Good Friday is a Human Endeavor
My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Matthew 27:46 (MSG)
It may sound strange — well, I know it does; but this passage — these words of Christ — have comforted me over the years. I think it’s because I can identify with these words of doubt and heartache.
Can’t you?
Within this question of Christ, “why have you forsaken me?” can become a theological black hole. What is going on here? I used to have answers. But, my interests have gone beyond trying to figure out what is behind these words of Christ. It’s pastoral for me know. It’s more than intellectual — it’s about dealing with this at a gut level. To do that, it helps to read the song that Jesus is referring to as he is on the cross.
God, God . . . my God!
Why did you dump me
miles from nowhere?
Doubled up with pain, I call to God
all the day long. No answer. Nothing.
I keep at it all night, tossing and turning.— Psalm 22:1–2 (MSG)
Haven’t we all had sleepless nights? Struggling? Worrying? Panicking?
Is this business going to make it? . . . Is my daughter safe? . . . What am I going to do without my spouse? . . . Why did this happen?
And in the midst of real-life, we feel like God has abandoned us. If even God is there at all. Peter Rollins thoughtfully describes what Jesus is going through as a kind of atheism — not an intellection one — but more of a “felt absence”. In his abandonment, he cries out, from a psalm of agony.
The song continues . . .
My life is poured out like water,
and all my bones have slipped out of joint.
My heart melts like wax inside me.
My strength is gone, dried up like shards of pottery;
my dry tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
You lay me in the dust of death.— Psalm 22:14–15 (VOICE)
My heart melts like wax inside me. This imagery has stuck with me going into the Holy Week.
What is it that might make our heart melt like wax?
What experience might one go through to come to such an sensation?
Ponder for a moment. Rewind your life — or the life of friends and family.
Can you remember a time — maybe long ago, maybe more recent, where this language my heart melts like wax inside me might describe the way you felt?
a shift begins . . . in tone & outlook
The story of the cross is a horror. Crucifixion is already unfathomable, but to crucify Christ, the perfect embodiment of love? It is too much to bear. And yet in the story of His last seven last words — He continues to forgive, to embrace, and to show compassion. He is thoughtfully taking care of his mom and best friend. He is welcoming another into paradise. He is even forgiving the crowd and authorities for carrying out this death penalty.
And yet, out of all of His recorded last sayings, this is the only line that is unique in tone. This is Jesus’ one saying that originates out of a sense of uncertaintly and lack of control. He is no longer directing. He is no longer instructing. He is questioning. He is quoting a song or poem that captured his deep sense of abandonment.
What Jesus had known before had shifted in this moment. I think, in Christ’s cry of, ‘My God, My God why have you forsaken me?’ there is a shift into a certain uniqueness in the human endeavor.
He was now . . . alone. He who had known only a sense of deep togetherness with the Father and Spirit was now empty. He who had been affirmed before the crowd at his baptism as the one who the Father was well pleased with now only heard silence.
It is here, in this shift, that I agonize for Christ in the story — but it is also here that I also find comfort. Because I too have felt alone. I too have felt a sense of abandonment. I have heard only silence.
If I’m honest — I often prefer a version of Christianity that is about having the right answers. I prefer a version of Christianity that is about winning. I prefer a version of Christianity that is about power, about control, and about a sense of God’s unending presence that is so real it is undeniable.
Isn’t this often our religion? Control. Power. Answers. Certainty.
And yet, I have lived 43 years — and that is enough time to know that things don’t go as planned. I have lived long enough to bury friends, and to question why. I have lived enough life to have my dreams dashed and my trust betrayed. And you probably have to, right?
In fact, there is no way to “return to the faith of your childhood,” not really, not unless you’ve just woken from a decades-long and absolutely literal coma . . . it follows that if you believe at fifty what you believed at fifteen, then you have not lived — or have denied the reality of your life.”
– Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss
Wiman’s words describe our human endeavor clashing against our faith — whatever it may be. Shifts occur because we experience real life. And life will bring us to a breaking point.
My God, My God, why have you forsaken US?
OUR heart melts like wax inside of us.
The story we tell each other tonight, of Good Friday, includes a reference to a poetry that reminds us how life shifts, and when we feel most alone, helpless, doubt-filled, and uncertain — our faith gives us words for even this.
The art above is titled steroscopic. It’s a reference to the depth at which we feel life and the way this human endeavor deconstructs faith.
*stereoscopic — relating to or denoting a process by which two photographs of the same object taken at slightly different angles are viewed together, creating an impression of depth and solidity. An anaglyph is a stereoscopic photograph with the two images superimposed and printed in different colors, producing a stereo effect when the photograph is viewed through correspondingly colored filters.
THE 7 LAST WORDS OF CHRIST
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Luke 23:34
Today you will be with me in paradise. Luke 23:43
Behold your son: behold your mother. John 19:26–27
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Matthew 27:46
I thirst. John 19:28
It is finished. John 19:30
Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. Luke 23:46
