Jesus references this psalm when he is on the Cross.
‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.’
It is possible to read this utterance of the psalm as an act of despair.
Certainly we might know of Jesus’ agony as he was crucified.
We can only wonder at Jesus’ agony on the Cross. There are so many possible layers of the meaning here. At once, this utterance might seem to us an action of despair, or perhaps better of nullity, and at the same time an action of triumph, as the psalm moves to reaffirm and reinforces faith in God.
The psalmist is abject. In a sense, he complains against God. He speaks of trust, and yet says that God does not answer.
The psalmist considers his state – as a worm, scorned by men, mocked by men – the cause of God seems broken and lost.
There is a deep and prolonged itemization of the physical poverty of the psalmist. Truly, this is a person at the most abject. Starving, dogs are set to prey on him.
This is truth: the affirmation thereby of God-fear and God-love.
This is Jesus.
Jesus speaks to teach us how to pray through the psalms.
This is a most important text – chosen by Jesus upon the Cross.
We cannot assume irony. We cannot say that Jesus on the Cross recited this psalm as if having given up on his mission. We can only say that Jesus’s recitation of this psalm was perfect and that it was intended to express perfection.
This is Christian prayer at the utmost. So much is fused. Jesus calls upon the Father – on the Cross. SO much of Jewish history is included and resolved. Jesus took so much upon himself. Jesus became the subject of these psalms. That is scary and that is triumph.
There is a sense in which this should be Christian prayer.
To cause scandal is to drive other people away from the path of faith, to cause another person to sin, to withdraw from a life of grace, to cease to believe in redemption in Jesus Christ. This is a terrible sin, and we know that it does not stop there. The evil spreads, and soon it is common practice to denigrate Christianity. We think of the millions upon millions of little ones – and this in ‘Christian countries’ – who have never been introduced to Jesus, and of all the attendant troubles they experience because their spiritual lives have not been fostered. The signs of this spiritual neglect are endemic, while when many people speak against Christianity they do not even know what it is that they are objecting to; they have become in so little time so far removed from what could have been their inheritance, the living faith [ … ]
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Psalm 34 expresses faith, gratitude and unwavering trust in the divine providence of the Lord. In the psalm, we encounter celebration of God’s goodness and a resounding call to praise God in all circumstances [ … ]
In today’s Bible reading, we see clearly that many of those to whom Mark addresses his Gospel would not be familiar with Jewish customs. Mark, therefore, explains that the Jews wash as a ritual of purification prior to eating. This was initially a prescription for how priests should wash before offering sacrifice – see Exodus 30: 17ff – and was extended by tradition to all Jews before every meal. It may be helpful for us to remember that this was not a matter of hygiene; rather ritual purification was a symbol of the moral purity a person should have when approaching God. We may also consider our own practice of washing our hands and saying grace before meals, such that our participating in a meal becomes an act of thanksgiving to God, the meal a sacred space [ … ]
