Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
The Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 18, 2007
W. Gregory Pope
The Seven Last Words of Christ
FORSAKEN
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Mark 15:16-34
This cry of Jesus from the cross is a terrible cry. It is perhaps a cry all of us make, if only to ourselves: My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
It is the cry of despair, of meaninglessness. It is the cry of perhaps our most primal fear - the fear of abandonment, the fear of being forsaken. And forsaken not by some frail and finite, imperfect human being - parent, spouse, partner, best friend. But abandonment by God.
I don’t know if you’ve ever felt it before. Many faithful saints down through the centuries have testified to an experience of the absence of God deep at the core of who they are. They have known those times when the worst has happened and God seemed terrifyingly powerless and absent.
Have you been to that deep, dark place where you truly wonder if God is really there? Whether you’ve been there or not, the fear of God-forsakenness can be deep and terrible.
This fear of forsakenness is woven all through scripture. Pleas that God will not forsake. Promises from God not to forsake us. Our promises not to forsake God. Cries that God has indeed forsaken us. Our word from the cross of Christ this morning is such a cry: “Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
Of all the things Jesus said from the cross, of all that he could have said, this cry of absence was the one we never expected to hear. It is almost unbearable. The other words were of one fabric with his life. Like, “Father, forgive” - well, Jesus’ whole life was bound up in forgiveness.
But this cry we could not anticipate. Even though we know that throughout his life Jesus knew abandonment and forsakenness. No room at the inn. No place to lay his head. His hometown even tried to lynch him after his first - and only - sermon there. Even his family seemed to misunderstand and forsake him. “He’s beside himself,” they said.
The religious leaders, the ones who should have known him best, accused him of blasphemy and conspired with Rome to put him to death. The crowds at Passover were yelling, “Crucify him! Crucify him! We don’t want him here anymore!” Even his disciples who had been by his side for three years “forsook him and fled.” All of them, Mark says. But God, surely God would not abandon him. At yet, here at the end he feels absolutely alone.
This is the cry we could not anticipate. This is the cry we do not want to hear. Think about it. Though misunderstood by his family and friends, Jesus’ whole life was lived in the warm immediacy of God’s loving presence. He called God, Abba, a baby’s first word for daddy, the most intimate and affectionate and trusting way anyone has ever prayed to God.
“Twice in his life he heard the voice of Abba from heaven telling him who he was - first at his baptism and later on the Mount of Transfiguration. “You are my beloved Son,” the voice of Abba said. Not everyone heard it, but he did, and the love in that Voice kept him going when he otherwise could have given up. When he had been up all night, when there was more to do than he could do, when his best friends missed his point and his enemies hounded him like a swarm of flies, the love in that Voice was life and breath and food for his soul. “My Son. My Beloved.” It was his promise, his reassurance that God’s hand was upon him.”1
Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, in that agonizing ordeal, Jesus prayed, “Abba, Father, if it be possible let this cup pass; nevertheless not my will but thine be done.” Abba. Father.
That prayer in Gethsemane is remarkable in its intimacy, its honesty, its yieldedness. With the intimacy and trust of a child, he pleaded honestly with his Father that the dread and terror of the cross be averted. But most importantly, there in the garden he abandoned himself into the arms of God: “Not my will but thine be done.”
And yet, by noon the next day he was crying on a cross, receiving the fury and insults of those who hated him. And amidst all the violent language filling his ears, he strained to hear the Voice of love that had sustained him all his life. If there was ever a day he needed to hear it, this was it, but there was no Voice from heaven this time. Only silence.
And on the cross he cries, this time addressing the One to whom he prays differently in the past: “My God, my God” - NOT Abba, not Father, but My God, my God - “why have you forsaken me?” The One who had abandoned himself into the arms of God now felt abandoned on the cross.
Can it be? True God-forsakenness? Is that what Jesus experienced? We cannot know for sure. It does appear he felt abandoned by God at that moment. But we are at the door of mystery here, witnessing the death and agony of this One sent from God. And we must honor that mystery with our careful words.
Obviously it was something he honestly felt. All the evidence around him showed complete abandonment. There was no evidence that redemption was being won. No guarantee that any good would come. He died - as we all must die - not knowing what was on the other side. Could it be that Jesus fears he has been abandoned in failure?
According to the gospel accounts, Jesus believed in his own resurrection. But believing is different than knowing for sure. And if you’ve ever listened to the dying, you know that often the questions become intense as the end draws near. It’s easy to answer the ultimate questions of life and death when life is good and the future is bright and death seems far away. But be it nails or needles in your arm, strapped to a cross or bound to a bed, when the end is drawing near, the ultimate questions of faith are answered from a deeper place within us. We ask ourselves then, perhaps for the first time, “Do I really believe what I say I believe?”
To be human is to live with the not-knowing. And if Jesus fully entered our human experience, as the Bible says he did, then he entered our not-knowing about the future. And let’s be clear: uncertainty is not sin; doubt is not sinful; no, they are honest experiences of human living.
There are times so terrible in this life that we feel forsaken even by God. Jesus entered completely into that experience. The text says that when Jesus was dying, just before this cry, the sky was darkened and for three hours from twelve noon to three in the afternoon it looked like the sun had been put out. There are times when we feel cast into utter darkness, when all the life and light and love we know has been snuffed out. When we find ourselves in that dark place, today’s word from the cross says, “Jesus has been there, too.”
In Bach’s masterpiece, The St. Matthew Passion, all the way through the soloist sings the words of Christ accompanied by strings. All except when Jesus utters the cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” There the cellos, violins and violas are silent. Just a cry. A cry of absence.
Jesus would later know that though he experienced forsakenness he was not forsaken. That though he felt abandoned by all, even God, he was not abandoned. That though God seemed absent, God was never more near. Perhaps even God was speechless, immersed in the darkness, weeping over the death of his Son.
But God would be true to the One Whom God Had Sent. On the third day, Jesus would rise. Jesus would later know for sure the vindication of resurrection, but at that moment on the cross he did not know. For what is faith but “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” not always felt, not experienced.
This cry of Jesus from the cross is ultimately a cry of faith. Reports of other crucifixions tell that often wild curses filled the air as the crucified person slowly and painfully died. But Jesus’ cry was not a curse; it was a prayer. “My God, my God,” he cried.”
It was a prayer from Psalm 22. Jesus was quoting scripture because in his prayer book, the psalter, he had founds words for his own experience. There are times when scripture can help us say what we ourselves do not have words for, just as hymns sometimes help us say what we could not otherwise express. Have there not been times when you have been able to sing “It Is Well With My Soul,” when you could not have possibly said those words?
“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” he cried, and for sure that’s how he felt. But by quoting the Psalms, could it be that he was crying out in faith and hope, desperate hope that God would come through on God’s promises?
Psalm 22 begins with words of Absence:
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.
Then the mood shifts toward Hope.
But you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you did our ancestors trust. . .
To you they cried and were saved;
In you they trusted and were not disappointed.
And by the end of the psalm we hear these words of Faith:
Deliver me and save me. . .
And I will tell of thy name to my people;
In the midst of the congregation I will praise you. . .
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord.
Jesus turned to scripture in all the crucial moments of his life - from the wilderness to the cross. Could it be that here in this experience of absence, he is still trusting in the promises of God, the promises of the God who seemed absent?
Why this experience of absence? I do not know. All I know is that because of his cross, because he was all alone, we are never alone. When we feel scared and alone, forsaken even by God, we have this Wounded Companion who has been there and will be there with us. Nothing we say can make him turn away.
With these words from Jesus on the cross, permission is given for any and all to scream “Why?” when faced with despair and unspeakable suffering. If we pray, “Where are you, God? I’m all alone here,” or if all we can do is cry out, we can know that Jesus has been there. Yes, the old spiritual is right, “Jesus knows all about our troubles.” And he has descended into hell to take your hand.
There is a mysterious text in First Peter that says in his death Jesus descended into Hell, entered the realm of the dead and preached to the spirits in prison, leading them from darkness and death to light and life. He is preaching still.
If you can tune your ears to the silence, you may be able to hear his saving voice. If the silence is for now too deafening, keep listening. The cries of the Crucified One still echo down through the ages. And the presence of the Crucified One you may find never to be more real, more near than in the dark of your aloneness.
Sometimes all we can do is believe and hope even as we doubt.
Inscribed on a cellar wall in Cologne where some Jews had hidden for the entire duration of the Second World War were these lines:
I believe in the sun, even when it doesn’t shine.
I believe in love, even when I don’t feel it.
I believe in God even when God is silent.
The God who called you Beloved in the healing waters of baptism will not leave you Forsaken in the raging waters of doubt and fear. So don’t give up. The God of the Crucified One will not abandon you but will embrace you. There’s a hand there in the darkness, the hand of One who knows the depths of God-forsakenness, and he will take you by the hand and walk with you, carry you with him into the light of dawn, Easter’s glorious dawn. Amen.
________________
1. Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way, Cowley, 84
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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