Wow, this passage contained some harsh words. One doesn’t often hear such mean words in church. But everyone has been mocked, for some reason or another. I know I have.
When I moved to Swarthmore from Houston in sixth grade, I was immediately the brunt of this one boy’s jokes. To this day, I have no idea how I got on his bad side but I did. He started calling me chubby cheeks in the hallways when I saw him. And he continued to do this throughout middle school. It got to the point where I would consciously avoid him. Even now, while I have forgiven him, I still feel awkward around him. When I told my mom about this a few years later, she said that the boy had a crush on me and that was his flirting. Well, that’s not a good way to get a girl to like you, let me tell y’all. But apparently he has gotten some new ways of attracting girls; he’s had quite a few girlfriends.
This year my cheeks have come back to haunt me. Two of my friends have started calling me ‘Round Robyn.’ They have even come up with hand signals to convey that I have a round face. And this time it doesn’t bother me, they are my friends. I know them and understand that they say this only to annoy me, in a jokingly way. What else are friends for?
I want to relate Psalm 22 to something that almost everyone in the congregation could relate to and remember – high school. Why? Who doesn’t remember high school? We all have good memories and bad ones. In essence, high school hasn’t changed all that much since John Weicher was a student or even Dick Wohlschlaeger. Maybe the work has gotten harder, and the specific pressures have changed but the basics will never change – college is next and you can feel like you’re under a microscope. Your grades are scrutinized down to the last hundredth. And every mistake, and mess up will suddenly be the most important thing to the schools.
As we start to look at Psalm 22, we look at the first verse and can immediately substitute worm for teenager. And it still makes sense. “But I am a teenager, and not human; scorned by others, and despised by the people.” Some people look down upon teenagers – thinking that they will never measure up – or even grow up. Teenagers have to work that much harder to prove themselves to adults – we do one bad thing and it takes 10 good things to make up for it. Think about times when you have felt like a worm, could be during high school or not? You can feel so small and insignificant, like nothing you can do will ever be good enough.
Put “all who see me mock at me; they make mouths at me;” in a high school setting and we can immediately picture walking down the crowded hallways during the switching of classes when our classmates are judging us even if they don’t say anything about it out loud. High school can be one of the roughest times – a teenager scrutinized at every turn – by teachers, classmates, colleges, and parents. But maybe this wasn’t high school for you. Maybe this was a different time in your life when you were still talked about behind your back. Could be work or just when you were walking around a town.
“Many bulls encompass me,” the Psalmist writes. In high school, as a student we can feel encircled by cattle – or other students – all of us just trying to survive. We struggle to not get consumed by all the things that are thrown at us; sex, drugs, and violence. We fight to find ourselves and connect with God. And maybe that’s not just high schoolers. Maybe all of us have moments – or long periods – when God seems distant or absent and we can feel ourselves getting overwhelmed. Whether we are in school or out, old or young. We are taught that God is always there for us. But sometimes, when the ‘evil-doers’ surround us, we forget that there is help for us. The words on the Psalmist remind us that it is okay to talk to God when things are bad. We have the right to say what we want to, even if it isn’t always thank you’s, and blessings.
When the writer of Psalm 22 talks about how he feels, you can feel his desperation. Just think of how you feel when you’re stressed out. All your strength is gone. You body can feel like it has been hit by a car. And it seems that there is no help on the way. Let us imagine how the Psalmist feels when he sees the light at the end of the very dark tunnel. He has discovered that – there is hope in the act of complaining to God. (Is it through writing poetry like me, or is it through music, exercise, or talking to a friend?) So, let us go out and complain, on our own terms. Amen.