have to admit that today’s last word from the cross is one of my favorite passages of scripture. That might sound strange to some of you, but I love it because I can puzzle and struggle with it, but it also brings me a great deal of comfort and solace. Of the 7 last sayings of Christ, it is also the only one in which it is contained in more than one gospel. All of the other sayings are unique to the gospel in which they are found, but Jesus’ cry of despair is found in both Mark and in Matthew, and this is the only thing that either of them have Jesus say from the cross. In fact, their crucifixion stories are remarkably similar, with a few more details being added by Matthew over the sparsity of Mark. But, what 50% of the gospels say is that while hanging on the cross that Jesus cries out, he doesn’t mutter, he doesn’t mumble, he doesn’t say it under his breath, he cries out in a loud voice, to make it very clear, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” That is a phrase that could never comes from the lips of the Jesus in the Gospel of John, a thought we’ll return to next week, and while Luke has him cry out in a loud voice, what he cries is something entirely different.
Now in some ways, just like Jesus giving forgiveness on the cross in Luke, having Jesus’ cry of despair, or his lament, matches perfectly with what we say about the major themes of Mark, which Matthew continues over in part into his own gospel. Additionally, it matches with the story of Jesus in the garden the night before. Just before he is arrested, he is in the garden of gethsemane with Peter, James and John and he tells the disciples to remain and to pray and to stay awake while he goes off to be by himself. And what do the disciples then do? They fall asleep, again a sign that they don’t truly understand the call to discipleship. But Jesus goes off to pray to God and he says “Abba, Father, for you, all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.” Now, last week I said that there is no punctuation in ancient Greek and so when translators are putting the manuscripts into English they have to guess where the punctuation should be. And there has been an argument made that in Jesus’ prayer here that it should actually include an ellipses here so that there is a long pause between Jesus asking God to remove the cup from him and then saying, not what I want, but what God wants. I think there is a lot to be said for that argument, first because this prayer has to be longer to allow the disciples to fall asleep, and second because it seems that Jesus needs to give some time for an answer to be given, of which he doesn’t seem to receive an answer. But to key points that also go along with this prayer.
The first is that earlier James and John had asked to be able to sit at his right and left hand in glory, and in response Jesus asks, “are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” Now I know that Jesus knows the rule not to end a sentence in a preposition, so I think that’s a mistranslation, but we know that while James and John both say they can drink of the same cup, but we know that they can’t. They abandon Jesus, and so as we think of Jesus cry of abandonment to God, we also have to remember that he has been abandoned by all those who had said they would be faithful, who would drink of the cup, who would pick up their cross and follow. But they didn’t, and so sitting at Jesus right and left now is represented by the two-other people who are being crucified with Jesus, one on his right and one on his left. Not really the glory that James and John were asking about.
But secondly, even Jesus asks God to remove the cup from him, and he doesn’t just make this request once, but twice he prays this prayer to God to remove the cup from him. The difference is that he is willing to see everything through. He understands the cost of discipleship. It doesn’t make it easier to undertake, but it is a known reality, which is what Jesus wants us to know as well, that to say we are going to pick up our cross and follow is to understand what the cross is all about, that it means suffering and even death. But to be faithful, and even with this cry asking God why God has forsaken him, Jesus is being faithful, because in his time of crisis, he is turning to his tradition and to his faith and quoting from the 22nd Psalm.
In the Christian tradition we don’t spend a lot of time talking about lamentations, which is a passionate expression of grief or sorrow. Instead we tend to hold on to Paul’s expression that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint, so suck it up buttercup and put on your smiley face. That passage from romans always reminds me of my grandfather telling me that eating my vegetables would put hair on my chest, well that wasn’t a good enough reason to have to go through doing the thing I didn’t want to do. But there was not really a way to express what we didn’t want to do, but within Judaism scripture expresses the full range of emotions. I mean we have an entire book called lamentations, but we see the same thing in the Psalms which is why the psalms are so often used for prayers expressing the full range of emotions we have, which includes giving voice to the worst times in our lives, and so Jesus turns to the 22nd Psalm which says “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? My God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest,” and then continues a few verses later, “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws.” This is not a prayer of celebration or thanksgiving, this is a cry from the depths of our soul, I am crying out to you God, why do you not listen to me? Hear me and answer me?
When my 9-year-old nephew died four years ago, I told his mother to take everything she was feeling to God, and she said, and pardon the language, that yelling God dammit and fuck were not prayers, and I replied that you better believe they can be prayers, because if that’s the best we can do, if those are words that fill us, if that’s where we are, if that’s what we need to express then it is just as valid a prayer as any other prayer, and maybe even more valid because it’s only when we express the full range of emotions to God can we ever begin to come close to God, and Jesus is the best example of that.
Because pay attention to Jesus’ prayers. There is much made of the fact Jesus’ prayers before this, like in the Garden of Gethsemane, are to Abba, Father, which is a term of intimacy, but this prayer from the cross is different. It’s not as intimate, except what does he say? He says, “My God.” This is not a denial of God, it’s not saying that God doesn’t exist, or that he is denying his faith. But instead it says that even in the midst of this suffering, even when he feels like God is not there for him, that he knows that God is present, that he is clinging all the tighter to his faith, not just by reverting to his faith and praying one of the psalms, but claiming God as his own, just as God claims him, just as God claims us. Psalms of lament are possible because of the promises of covenantal relationship. And in the midst of this prayer and dying with these words of his lips, he converts the roman centurion who says after his death “Truly this man was God’s son.” That is his prayer, in expressing his true feelings and emotions in that moment was a testament of faith in that moment. It was saying that I am going to pray my f-bomb, but I am not giving up or giving in and being a witness to your faith, and if Jesus can cry out to God, what is to stop us from doing the same?
Now the last piece is that in Matthew and Mark, immediately after Jesus dies, that the curtain of the temple is torn in two. Now there is no explanation given about what this means, I think one of the reasons is that within Jewish tradition, in a time of mourning people tear their clothing as a sign of grief, especially when it’s something that can’t be expressed merely by words. I always imagine that the tearing of the curtain is an expression of God’s grief at Jesus’ death, that it is God’s own participation in the passion. Now the traditional meaning of passion is to suffer, and we have this continued to us in the word compassion, which means to suffer with. And yes, I know I just ended a sentence in a preposition, but if Jesus can do it, then so can I. So, to be able to love others means being able to have compassion for them, to suffer with them. that’s why narcissists have such trouble expressing empathy, because they are only concerned about themselves. And so, a God who does not suffer is a God who cannot love, because love calls for us to open ourselves up wholly to another person, and we see that happening on the cross.
We know that Jesus is not truly forsaken on the cross, because the promise is that God will always be there, especially we need God the most. And we hear that in the 22nd psalm as well, which says God “did not despise of abhor the affliction of the afflicted; God did not hide his face from me, but heard me when I cried to him” God hears us when we cry, even if we might not feel God being present, God is there, and what Jesus shows us is to cry out to God out of our despair, our anguish, our suffering and our turmoil, to cry out and to not let go, because despair, anguish, suffering, turmoil and even death do not have the final word. They do not have the final say in our lives, because God wins. We have Jesus cry of despair, but we know how the story ends. We have our own cry of despair, but we too know how the story ends. God wins. So, cry out to God in celebration and cry out to God in pain and sorrow, because God has compassion for us because God loves us, and the drama of this moment is not Jesus feeling abandoned, but in his strength in crying out “My God,” which is answered by an affirmation that “truly this man was the son of God.” And so, as he hung on the cross, Jesus said, “Eloi, eloi, lama sabacthani” which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”
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