Good Friday (B) + 3.29.18

M. Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

Good Friday, 3.29.18

(Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34, the Passion of St John)

“My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?” These are Jesus’ words in the same passion gospel that we heard today, according to Mark and Matthew. Although these specific words are not mentioned in today’s reading, we hear them all the same in Jesus’ painful passion and death.

Who has not been there? Wondered in one situation or another if God has not abandoned us?
And we sometimes wonder secretly if it is a lack of faith. Perish the thought, we think. That is not the way a faithful person thinks.

But really it is. Because Jesus, the most literally faithful person that ever lived, got to this point. And what fully human person wouldn’t? Jesus’ was a legal public execution, designed to be painful in the extreme. And Jesus, so set and faithful on his journey, on the way he knew he needed to tread, but here we have the change. Jesus, truly powerful as the son of God, must self-empty upon the cross to show us his true strength in the Godhead. The strength that supercedes death.

Earlier in John, the soldiers scoff, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and hitting him on the face (John 19:3).

Do we doubt that Jesus could have fought back, had that been the way? (PAUSE)Do we doubt Jesus’ power? No, indeed we do not doubt. But Jesus was not that kind of superhero. He is our Messiah, the Son of God. He follows a wiser way.

Jesus was a Jewish man steeped in the Hebrew Scriptures. Have any of you seen a beloved brother or sister near death? Often what they will respond to, even when all else is gone, and say with you, is a deep rooted scripture or often in our tradition it is the Lord’s Prayer.

For Jesus that beloved scripture that came to mind was from the Psalms and the Holy Scriptures. He says “I am thirsty”. This is not a quote totally out of context or solely a cry for help, although we might also see it that way. It comes from Ps. 69 – when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink. Why have you forsaken me? In Mark and Matthew refers to Ps. 22. How can God be without God? How can the Son not feel the beating heart of the Father? Yet which of us humans has not felt that moment –not of disconnection, as it is not possible, but of felt disconnect, when all the world seems bleak.

Jesus quotes directly from the scriptures. Now imagine you were a Jew observing this entire scene, whether close to the cross, feeling scared out of your wits, or a bit back, regardless if you were in hearing range, you would have recognized this verse and also be perhaps jolted by the awareness of having just envisaged the fulfillment of Psalm 22, vs. 16-18 in detail.

Let us hear them:

“16	Packs of dogs close me in, and gangs of evildoers circle around me; *     they pierce my hands and my feet;     I can count all my bones.
7	They stare and gloat over me; *     they divide my garments among them;     they cast lots for my clothing.
18	Be not far away, O LORD; *     you are my strength; hasten to help me.” (BCP)

The Psalmist wrote this 1000 years before Jesus’ death[1] but these words were being realized RIGHT. THIS. MOMENT. Take it in for a moment. The scriptures are fulfilled. Imagine the shock going through your body, the clenching stomach as you realize that this man, rather than being forsaken, is truly the Son of God. How else would all of this so clearly echo the scriptures. Oh God, what have we done?

It may have seemed pre-determined, seeing Jesus go through such suffering as recounted in the ancient scriptures.

This might make us wonder if God is pulling the strings here, fulfilling the scripture even at the cost of his own son. Some have seen this as God as a sort of puppet-master- torturing his own son. But I like what Tony has to say in his A Better Atonement. He says: “Of course, it is unthinkable that God would experience godforsakenness. How can a divine being experience his own absence? God is only able to do so because God’s very nature is trinitarian. In an act of ultimate solidarity with every human being who has ever existed, God voluntarily relinquished his godship, in part, in order to truly experience the human condition.”[2]

In an act of ultimate solidarity with every. Human. Being.  Jesus gave up all so that he would feel with us. Would suffer with us.

Would  suffer with every child who feels forsaken when they are abandoned by a parent. Would suffer with every addict who feels left behind when they give into the craving. Would suffer with every mother who cannot feed herself because she needs to give the little food she has to her child.

Jesus gave it all up, for us, even to the point of feeling forsaken by Godself, if just for a moment. Gave it all up. For us. For our salvation. For us to know that we are never, ever, ever forsaken.

We are loved. Nothing can separate us from the love of God? As we hear in Romans 8:31-32:

“If God is for us, who is against us? [Who is against us?] (PAUSE) {indeed} He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?”

And later, in vs. 35,

 ^“Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”

Now does this mean we will never suffer?
Sadly, not. Even in this same passage, Paul quotes Psalm 44,

Saying:

“As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long;
    we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’” (vs. 36).

But thank you JESUS. Thank you Jesus! Because in the ignominy, suffering and humiliation of the cross, we are saved. Indeed, rather than being buffeted to and fro by the winds of our fate since we still suffer at times as our suffering servant Messiah suffered, if not to the same extreme, Paul affirms that even so,

“³⁷ … in all these things we are more than conquerors {we are more than CONQUERORS} through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (vs. 37-38).

We are more than conquerors! (BEAT)
But for now, we wait. We wait with Jesus on the cross, knowing that even as we hear these plaintive words, even as we perceive Jesus’ pain, we hear God’s whisper in our ear: You are beloved. You are never forsaken.
And we hear the words from the end of Psalm 22, now from the NRSV version:

“For he did not despise or abhor

The affliction of the afflicted;

He did not hide his face from me,

But heard me when I cried to him (vs. 24).”

Jesus, risen, can say this, although the help did not come when it was hoped for or expected.

And I pray that at some point, we too, can all say this.

So that we can affirm with the psalmist:
“All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to
                             the LORD, *
    and all the families of the nations bow before him.” (BCP, vs. 26).

Let us all know that God is good. That we are not forsaken. That through Jesus we will be redeemed. We ARE redeemed! Praise God!

Amen.

---

[1] Kyle Butt, “My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?” Apologetics Press, 2002 (http://ap.lanexdev.com/APContent.aspx?category=10&article=622).

[2] Tony Jones, A Better Atonement: Beyond the Depraved Doctrine of Original Sin (Kindle Version, JoPA: 2012), loc. 639.