God’s Own Separation
For our Good Friday service, we took part in a “seven last words” service in which we go through the seven phrases of Christ on the Cross. The word I was assigned was the only one of the seven that is found in two separate Gospels, Matthew and Mark, this being Jesus’ allusion to Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46 & Mk 15:34) What follows is the short reflection I wrote for the service.
I want to let you in on a secret, we pastors? We’re human, and in our lives we find moments where, if you ask us if we believe in God or if we feel God’s presence, we might not be able to answer with a definite yes; we may even go so far as to, at times, say no. It’s not as though we lack faith in that which we do not see, it’s that we feel the absence, the separation that it seems everyone feels from time to time. We go to that place where maybe we always experienced God, where God would always seem so present only one day to find that God’s not there. God is gone.
I liken this to one of my favorite activities, once the weather warms up I like to go for hikes, and as anyone who has ever taken a walk through the woods may realize, it’s a journey that doesn’t always feel clear. It doesn’t always feel like a journey forward. It’s a path with twists and turns, elevations and descents, hatchbacks and dark patches of woods where the sun above struggles to shine through. As we journey we may find these snatches, these brief patches where the path evens out, where the sun shows up, but these are at times the exception not the rule. In our faith journey these may be the moments when we feel as though God is so close we could touch him while at other times we might be isolated, doubtful. So separated that we may as well be crying out to God, “why have you forsaken me?”
This is life. It’s not a simple thing. Never easy, never straight. It’s life and it winds and twists, elevates and falls, it leads us in every direction and sometimes it leads us towards feeling isolated and alone.
When Christ cries out from the Cross the words of Psalm 22 he mirrors our own sorrow, our own sadness. It’s the cry of a mother separated from her children, the cry of a man strapped to a table as the poison that will kill him flows into his veins, it’s the cry of a family as a gunman destroys a life, it’s the cry of a mother losing a child in a miscarriage, the cry of a family as they watch a loved one get torn apart by cancer, it’s the cry of all of us in the depths of life.
As Jesus cries these words out he reveals the greatest moment of his solidarity with us. Our God is not remote, not distant, our God is closer to us than we can ever dare to imagine, so close he tasted the same suffering and death we all experience, the same pain, the same heartache, the same abandonment. As Christ suffers and dies, executed by the same people he came to save, he cries out to God with God’s own voice and reveals the deepest Mystery, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
On this Good Friday I won’t stand here and offer that simple platitude that God is always with us, because while that is true there are many times in our lives where we don’t feel it, where we don’t experience it, and to simply say it doesn’t speak to our grief and heartache.
We have entered into the valley of the shadow of death, we have entered into what Christian tradition has deemed Holy Saturday, the Dark Night of the Soul, the span in which God, for one period of all of history, was in some way, unknowable. Where God and Creation were utterly separated.
And yet the separation is not complete. Not permanent. Not eternal. From Death springs life and that life is eternal.
God of life you give us breath, and being, and substance. We admit in our lives we feel absence, we feel separation, we feel forsaken. Strengthen us in these times, put people in our way who support us, who speak truth, who reveal your love even when we can’t see it ourselves. Lead us in your way. Amen.
