This video is for Wednesday Night's discussion
Sometimes I feel
Like I don't have a partner
Sometimes I feel
Like my only friend
Is the city I live in
The city of angel
Lonely as I am
Together we cry
I drive on her streets
cause shes my companion
I walk through her hills
cause she knows who I am
She sees my good deeds
And she kisses me windy
I never worry
Now that is a lie
I don't ever want to feel
Like I did that day
Take me to the place I love
Take me all the way
Its hard to believe
That there's nobody out there
Its hard to believe
That I'm all alone
At least I have her love
The city she loves me
Lonely as I am
Together we cry
I don't ever want to feel
Like I did that day
Take me to the place I love
Take me all the way
Under the bridge downtown
Is where I drew some blood
Under the bridge downtown
I could not get enough
Under the bridge downtown
Forgot about my love
Under the bridge downtown
I gave my life away
1. What are some words that come to mind about the video?
2. What images in the video do you relate to?
3. What images in the video do you think Jesus relates to? (Where is Jesus in the video?)
4. How does Jesus' cry, Jesus' use of Psalm 22 echo your own?
Here are some words on Psalm 22:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
This cry from Jesus’ lips echoes the cries of the faithful throughout human history. It is an ancient and anguished complaint to God because God is silent and absent in a time of great personal distress, for Jesus this comes on the cross.
Jesus takes up the ancient cry of Israel whose psalms arose within the experience of worship. The psalms foster individual prayer, communal praise, private reflection and learned instruction; they provide a window through which ancient Israel’s response to God’s presence or absence may be viewed; and they give voice to our prayers and praise today.
When Jesus uses Psalm 22, a psalm used to express grief at God’s absence in the face of unknown causes, Jesus asks, “My God, my God, why? Why the cross, why the suffering, why the humiliation? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Forsake is not a common word anymore. To forsake is to renounce or turn away from entirely, to abandon, to desert. Forsakenness carries with it a sense of absence, or a loss of the intensity that presence brings. Jesus still calls out, “My God, my God,” Jesus doesn’t doubt that God is God or that God is real, Jesus questions God’s silence at his time of need.
While God’s presence to Jesus diminishes in intensity on the cross, God’s presence in and for Jesus, as well as for the whole of creation, remains intact, and at what seems its weakest, is stronger than ever before and ever since. One can gather from Jesus’ cry that this presence remains hidden from Jesus.
But the cross is the time and place where God’s everlasting will for salvation is carried out, amidst great silence the cries of Alleluia are born.
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