Gosh I had a fight last night. Last night the chapel become for us the Garden of Gethsemane and we tried to wait with Jesus as we remembered how he struggled to come to terms with the terrifying reality of following what he understood to be God’s call to him. I had a fight, because that three hours of silence is hard to bear. First, I tried to focus on what was happening to Jesus, then I moved on to praying for the people I love followed by the people I find it hard to love. I prayed for our community here, I prayed for the world and I prayed for myself, that I might know and have the courage to follow, the will of God in my own life. But still 2 hours to go! Then my mind shifted. What am I doing here? Is God really listening to me? Am I just talking to myself? Is God really there? And finally, of course, I was in Gethsemane, confronted with the big questions that no doubt confronted Jesus as he knelt and prayed on that strange night.

One of the wonderful things about scripture is that it is possible to find all the emotions and feelings that we go through recorded there. All our celebrations and successes, and all our disappointments, sadness and confusion can find a voice through the words of scripture.

‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress?’

Yes, at the heart of our scriptures we find not only that our negative feelings about God and each other are captured but we are given permission to voice those feelings. Today, as we come before the cross, we are encouraged to be honest about the anger, the disappointment and the bitterness that we feel with God. So often the church has tried to cut out and ignore psalms like the one we heard today. But without psalm 22 and other passages like it, what would be the point in being a Christian? What would be the point of following a God who couldn’t take the full force of our honesty and our complaining?

You see, when you can’t complain, when you don’t have permission to acknowledge how bad things are, then you lose all sense of power. If you are only ever allowed to praise God and celebrate how wonderful God is you end up spending half the time in forced silence. Such silence, as we have seen in the recent events in Jersey, only leads to deceit, denial and cover-up, and it is exactly the same in our own lives with God. We need to acknowledge the reality of all our experiences with God. It builds our confidence and helps us into a mature relationship with God.

There is also another reason why we need the freedom to be honest and complain to God. We need the capacity to raise questions about the fact that we are told that God is good and yet the world that God has made seems to be full of injustice and pain. There is so much that isn’t fair in ‘God’s good world’. Some things just aren’t right, they shouldn’t be accepted, things can be changed and, if we are honest, one would think that it is God’s duty to sort things out. Looking at the cross, looking at the situation in Tibet, Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel/Palestine and in our own lives demands that we ask the question, ‘why isn’t God doing something?’

If this God matters in every dimension of our lives, we need permission to ask these questions. We need to have difficult and awkward conversations with God. God puts himself in precisely that vulnerable position as he hangs upon the cross, open, ready for us to fling every criticism and accusation at him. And it is our duty to ask those questions and make those demands for justice. For where those words are not used, we will simply end in hopelessness. Today it seems that any new resolve on God’s part depends our words of complaint and protest. Today it seems that our growth in maturity depends on our revealing the vulnerability of God to our criticism.

Now don’t start feeling sorry for God. This is the consequence of God wanting to be human. The cross is the point of ultimate transformation and learning for God. God may not explain why there is suffering, but as a result he needs to suffer alongside us. God may not explain why there is regret and sadness but therefore he must become the sorrowful one. God may not explain why there is humiliation, instead he practices self-emptying love.

‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress?’

Today our questions will not be silenced and our God must live out an answer.