Seven Last Words of Christ #4

Lenten Meditation
March 18, 2009

Fourth Word
Mark 15.34, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

To be forsaken, to feel abandoned or deserted, to believe even for a moment that in all the universe we are completely alone, may be one of the most awful experiences we know. Living alone is hard; dying alone is harder. We value independence, and at times we seek solitude. But not the sort of forced loneliness we call forsaken. You don’t have to hang on a cross to know what it means. A family member walks away. A trusted friend betrays your trust. A lover whose reality did not live up to your imagination abandons you. Your church doesn’t notice. To be forsaken is to feel surrounded by the torn places in the web of life and to hang on by a single, silken thread.

Jesus on the cross felt forsaken. Why else quote the line of lamentation that begins Psalm 22? It is a traditional lament, in that its meter is three-two, while most Hebrew poetry is three-three. There is something missing, incomplete, halting in the dance. Laments stop too soon, leaving empty space in the prayer where God ought to be. The words are honest. They plumb the depth of our darkest feelings. I cry but you do not answer. My ancestors trusted you, but I am despised; why do you not deliver me?

If I said, “Twinkle, twinkle,” you’d say, “little star.” If I sang, “O say can you see,” you’d sing, “by the dawn’s early light.” If I sang, “On a hill far away,” you’d sing, “stood an old rugged cross.” When Jesus says, “My God, my God,” his audience should suspect where he is going. When he continues, “why have you forsaken me?” they should know the rest of the tune. But for some reason, they do not understand. They think Jesus calls on Elijah, and the cruel ones wait to see if Elijah will appear. What we know, and what the early church remembered, is that Jesus was quoting a Psalm that, short of Rachel weeping for her children, wallows in the lowest lows in scripture. But it also has the highest highs. The Psalmist admits, “I am a worm, and not human.” Yet he commits his cause to God. Jesus recognizes that even on the cross, with his life seeping away, it was God who delivered him at birth, God who kept him safe so he could nurse at his mother’s breast, and, even now as trouble encircles him like charging bulls and ravenous lions, even now as he is poured out like water, even now as his bones creak and his skin wastes away and his tormentors laugh and divide up his clothing, God remains his salvation.

If Jesus identifies with being forsaken, he also identifies with the Psalm’s ringing song of praise. You and I who follow in the way of the cross may be tempted to flounder in our forsakenness. Jesus does not want that to happen. He knows we know the words that follow: From you comes the praise of the great congregation! The poor shall eat and be satisfied. Those who seek him shall praise him. All the ends of the earth shall praise the Lord. Jesus’ song continues in us as it reveals God’s purpose for the coming kingdom. As the dead bow down and generations to come will sing, as past and future ring with the songs of salvation, Jesus’ song resonates in our hearts, not as excuse or apology but praise proclaiming our place in the life to come, the dominion that belongs to God.