My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Last Sunday, many of us heard the Passion of Jesus according to the Gospel of Mark which included this,

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, ‘Listen, he is calling for Elijah.’ And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.’ Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. (Mark 15:33-37)

Christian Choate’s body was discovered near Gary, Indiana one summer day. He was buried in a shallow grave under a slab of concrete behind the trailer where he once had lived. He had actually died two years earlier. He was only 13. 

Those were thirteen years of misery. Years of isolation and neglect. Years of verbal and physical abuse at the hands of his father and step-mother. He lived with them because his mother and her boyfriend had been accused of molesting him.

He was kept home from school and home schooled. The essays his step-mother asked him to write are heart-breaking. She asked to write about "Why do you want to play with your peter? Why do you still want to see your mom? Why can't you let the past go? What does it mean to be part of a family?"

Christian spent much of the last year of his life locked in a three-foot-high dog cage, with little food and drink and few opportunities to leave. He was let out briefly to clean and vacuum. And he endured savage beatings from his father.

One night in April of 2009, Christian was too weak to keep his food down. His father beat him to the point of unconsciousness, then locked his limp body in the cage. The next morning, his sister Christina found him dead.

Christian wrote of why nobody liked him and how he just wanted to be liked by his family. He stated that he wanted to die because nobody liked the way he 'acted.' Christian's writings detail a very sad, depressed child who often wondered when someone, anyone, was going to come check on him and give him food or liquid. Christian often stated he was hungry or thirsty.

[Linkto the news story]

But Elijah did not come for Christian. And we have no knowledge of his hearing God or being aware of God’s presence. Given the constraints on his life, we don’t even know if he knew enough to cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

It's a story that haunts me and has become a sort of test case or talking about God. Any god-talk  worth the trouble has to take this story and the myriad other stories of human suffering into account.

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

They are the most disturbing of the words Jesus spoke from the cross. But, for me, they are also hopeful. The truth is I often find it hard to believe in God. Much god-talk strikes me as little more than sentimental fancy. Talk of god in a baby’s smile or the beauty of nature doesn’t quite cut it. Generic talk of “the Holy” or “the Sacred”? I don’t know what that means. Even talk of god as love, by itself, seems to me to too easily slip into sentimentality. All such talk falls flat in the face of the horror of Christian Choate’s story. Or the realities of Syria, the Congo, or Parkland, Florida.

But, this is different. From the cross Jesus cried with a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" What are we to make of that? I want to suggest that there are at least a couple of things we can say.

Jesus, in the fullness of his humanity, experiences the horror of being betrayed, denied, and abandoned by his friends and rejected by his people. Jesus experiences all the torture, terror, and tragedy that humanity inflicts upon itself when it turns from God.

And, mystery of mysteries, Jesus, who knew such intimacy with the One he called ‘Father,’ experienced the awful, bewildering silence of God. Even as we remember that Jesus cried out using the worship language of his people as found in Psalm 22, there is no escaping that it was a cry of anguish. We dare not try to get around that.

But there is a second thing. In Jesus, we affirm that God’s very self entered into the darkest depths of human experience. As Madeleine L’Engle wrote,

For Jesus, at-one-ment was not only being at-one with the glory of the stars, or the first daffodil in the spring, or a baby’s laugh. He was also at-one with all the pain and suffering that ever was, is, or will be. On the cross Jesus was at-one with the young boy with cancer, the young mother hemorrhaging, the raped girl [and at-one with Christian Choate and his sister. And even with the broken tortured spirits of their parents]. We can withdraw, even in our prayers, from the intensity of suffering. Jesus, on the cross, experienced it all. When I touch the small cross I wear, this, then, is the meaning of the symbol.

The cross is what makes it possible to believe in God at all. That is on of the reasons this Friday is good.

William Temple, who was Archbishop of Canterbury during the first years of WWII, wrote in Christus Veritas,

The revelation of God’s dealing with human sin shows God enduring every depth of anguish for the sake of His Children. . . All that we can suffer of physical or mental anguish is within the divine experience. . . .He does not leave this world to suffer while He remains at ease apart; all suffering of the world is His.

Temple goes on to claim, “Only such a God can be God of the world we know.” Only such a God can be God in a world that includes multiple stories like that of Christian Choate. Only such a God can be God of our own stories.

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Let’s be clear. This is not Jesus vs God. This is not God the Father torturing Jesus so he won’t have to torture us. The God we know through Jesus is not like Christian Choate’s father. This is God, the Holy Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – working in harmony to address the deepest, darkest depths of human need to bring forgiveness and healing and the promise of restoration.

And we know – thanks be to God, we know – that whatever Jesus experienced in his cry of dereliction, he did not despair and God did not abandon him. We know the rest of the story. We do not need to pretend on Good Friday that we don’t know what happens on Easter Sunday. We know that God was in Christ reconciling the world. Through the cross and resurrection God has come to transform the torture, tragedy, and terror.

This does exhaust the meaning of the cross. It does not answer all the questioned raised by the hard reality of human suffering. But, we can give thanks that in Jesus’ cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" there is the assurance that there is no human experience – not even the appalling, heart-rending experience of Christian Choate – that is finally God-forsaken.

(To be continued on Saturday with Of First Importance)

See also:

Jesus of the Scars

Click, Click, Click, Click - A Good Friday Sermon

Suffering and the Wildness of God

Phillips Brooks on Jesus' Effect on His Disciples

Phillips Brooks (1835-1893) was one of the great preachers and leaders of the Episcopal Church. He was the Bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts. He wrote the classic Christmas carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem. He also attended seminary at my alma mater, Virginia Theological Seminary. Here is a portion of a sermon Brooks preached on Matthew 26:21-22 in which he reflects on how it is that Jesus’ disciples might each wonder if he was the one who would betray him. They asked, ‘Is it I?”

It must have been that their life with him had deepened the sense of the mystery of their lives. They had seen themselves, in intercourse with him, as capable of much more profound and variable spiritual experiences than they had thought possible before. And this possible life, this possible experience, had run in both directions up and down. They had recognized a before unknown capacity for holiness, and they had seen also a before unknown power of wickedness. Their sluggishness had been broken up, and they had seen that they were capable of divine things. Their self-satisfied pride had been broken up, and they had seen that they were capable of brutal things. Heaven and hell had opened above their heads and below their feet. They had not thought it incredible when Christ said, ‘I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again and receive you to myself,’ now they did not think it incredible when he said, ‘One of you shall betray me.’ The life with Christ had melted the ice in which they had been frozen, and they felt it in them either to rise to the sky or to sink into the depths. That was and that always is Christ’s revelation of the possibilities of life.

(Philips Brooks: Selected Sermons, William Scarlett, ed., p. 151)

“Their sluggishness had been broken up, and they had seen that they were capable of divine things. Their self-satisfied pride had been broken up, and they had seen that they were capable of brutal things.” Perhaps that should be the goal of all our preaching and teaching, all our spiritual disciplines.

Top 10 Posts of 2017

Here are the ten posts on this blog that generated the most activity last year:

10. Centered on Jesus I: Introduction. Not Moderate

The beginning of a series of which two other posts made the top 10. I intend to continue this series as I find the time.

9. Regarding Terrorism and Refugees

           

8. Jesus = the very face of God

            Is God really like Jesus?

7. Does God Pass Gas? A Christmas Meditation

A conversation with my daughter that led to some reflections about the meaning of the Incarnation

6. Delight – Don't Forget About Delight, a Reading List

5. Virginal Conception and Other Preposterous Things

            Christians are expected to believe a lot of preposterous stuff

4. On Rachel's Lament and Not Looking Away

“How can we go on singing “Joy to the world, the Savior reigns,” in view of the fact that the monsters continue to devour our children with undiminished ferocity?”

3. Centered on Jesus III: Jerome the Ciceronian

“When we give our allegiance is to something other than Jesus Christ – Conservatism, Progressivism, this or that political party, a nation, or anything else – we can find ourselves endorsing things that followers of Jesus ought not endorse and excusing behaviors followers of Jesus ought not excuse.”

2. Centered on Jesus V: If Christ is King . . .

“'Christian nationalist' is an oxymoron.”

1.Loving Your Neighbor in an Age of Compassion Fatigue

This post seems to have struck a nerve. Not only was it the most read of my posts this year, it quickly became the most read post ever on this blog

The work of Christmas begins (continues)

Today is the 12^th day of Christmas, which means it is the last day of our Christmas celebration this season. But, the work of Christmas continues. It is the work of Jesus. It is the work of his disciples. Here is a quote from Howard Thurman (1899-1981) who was an African-American author, philosopher, theologian, educator, and civil rights leader:

When the song of the angels is stilled,

when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and princes are home,

when the shepherds are back with their flocks,

the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal the broken,

to feed the hungry,

to release the prisoner,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among the people,

to make music in the heart.

(The Mood of Christmas & Other Celebrations)

Recovering our true humanity

For the eleventh day of Christmas, more Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

And in the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Henceforth, any attack even on the least [person] is an attack on Christ, who took [the human form], and in his own Person restored the image of God in all that bears a human form. Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race. By being partakers of Christ incarnate, we are partakers in the whole humanity which he bore. We now know that we have been taken up and borne in the humanity of Jesus, and therefore that new nature we now enjoy means that we too must bear the sins and sorrows of others. The incarnate Lord makes his followers the brothers and sisters of all humankind.

(The Cost of Discipleship, Chapter 32)

The Incarnation is the ultimate reason why the service of God cannot be divorced from the service of [humanity].

(The Cost of Discipleship, Chapter 32)

Where thrones shake, the mighty fall, the prominent perish

On the ninth day of Christmas, something from Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945):

For the great and powerful of this world, there are only two places in which their courage fails them, of which they are afraid deep down in their souls, from which they shy away. These are the manger and the cross of Jesus Christ. No powerful person dares to approach the manger, and this even includes King Herod. For this is where thrones shake, the mighty fall, the prominent perish, because God is with the lowly. Here the rich come to nothing, because God is with the poor and hungry, but the rich and satisfied he sends away empty. Before Mary, the maid, before the manger of Christ, before God in lowliness, the powerful come to naught; they have no right, no hope; they are judged.

(God Is In the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas)

As Rain Falls on the Earth

For the eighth day of Christmas, the Feast of the Holy Name, something from St. Hesychios (8th or 9th century) whose writing can be found in the Philokalia:

The more the rain falls on the earth, the softer it makes it; similarly, the holy name of Jesus gladdens the earth of our heart the more we call upon it.

(Watchfulness and Holiness)

If you are looking for a spiritual practice to adopt in 2018, I recommend the Jesus Prayer. Mindfully (or ‘watchfully’, as the writers in the Philokalia would say) repeating the phrase “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me” is an ancient Christian prayer discipline. The phrase can be lengthened: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” It can be shortened: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy” or shorter still to the point of just repeating the Name, “Jesus.” Whatever the length, I have found it a helpful exercise to focus my attention on Jesus and his mercy as well as making my own heart and imagination more merciful. It has indeed, like rain, gladdened the dry earth of my heart.

For brief introductions to the Jesus Prayer see here, here, and here. A good readable book on the Jesus Payer is The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer that Tunes the Heart to God by Frederica Mathewes-Green.