"the search for God.. with a high level of doubt"

"The song is about the search for God and like the film, it’s looking for a fresh slant on spirituality, in this case with a high level of doubt.' Peter Gabriel

Why don't You show yourself

Why don't You show yourself

Why don't You show yourself

Was that something whispering in the leaves
I can smell Your breath within a breeze
Something lying at your feet
Making you alive more complete

And we rely on
All that's forgotten
With the way that destiny
Can pull You down

So we are searching
Searching for You
And we go hunting
Hunting for You

And in this empty space
In this hollow place
Why don't You show yourself
Why don't You show yourself

Life and death
The strong and the weak
The only thing you think about
Is exactly what you seek

We look for footprints
We look for clear signs
Look for any presence
That we can find

And still we're searching
Searching for You
And we go hunting
Hunting for You

And in this flesh and bones
In this man's heart
Why don't you show yourself
Why don't you show yourself

Hard to find You
Harder to see
The way you're talking
And the way you ' re set to be
In You I find me
Why don't you show yourself

And we go hunting
Hunting for you
And we we're hunting
Hunting round this world

And in this wounded place
Why don't you show your face

Why don't you show yourself
Why don't you show yourself

Why Don't You Show Yourself
--
studio version mp3 here

Peter Gabriel's prayers are answered

Acceptance speech upon winning "Prog God" award:

praying with Richard Patrick and Filter

  "I tried to pray..I'll give it a shot" (lyrics to  Filter's "Captain Bligh").


I know; I'm behind the times.

Filter is a new band to me: I heard "Skinny" the other day, and found it captivating and spiritually moving.  The band is basically Richard Patrick and whoever rallies around for a given album.season.

For someome who claims to (no longer?) be a believer..I wonder if  he doth prostest too much.

Pretty God-haunted.

 Even though Captain Bligh is supposed to be about Patrick's leaving his former band (NIN):
to me it smells like another singer (Peter Gabriel)'s song ("Solsbury Hill") that is officially about him leaving his former band (Genesis)..but reads like a journal following a  God-encounter.

  Even though one album is "Anthems for the Damned," it feels like a pulling a Johnny Cash.



 Skinny:

Captain Bligh:




 9:37ff on Bono and Christianity:

 Quote:
" I’ve even said it in interviews: 'We’re the heavy version of U2.'”
 Article excerpts:

After shows, we stay until everyone who wants an autograph gets one. The biggest rock stars are all nice guys: Bono, Mick Jagger," he says.

Since it's agnostic Carl Sagan's birthday, I ask him how his own agnosticism influenced the new album. As far back as Filter's first release, Patrick has peppered his songs with jabs at organized religion, but on The Trouble With Angels he's more direct, like he's no longer pulling his punches. "Did you hear the one about heaven? There's a guy that's running the sky," he sings on the title track.

"Science is awesome," he says, displaying an almost childlike enthusiasm for the natural world that's infectious when you're in his presence. "I can see beauty in the rings of Saturn. Why does there have to be a reason for everything?" He's a non-believer in religion and a believer in science. He launches into a lengthy diatribe on the theory of evolution, ending with, "How much more proof do you need?"

His wife is a Christian. "She's moderate, she prays at night," Patrick says. If everyone was like his wife, he says, he wouldn't have as much of a problem with religion; it's the fanatics that get under his skin.  link

Peter Gabriel and his emotional toolbox for grieving

"I Grieve":

it was only one hour ago 
it was all so different then 
there's nothing yet has really sunk in 
looks like it always did 
this flesh and bone 
it's just the way that you would tied in 
now there's no-one home 

i grieve for you 
you leave me 
'so hard to move on 
still loving what's gone 
they say life carries on 
carries on and on and on and on 

the news that truly shocks is the empty empty page 
while the final rattle rocks its empty empty cage 
and i can't handle this 

i grieve for you 
you leave me 
let it out and move on 
missing what's gone 
they say life carries on 
they say life carries on and on and on 

life carries on 
in the people i meet 
in everyone that's out on the street 
in all the dogs and cats 
in the flies and rats 
in the rot and the rust 
in the ashes and the dust 
life carries on and on and on and on 
life carries on and on and on 

it's just the car that we ride in 
a home we reside in 
the face that we hide in 
the way we are tied in 
and life carries on and on and on and on 
life carries on and on and on 

did I dream this belief? 
or did i believe this dream? 
now i can find relief 
i grieve

I hate to disagree with
 
Peter Gabriel:

"I Grieve" was conceived after Gabriel looked over his catalogue of music as if it were a catalogue of emotional tools. He found one major missing tool to be one to cope with death and therefore "I Grieve" was born.  
"I Grieve" wiki (hear him say this on the 9/11 video below)

I think Gabriel's canon/cannon  (including his songs with Genesis ) is full of tools to help him/us grieve/lament/deal with death.. ("With only one colour, dead"  etc etc)


One of my favorites (though not officially about death, but death of a relationship):

This old familiar craving/I've been here before/ this way of behaving/Don't know who the hell I'm saving anymore/Let it pass let it go let it leave/From the deepest place I grieve/This time I believe....
Peter Gabriel - Love to be loved from Al Ex on Vimeo.

Also, note..he quoted himself (from the song above) to the song at hand ("I Grieve").

"I grieve"
Two  naked words we don't say enough in/as church.
I grieve not grieving.

Of course, any song dealing with grief/death is transferrable to new contexts,concerts, and Sitz Im Leben situations  ("U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday is a classic example; see this):

Gabriel performed the song live on the television show "Larry King Weekend" on the one-year anniversary of 9/11, during which Gabriel said that his two daughters were living in New York City on 9/11 and he could not contact them for a while, and that this song was for people who didn't hear anything from their

relatives then.^[8] It was not, however, written specifically for 9/11, having appeared on the City of Angels soundtrack in 1998 (in an earlier version) and

performed live

prior to 9/11.  "I Grieve" wiki

deleted final verse of "In Your Eyes"

It's such a prayer that it has even been recorded by Christian artists. See Gabriel's comments on the God content  at this link:

• Peter Gabriel: "In Your Eyes" and the whole God and "church thing"

But here's a peek into the song's development; it's the "SO DNA" version Gabriel inlcuded on a box set.  Pay extra attention to the third snippet; as it includes a "new" final verse.  Nick Deriso notes that

the now almost-completed lyrics presented with an echo-filled poignancy. At this point, “In Your Eyes” appears to be essentially finished, save for remixing and the final vocal take, until Gabriel gets to the second verse — where he’s still improvising some of the words. Gabriel continues experimenting with the vocal interplay, and later deletes a final verse — one that turns out to be both urgent and deeply emotional. link

Image from this page

John J Thompson has long been one of my favorite music reviewers:

"..Although in the same basic pool, they  {Coldplay] have never been as interesting as Peter Gabriel, as spiritually rousing as U2 or as erudite as Sting. Gently introspective and instinctively melodic, they have become one of the staples of the feeling millennial’s musical diet. With Ghost Stories, however, the band takes a dive toward the deep end of the soul with songs exploring humanity’s universal longing for connection....The band seems anchored to flesh, even as all eyes look heavenward for answers."

-full article:

"The devotional intimacy of Coldplay’s Ghost Stories" by John J Thompson

I definitely took this as a worship song:

signs of Kingdom life in Godhaunted NYC? please add comments

I learned so much from my students..

(isn't that how it's supposed to work? I love how Leonard Sweet, when introducing former students of his, says something like, "This is Ted, we studied together in the nineties."...Not, "I was Ted's professor in seminary.")

........................my "students" in

 "Theology of the City/Urban Ministry"  at Latin American Bible Institute-Fresno/Sanger Extension).

I was disappointed we never got to take a more "urban" field trip than to downtown Fresno. 
All things considered, I would have chosen New York City.
(I'm always asking the question that folks once asked me every day).

And for the soundtrack to us coming out of the tunnel and into Manhattan, would of course be the
chilling scream of Peter Gabriel in the intro to Genesis' "Back in New York City."

Practice it now, class:
!



I found it amazing that only a couple years ago, the total Google returns of "theology of New York
 City" was ZERO (until my post). Wow, I just checked the results...someone chime in, please..

 NYC has taken a bad rap as spiritually dead/bankrupt.  Yet check out the winner of the
"America's most saintly city"  !!

All that to say, either below in the comments, or on the Facebook mirror of this post,
I would love to hear

a)What signs of  Kingdom  life do you see in NYC?

b)Name some specific churches, ministries, Kingdom
 outposts, house churches etc that you know of there..
---


               Erasmus: "the city  is a huge monastery."




                  

Lou Reed returns from the dead to scratch St. Peter's back on Solsbury Hill, and deny that he (Lou) was ever a slut..

From the second album of the duo, "Scratch My Back...And I'll Scratch Yours"..

Just three reasons why this song  is a phenomenon:

1)Lou Reed covering any Peter Gabriel song is emough of an event; let alone Gabriel's seminal "I'll tell you the song is just about leaving Genesis, but it's really a conversion narrative" song.

2)Lou  sings "you can keep my things/they've come to take me home" in a song recorded not long before ..and released after... his death.

3)The lyric change to "my friends would think I was a slut."  Love that he got Peter's blessing on that..


More on this album



 -- Related:

Peter Gabriel's lament for the times-preview all songs here

Peter Gabriel's mercurial, disruptive, Moses: the Mozo song cycle and making gold from crap

Peter Gabriel: "the Cross worked!"...and Supper's Ready

 

 

living from, if not in, the city: place and "citi-zenship"

I remember standing on top of the World Trade Center (after taking this photo of my brother and mother), and thinking, "What if this building fell?"

Of course, I didn't imagine it falling in the direction/way it eventually did.. imploding top to bottom, as opposed to the "obvious" at-an-angle, leaning Tower of Pisa style
Maybe it was the Todd Rundgren line "Earthquake in New York City; the Chrysler Building fell in my yard" that influenced my imagination.

In one sense, it's a terrible analogy to imagine the Heavenly City, the New Jerusalem "coming down"
onto earth in a ways/means similar to the Twin Towers..

...yet in another sense, it's very appropriate.  Not only is it described that way in Scripture, but such would be a subversion and reversal of the destructive nature of 9/11.  The text allows us to imagine very creative/recreative  move by the Creator: this "coming down"  city.   I imagine it a bit like this scene from a vintage  Peter Gabriel.. it comes down, closes down/clamps down, but  opens again...revealing the same cast of characters, but a new  contect and context. (start at 1 hour 29 min) 

Boom!

Thy Kingdom come

on earth
on Fulton Mall
on time
on me

in Africa
in hell
in droves
in me. 
  (link)

I love teaching "Theology of the City."

The catch is: the Bible College I teach it at is officially part of a city,
                        but it is so far out on a country highway that it is not

urban or urbane.
SO..my only choice is to (for at least one session) take a road trip/field trip so we can "have class"  incarnationally; "on site with insight."  We head on down the highway until we are in downtown Fresno.

Once, as we sat at a  downtown St. Arbuck's, with our class for once soundtracked by screaming traffic instead of a creaking heater, some  (prearranged) guests joined us for discussion.
One of the saints was Steve Skibbie, one of several saints  in our city who have intentionally moved into challenged inner-city neighborhoods. (read more:  Christianity Today).  I don't remember exactly what he said, but I remember vividly where he said it from: both from a  deep "place" he had come to live and a  a literal place in the city where he had amazing vantage and advantage points in watching Kingdom moments come down on a daily basis...on sidewalks.

I was jealous and zealous of his location...i live in the safe (unsafe) suburbs..

For class that day, we could do no other but move to a place/space/frequency/hood where we were Kingdomly connected and contexted...literally in the city.

In a recent interview, Bono tweaked one

of his taglines.  He has long said/sung versions of "Where you live should not determine whether you live or whether you die."  But this time it was, "an accident of where you live cannot decide whether you live."

Now Bono is quite a Bible reader, so he surely  doesn't believe it's literally an  accident where people are born. ..unless in the theological sense of the tern ( which delightfully means  sorta the opposite of the usual definition).  Acts 17:26: "From one person he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands."

One of Bono's "pastors," Eugene Peterson:

In the Christian imagination, where you live gets equal billing with what you believe.  Geography and theology are biblical bedfellows...I find that cultivating a sense of place as the exclusive and irreplaceable setting  for following Jesus is even more difficult than persuading men and women of the truth of the message of Jesus. Why is it easier for me to believe in the holy (because God inspired it) truth

of John 3:16 than the holy (because God made it) ground at 579 Apricot Lane where I live?  (emphasis mine)

 ...What we often consider to be the concerns of religion—ideas, truths, prayers, promises, beliefs—are never permitted to have a life of their own apart from particular persons and actual places. Foreword to Eric O. Jacobsen,"Sidewalks in the Kingdom"

 Leslie Leyland Fields --from  decidedly non-urban Kodiak Island, Alaska--recently returned from the Holy Land:

I will be leaving soon. I don’t want to leave behind the land of miracles. I don’t want to stop living this way: beginning every day with anticipation, asking the Lord to direct my feet, keeping my hands and backpack open.

I have decided to take the Holy Land with me.  Wherever God is, that’s holy land. You’re standing on it now. And when I return to Kodiak, to snow and winter darkness, that will be Holy Land and Sea as well.

This is what I remember and know again after this fourth visit to Israel. You don’t have to walk in the Footsteps of Jesus, or think you have lost something essential to your faith if you don’t make it to Israel. Yes, this is an amazing land, and I have received far more than I can carry or tell you about, but it is God who is Holy, and you can find Him anywhere. 

You just have to dare. You just have to risk.  Give strangers a lift. Put on walking shoes. Talk to people you don’t know. Listen to them. Feed them. Ask them for help if you need it.  Be a wanderer in your own town. Believe in the miracle of provision, of  multiplying oranges and fish you somehow can carry.  We can do this.

Help others see that this place, this land where you are living 

right now---

Beautiful, desolate, tropical, Arctic,

City, suburbia, wilderness, ghetto---

This is the Holy Land:

 Jesus is there

And miracles are waiting.  link

It is surely not God's will for all people to live in the city.
Bu could it be that we are indeed called ...and should will...to live from the city.
Or at least from the "heavenly realms," in which Paul says we actually are resident and embedded in.
But one cannot avoid  from the reality that Kingdom come...and kingdom now...is somehow  intrinsically and  gloriously enCitied:

I am quite sure that the Christian community in this country will eventually come around to fulfilling its role as city people.  i am confident in Eric O. Jacobsen,, "Sidewalks in the Kingdom," p. 166
this because I know about the New Jerusalem, and I also know that our current relationship to heaven is described as "citi-zenship."  For those whi can learn to appreciate the city now--so much the better.  And for those who can't?  Well, they'll just have a lot of catching up to do  -

---
Related:

• casting shadows on the city

• U2 can pastor the city

• simultaneous perception and epistemology/synsethesia/simulacra of the city

•  

• sideways city-texts and my whenabouts in a spacetime drive and dérive

• theology of New York City

•  

 

 

 

"everybody sing now: 'Blessed is the one who dashes infants against the rocks!""

I was so thrilled to hear that St. Kurt Willems got the chance to ask N. T. Wright  a question about the psalms...that is  basically the same question I would have asked!

Kurt popping the question

Psalms of lament and imprecation aren't often enough set to contemporary worship songs (just ask Mark DeRaud). In a helpful post ( "WE NEED MOURNING WORSHIP SERVICES"),  Pasta Spin laments that we don't lament enough in church/as church.  I make the case that when the church doesn't lament, society finds a way to remind the church of its calling (Complaints Choir, anyone?)

I love teaching a class (Pasta Spin teaches it, too), where students are challenged to find contemporary songs that are worshipful.

I enjoy challenging them to cite examples of contemporary songs/psalms of lament; songs that are not "happy-clappy"(hear Bono talk about this phenomenon  in the video below)

  I have several tunes that work for me
 (see No sad songs allowed, "Low" by The Violet Burning,

Praying with Pink Floyd,   "Make it a Double" and posts labeled "lament.")

  Often, students have never considered--until hearing the history of Psalms

--that such would be "appropriate" for worship.

But let's stretch a little more.  If all the psalms have precedent for liturgical/musical  use..how about those delightful songs of imprecation?

How about a little ditty on Psalm 56:8" 

"Break their teeth, O God!"

 (Love the irony that the inscription on this psalm reminds us it was to be "sung to the tune of 'Do Not Destroy''....ha! and don't miss the tune title for Psalm 22. See "The Lord Be With You...Even When He's Not!")

But the one I've often wondered about is the one Kurt asked Wright about: 
Is there a place for chanting/singing  Psalm 139:7:  

"Blessed  is the one who seizes your infants
    and dashes them against the rocks."

Uh, not quite fit for an infant dedication service!

I love the answer Wright gave; the audio is here, at the 1 hour, 7 min mark.
--

Related:

• Brueggemann on lament: “Churches should be the most honest place in town, not the happiest place in town"
• Peter Gabriel's lament for the times-preview all songs here
• Well-Ended Stories That Don't End Well

Back in N.Y.C.

Prophetic brilliance mixed with a bit of bloated cheese.

No, that's not my self-description.

It's  Peter Gabriel's swan song/concept(s) album/double album with Genesis:
"The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway."
(see previous posts: Genesis "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" Complete Video Interview
and "What the hell is IT"? 

One standout track is "Back in N.Y.C."
It can be enjoyed/felt even without the context
(see Genesis - Back In N.y.c. Lyrics | SongMeanings).
The Gabriel scream!
But don't get me started on the part about cuddling a sleeping porcupine !(:

For some reason, one of my favorite lines is

You say I must be crazy, 'cause I don't care who I hit, who I hit.
But I know it's me that's hitting out and I'm, I'm not full of sh--!".

I just have to be careful how/how loud/where I sing along.  (:
Somehow..even with the too-obvious rhyme..

                    it seems  somehow made for church/prayer/lament

..kind of psalmish.

It also somehow comes to mind when I myself am literally "back in NYC"..

that surreal and holy moment when you exit the  the tunnel and Manhattan  involuntarily invades your view and  gloriously assaults your senses and sensibilities..



Anyway, it would be interesting to hear from anyone for whom this old song is new:

what does it feel/seem to be about
..just from

the soundscape,
           emotions,
                    atmoscontexture
                                   and lyrics
                                              you can pick up?




Studio version:
 

 
Isolated vocals,,as if they weren't chilling enough:

It was the first song of the reunion w/Gabriel/Collins:


They even did the song the some after Phil Collins picked up the vocals:

Satan obviously created Zappa-- because he once said "God is dumb" (but he led me to Jesus!)

"Well let's get serious, God knows what he's doin' He wrote this book here and the book says, 'He made us all to be just like him' So, if we're dumb, then god is dumb................... and maybe even a little ugly on the side."

The infamous theologian  Frank Zappa once said that.

OK, he sang it technically.
.so I'll claim the long shot that he was singing in character.

I still maintain that FZ was God-haunted, as Happy Lee will be glad  to hear.
 Unlike a recent commenter of mine. who took offense to my posting about "secular" singers like Peter Gabriel and claimed that "Satan created them"  (!)..



I stubbornly think that
 everyone is made in God's image,
                           and thus reflect God
                       even if they reject God.

Even recreated folk don't always imagine..or manage...their image well.

The catch is: we should.
                    we could.

The world has a God-given right to judge us when we don't act like God
                                                                                            or like God.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."  -Jesus, John 17

Ironically, Zappa was not dumb all over...not at all, even on the side.
He IS all over...unfortunately.


He WAS able to create...as someone created in God's image..moments  of



                                  prayerful and "palpable holiness."

(Read the last four words again, and rejoice that Frank Zappa, confessed atheist,

is one of the people who led me to Christ!.  Hmm, guess God can use anybody..or anything to get us.

Zappa knew that argument he made in that line could be a classic example of fallacious reverse-argument.
He DOES seem to really be uneasily serious in this song, I admit.

I hope he was pulling a Colbert.
Like most public agnostics/atheists, there are rumors of a  stealth..or deathbed..conversion.
And contrary to some (dumb) logic,
             God would not be dumb to accept  it.


Do read the full lyric:


 
Frank Zappa - Dumb All Over (Lyrics) from Daniel on Vimeo.

Peter Gabriel: "In Your Eyes" and the whole God and "church thing"

40:05 mark
\\

Among the "Christian artists" who have covered the song:  The Wrecking, Neal Morse, Nicole Nordeman..

Related:

Is there such a thing as Christian music?"

: St. Peter calls for the elders to witness

Peter Gabriel's mercurial, disruptive, Moses

Genesis "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" Complete Interview

Complete album:
Full album live:
 Related:

• "What the hell is IT"?
• Peter Gabriel: "the Cross worked!"...and Supper's Ready
•  Peter Gabriel's mercurial, disruptive, Moses

was Jesus forsaken by God?

Ever heard this teaching/sermon?

• ‎"God cant look at you because you're sinful. He can only look at Jesus, or look at you through Jesus."
• "On the cross, Jesus was temporarily but literally forsaken/abandoned by God the Father, because he was carrying the weight of our guilt and sin, and God is too holy to be look at sin"

Me, too.

That will preach!

Too bad it's not in the Book.

Excellent new article in Christianity Today below.,  The illustration about the president (that I have put in bold)  is hugely helpful. 

Christians usually respond that God had to turn his back on Jesus because Jesus took on the sin of the whole world, and God can't look upon sin, so he turned away. We hear this in sermons and worship songs. "The Father turns his face away." "God can't stand sin, so he turned his back on Jesus."

On one level this provides a tidy theological answer. But at a more visceral, emotional level, it's still unsatisfying. In our own families, when a child has erred, we might get mad at them. But would we forsake them? Abandon them? Kill them? There was a case last year of parents with a very strict form of discipline. They thought their daughter was "rebellious," so they starved her and beat her. They locked their daughter out of the house in the middle of winter. She froze to death. We call that child abuse.

Is that what God did to Jesus? Left him on the cross to die?

This also raises the theological problem of the broken Trinity. Christians are Trinitarian; we believe that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, eternally united in purpose and divine love. But does the Father break fellowship with the Son on the cross? Are they pitted against each other?

Cross-Cultural Perspectives

We in the West live in a predominantly guilt-based culture; we tend to think in terms of guilt and punishment. When someone is guilty, they must be punished. So if Jesus took on our guilt and sin, the punishment is death. God's justice must be satisfied, so Jesus must be executed. It's disturbing, but that's how we understand the story.

But much of the world, including the ancient biblical world, thinks less in terms of guilt and more in terms of shame and honor. A few years ago I read the book The Bookseller of Kabul, about life in Afghanistan. And some of the most disturbing parts were the descriptions of honor killings. A woman somehow brings shame to a family, and she is killed to take away the shame and to restore honor. It doesn't matter if she committed adultery or was raped. It doesn't matter if she was the perpetrator or the victim. If she has been made impure, the impurity must be removed to restore family honor. And in many cases, a father will kill his daughter. Or a woman's brothers will kill her. It will be described as an accident, but everybody knows what happened.

So modern objections to Christianity say that this is the essence of Christian teaching on the Cross. God's son has been made impure, tainted by the sin of the world. So God restores his honor by killing his son. This puts us Christians in a bind. If we defend this theology of the Cross, then it seems like our Christianity does the same thing as honor killings in Afghanistan. And we lose our basis for saying that those honor killings are wrong, because our God does the same thing. Does he?...

...I find it interesting that Matthew and Mark tell us that some of the hearers misheard Jesus.  That opens up the possibility that the same has been true for others, and for us. Have we misunderstood this cry from the cross? The crucifixion narratives do not explicitly tell us what Jesus' cry meant. Both Matthew and Mark record the cry, but neither unpacks the meaning. They just let it stand. Neither actually says that God turned his face away, turned his back on Jesus, or abandoned him. That's an assumption that we bring to the text. It doesn't come from the passage itself

.Here's the key biblical insight that changed everything for me in how I read this passage. It's a simple historical fact about how Israelites cited their Scriptures. They didn't identify passages by chapter numbers or verse numbers. Verse numbers weren't invented yet. Their Scriptures did not have little numbers in the text. So how they referenced a passage was to quote it, especially the first line. So the book of Genesis, in Hebrew, is not called Genesis. It's called, "In the beginning." Exodus is "Names." We similarly evoke a larger body of work with just a line of allusion: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away." or "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
That's why Jesus often says, "It is written" or "You have heard it said." He doesn't say, "Deuteronomy 8:3 says this." No, he says, "It is written, 'Man does not live by bread alone.' " That's just the way they did it.

So when Jesus says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" he's saying, "Psalm 22." He expected his hearers to catch the literary allusion. And his hearers should have thought of the whole thing, not just the first verse:  "I am … scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. … I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax. … My mouth is dried up … my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. … All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment."

Is Jesus saying "I have been forsaken by God"? No. He's declaring, "Psalm 22! Pay attention! This psalm, this messianic psalm, applies to me! Do you see it? Do you see the uncanny way that my death is fulfilling this psalm?"
Jesus has done this before. At the beginning of his ministry, in Luke 4, he read the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue, saying, "The spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Then to make things completely clear, he said, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."
That's what Jesus is saying on the cross. When he says, "My God, my God," he's saying, "Psalm 22. Today Psalm 22 is fulfilled in your hearing. I am the embodiment of this psalm. I am its fulfillment."\

A Psalm of Lament and Vindication

Psalm 22 is one of many psalms that fit a particular lyrical pattern. We call them the psalms of lament. They usually begin with a complaint to God, rehearsing the wrongs and injustices that have been experienced by the psalmist. Psalm 5: "Listen to my words, Lord. Consider my lament." Psalm 10: "Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?" Psalm 13:  "How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?" Psalm 74: "O God, why have you rejected us forever?"

This is a common pattern in the Psalms. This opening lament usually goes on for a stanza or two. But then the psalm pivots. The psalmist remembers the works of God, and the psalm concludes on a note of hope. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says that these psalms were Israel's way of ordering their grief and making sense of their sorrow. Today, we'd call it "processing." They would recount their troubles, but by the end of the psalm, they declared their confidence in God.
That's what's happening in Psalm 22. It starts out with the psalmist feeling forsaken and abandoned. "Why have you forsaken me? … I cry out by day, but you do not answer." But he's not literally forsaken, any more than the other psalms mean that God was literally forgetting the psalmist forever. It's expressing how the psalmist felt at the time.

But that's not the end of the story. Like the other psalms of lament, there's a pivot point. Several, in fact. Verse 9: "Yet you brought me out of the womb … from my mother's womb you have been my God." Verse 19: "But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me." The psalm is not a psalm of forsakenness. It starts out that way, but it shifts to confidence in God's deliverance. Verse 22: "I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you." And here's the key verse, verse 24: "For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help."

Here is a direct refutation of the notion that the Father turned his face away from the Son. But the refutation is not as important as the pivot. Jesus is declaring: Right now, you are witnessing Psalm 22. I seem forsaken right now, but my death is not the end of the story. God has not despised my suffering. I will be vindicated. The Lord has heard my cry. Because death is not the end. Verse 30–31: "Future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!"

Jesus is not saying that God has forsaken him. He's declaring the opposite. He's saying that God is with him, even in this time of seeming abandonment, and that God will vindicate him by raising him from the dead.
The closest modern analogy I can come up with might be something like this. Imagine that later on this election year, this summer, the President is on the campaign trail. And despite his security, an assassin gets in and shoots him. As the President falls to the ground, he says, "I still have a dream." And then he dies.
Now imagine everybody saying, "Hmmm, his last words were 'I still have a dream.' I wonder what that means. What was his dream? Was he napping on the campaign bus? What was it about?" No, we'd all recognize that he was making an allusion to Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech. He'd be saying that this dream is still alive, that it did not stop with MLK's death, and it would not stop with his.
It's the same way with "My God, my God" on the cross. It's a biblical allusion, and the point of Psalm 22 is not about being forsaken. After all, David wrote Psalm 22. Was David saying that God had forsaken him forever? No. The literary genre of the psalm of lament shows that David was saying that he felt like God had forsaken him. That the odds were against him. That things looked really bad right then. But that was not the end of the story. David still had confidence that God would hear his cry. God did not abandon David. And God did not abandon Jesus. The clearest evidence of that, besides the rest of Psalm 22, is Jesus' final words on the cross, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." The Father had not forsaken him. God was still his Father. Jesus was still his Son  -Link, full article

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See also:

• Was Jesus Forsaken?
• Was Jesus Forsaken? | The Emerging Scholars Blog
• Was Jesus forsaken by God on the cross?

Relared:

• The Lord Be With You...Even When He's Not!"
• Two-stage shaming, Naked at the Cross, Trinitarian unity when separated
• Book excerpt and audio interview: McCall's "The Trinity and the Cross"
• Peter Gabriel: "the Cross worked!"...and Supper's ...