooner or later, we too, will know what it means to feel forsaken by God.
The old writers spoke of this reality as Deus Absconditus - the God who is hidden. Have you ever tried to pray and felt nothing, saw nothing, sensed nothing? Has it ever seemed that your prayers did nothing but bounce off the ceiling and ricochet around an empty room? Have there been times when you desperately needed a word of assurance, some demonstration of God's presence, and you got nothing? Sometimes it seems like God is hidden from us. We do everything we know to do. We pray. We serve. We worship. We live as faithfully as we can. And still there is nothing. George Buttrick said that in those times we feel as if we are "beating off Heaven's door with bruised knuckles in the dark."
I am sure that when I speak of the absence of God you understand that God is never truly absent. I am talking about a sense of absence. God is always present with us - we know this theologically - but there are times when we cannot feel His presence.
These theological truths are of little help to us when we enter the Sahara Desert of the heart. Here we experience real spiritual desolation. We feel abandoned by friends, spouse, and God. Every hope evaporates the moment we reach for it. Every dream dies the instant we try to realize it. We question, we doubt, we struggle. We pray and the words seem empty. We turn to the Bible and are unable to find the truth. We seek fellowship from other Christians and discover only criticism, selfishness, and maybe a lecture on your lack of faith.
The biblical metaphor for these experiences of forsakenness is the desert. It is a fitting image, for we do feel dry and barren and parched in these times. We cry with the Psalmist, "I call all day, my God, but you never answer." (Psalm 22:2) We know God is there, but we can't connect with Him.
These experiences of abandonment and desertion have come and will come to most all of us. Therefore, today we will see if anything helpful can be said as we face the barren wasteland of God's absence.
The first thing that I have to say is a word of encouragement. We are not on a rabbit trail in life but a major highway. Many have traveled the road before us. Think of Moses exiled from the splendor of Egypt, waiting year after silent year for God to speak. Think of the Psalmist's cry to God, "Why have you forgotten me?" (Psalm 42:9) Think of Elijah in a desolate cave keeping a lonely vigil of misery and abandonment. Think of Jeremiah lowered down into a dungeon until he "sank in the mire." Think of Mary's solitary vigil at Golgotha, watching her son die. Think of those words from the mouth of our Savior, "My God, My God, why ... why ... why?"
Christians down through the centuries have gone through the same experience. Saint John of the Cross named it "the dark night of the soul." George Fox said simply, "When it was day I wished for night, and when it was night, I wished for day." We are in good company. God's saints through the ages have prayed the prayer of abandonment.
Also, I want you to know that to be faced with this feeling of God's absence does not mean that God is displeased with you, or that you are insensitive to the work of the Holy Spirit, or that you have committed some horrible sin against heaven, or that there is something wrong with you. Darkness is a definite experience of prayer. It is to be expected and embraced.
The second thing that can be said about our experience of abandonment is that every faith journey is unique. Our sense of God's absence does not come to us in any predictable timetable. We cannot draw a universal road map that everyone will be able to follow.
Those in the first days of faith often are given unusual graces of the spirit. Just like the attention that is given to a newborn baby. It is also true that some of the deepest experiences of alienation and separation from God have come to those who are mature, committed Christians. We can enter the desert of barrenness and the dark canyons of anguish at any number of points in our journey of faith.
We enter into a living relationship when we accept Christ. It is a relationship that begins and develops in mutual freedom. God gives us freedom because He desires creatures that freely choose to be in relationship with Him. Through the prayer of the forsaken, we are learning to give to God the same freedom. Relationships can never be manipulated or forced.
If we could make the Creator of heaven and earth instantly appear at our beck and call, we would not be in communication with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We do that with things, objects, and idols. We cannot manipulate God.
Can you see how our sense of the absence of God is an unsuspected grace? In the very act of hiddenness God is slowly weaning us from fashioning Him in our own image. By refusing to be a puppet on a string or a genie in a lamp, God frees us from our idolatrous images.
We should be thankful that God does not always present Himself whenever we wish, because we might not be able to endure such a meeting. Often, in the Bible, people were scared out of their wits when they encountered the living God. "Do not let God speak to us, or we will die," pleaded the children of Israel (Exodus 20:19). At times this should be our cry as well.
Saint John of the Cross said that two purifications occur in the dark night of the soul. The first involves stripping us of dependence upon exterior results. We find ourselves less impressed with the religion of the "big deal" - big buildings, big budgets, big productions, and big miracles. Not that there is anything wrong with big things, but they are no longer what impresses us.
The second purifying of Saint John involves stripping us of dependence upon interior results. This is more disturbing and painful than the first because it threatens us at the root of all we believe in and have given ourselves to. We wonder what kind of God we believe in. We discover that the workings of faith, hope, and love become subject to doubt. Our personal motivations become suspect. We worry whether this act or that thought is inspired by fear, vanity, and arrogance rather than faith, hope and love.
This brings us to the issue of what we do during these times of abandonment. Is there any kind of prayer in which we can engage when we feel forsaken? Yes - we can begin by praying the Prayer of Complaint. This is a form of prayer that has been largely lost in our modern, sanitized religion, but the Bible is full of it.
The best way I know to relearn this approach to God is by praying the "Lament Psalms." These ancient Psalm writers really knew how to complain, and their words of anguish and frustration can guide our lips into the prayer that we dare not pray alone. They expressed reverence and disappointment, "God whom I praise, break your silence" (Psalm 109:1). They experience hope and despair, "I am here, calling for help, praying to you every morning, why do you reject me? Why do you hide your face from me?" (Psalm 88:13-14).
They had confidence in the character of God and exasperation at the inaction of God, "I say to God, my rock, 'Why have you forgotten me?"' (Psalm 42:9)
The Lament Psalms teach us to pray our inner conflicts and contradictions. They allow us to shout out our forsakenness in the dark caverns of abandonment and then hear the echo return to us. They give us permission to shout our frustration to God one moment and break into doxology the next.
A second thing we do when we are experiencing the silence of God is to keep doing what we know God requires. We pray, we listen, we worship, and we carry out the duty of the present moment. What we learned to do in the light of God's love, we also do in the dark of God's absence. God is God whether you feel Him or not! We ask and continue to ask because we know that God is there even though we do not find Him. We knock and continue to knock even when the door remains shut.
We love God more than the gifts that he provides. Like Job, we serve God even if He slays us. Like Mary, we freely say, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word" (Luke 1:38). This is a wonderful grace.
I would like to offer one more counsel to those who find themselves feeling the silence of God. Wait on God. Wait, being silent and still. Wait, being attentive and responsive. Learn that trust preceded faith. It is trust that leads us to receive the gift of faith. Wait and trust that God will do what he has promised in His Word. Trust is confidence in the character of God. Firmly and deliberately, you say, "I do not understand what God is doing, but I know that he is out to do me good." That is trust. That is how to wait.
I do not fully understand the reasons for the wilderness of God's silence. This I do know - while the wilderness is necessary, it is never meant to be permanent. In God's time and in God's way the desert will give way to a land flowing with milk and honey. And as we wait for the promised land of the soul, we can echo this prayer, "O my God, deep calls unto deep. The deep of my profound misery calls to the deep of your infinite love."
God where are you? What have I done to make you hide from me? Are you playing cat and mouse with me, or are your purposes larger than my perceptions? I feel alone, lost, and forsaken. You are the God who majors in revealing yourself. You showed yourself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When Moses wanted to know what you looked like, you obliged him. Why them and not me?
I am tired of praying. I am tired of asking. I am tired of waiting. But I will keep on praying and asking and waiting because I know that you are there, and I have nowhere else to go.
Jesus, you too, knew the loneliness of the desert and the isolation of the cross. And it is through your words on the cross that I speak these words.
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