Did God forsake Jesus on the cross?
When Mother Teresa’s private journals were published after
her death, the surprising revelation was that she spoke of long periods where
the sense of the absence of God was more real to her than God’s presence.
In Mark’s version of the passion narrative Jesus utters a single saying from the cross: “My God, my God, why have
you forsaken me?” The cry echoes the feelings of the Psalmist (Ps. 22:1). It’s
a question, not a declaration and it reflects the sense of God’s absence that
overtook Jesus in his humiliating death.
Did God actually depart? Was Jesus really forsaken by God?
Was this in reality the eclipse of God?
In subtle ways throughout the passion story Mark’s Gospel
proclaims Jesus to be God’s agent of redemption. Before the high priest, Jesus
is asked, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” (14:61). Jesus
responded, “I am” (14:62). Jesus also affirmed Pilate’s question, “Are you the
King of the Jews?” (15:2), which, obviously, Pilate did not believe. The
soldiers mocked Jesus as “King,” dressing him in the color of royalty and
placing a crown of thorns on his head (15:16-18). The inscription on the cross
read, “The King of the Jews” (15:26). As he hung on the cross, passersby, along
with the priests and scribes, mocked him as “Messiah and “King of Israel”
(15:29-32).
Herein is the irony and paradox. The final confession made by the Roman centurion that Jesus was God's Son (15:39) affirms that in Mark's view God was
indeed present in this horrific event, acting in Jesus to redeem. Though Jesus
is somewhat passive, bearing all the hate and animosity of the religious and
political powers, God is active, reaching out to the world in and through
Jesus’ death. God is active in the passivity of Jesus, absorbing the hate and
animosity.
I believe that what Jesus experienced, God experienced. I do
not believe in a distant, removed Almighty—an “Unmoved Mover.” I believe in a
God who is deeply moved and engaged in the life of the creation. God, I
believe, is not almighty in the use of power, but in the expression (though
often hidden) of his magnanimous, wasteful love.
In his novel, “Jayber Crow,” Wendell Berry observes that
Christ did not descend from the cross except into the grave—that is, he didn’t
overcome his killers by violent power. If he had, says Berry , then everyone would be coerced to
believe in him, and “from that moment the possibility that we might be bound to
him and he to us and us to one another by love forever would be ended.”
Theologian Jurgen Moltmann says, “Good Friday is the most
comprehensive and most profound expression of Christ’s fellowship with every
human being.” He stands in union and solidarity with every suffering soul.
Christ descended into our “hell” and suffered it, in order
to empty it of its malevolent power. Our failures and defeats, our feelings of
abandonment and rejection, do not separate us from God, but draw us into
communion and cooperation with God who shares in the suffering of this
beautiful, yet groaning and travailing world.
God did not abandon Jesus, nor does God abandon us on
whatever “cross” we may be stretched out upon. In our suffering, God suffers
and is for us and with us, regardless of what we may feel or not feel.
Brother David Steindl-Rast has made the point that the
affirmation that Jesus was not actually abandoned by God when he cried out in
agony on the cross speaks above all about God. It presupposes a view of God
that says God is concerned with justice and does set things right, though not
necessarily on the level of history.
The faithfulness of Jesus is highlighted in Jesus’ cry. While
Jesus felt forsaken on the cross, he did not forsake God. “My God, my God” is a
cry of faith. It is an affirmation of his persistence that the God of justice
and peace, judgment and grace, the God who inspires visions of a world healed
and made right, is, indeed, his God.
If we believe that God “gives power to the faint, and
strengthens the powerless” (Isa. 40:29), then we, too, can overcome when the
pain and darkness surround us and God is conspicuous by God’s absence. As with
Jesus, the challenge before us is to keep trusting.
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