“Eli, Eli lema sabachthani? Matthew 27:46
It’s not the cry of “Crucify him!” that startles me today – though it comes so quickly on the heels of “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” That the one who was hailed as King and given a parade with the crowd waving palm branches, is, just five days later, hanging on a cross beneath the sign “King of the Jews” doesn’t surprise me. It used to, when I was young, but not anymore. Maybe it’s a function of aging, that the fickleness of the people of Jerusalem, as well as our own fickleness, or own sinfulness, no longer shocks. Maybe it’s because of a life-time of confessing that we have turned from God, wandered from his love, sinning against God and neighbor in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and left undone. So, when someone buys all the toilet paper or the frozen vegetables or the bottle water, or even the wine, I might be very annoyed – especially about the wine – but, I’m not surprised. Or when a leader, say like Pilate, abdicates his responsibility and passes the buck, we know we too are sinful and unclean, that all of us fall short of the glory of God. And when the crowd goes from shouting hosanna to crucify in less than a week, we know them to be just like us – also captive to sin, and while it may have startled or even frightened us when we were children, sadly it now longer does.
The words that do startle me, and perhaps you too, are the ones Jesus shouts from the cross “Eli, Eli lama-sabachthani” – “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” In part, it’s the Hebrew, the language Jesus spoke, his mother-tongue. And that in Matthew, as well as Mark, these are the only words he speaks. He doesn’t talk to the guy on the cross hanging next to him as in Luke, nor does he commend the care of his mother to his beloved disciple as in John. No, today we hear the cry in which the human spirit is broken down to its most basic units of anguish – Daddy, why?[i]
Some of you might recognized these words – “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” It’s the first sentence of Psalm 22. We hear it every year at the end of worship on Maundy Thursday when the altar is being stripped and will again this coming Thursday. The action signifying how Jesus loses everything. In the dark church the words reverberate and sound like a blueprint for crucifixion: “All who see me mock at me they make mouths at me, they shake their heads; they say, “He committed his cause to the Lord let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him!” For dogs are all around me; a company of evil doers encircles me, they have pierced my hands and feet, I can count my bones.” But even in the dark church we are not left desolate. Eventually the psalmist speaks of hope and trust in the Lord, “To him shall all the proud of the earth bow down.”
Only Jesus was left desolate – he died before he got pass the first verse. He cried out, but did not receive an answer. And though we might not be surprised by the crowds’ shouts of “Crucify, crucify,” this is too much to bear. Jesus was not sinful and unclean, so when he calls out desperately like a child abandoned by his parents, it shakes us to our core. Especially in these days of the coronavirus pandemic when we can’t see the enemy, when we are isolated, when the economic fallout is devastating, when those who struggled to survive in good times are barely hanging on, and hopes and dreams and plans are cast aside. If Jesus is forsaken, what about us, about you and me and the whole blessed, or is it cursed, world?
There is an old saying from a fourth century theologian about Jesus: “What he did not assume, he did not redeem.” This means if there is any part of this human life that Jesus didn’t take on himself, then that part is left outside redemption. What he did not assume, he did not redeem. Have you ever been tempted? So was, he. Your temptations have been redeemed in his. Have you ever been hated? So was, he. You have a place in him. Have you ever been lonely, afraid, without a home? So was, he. Have you ever doubted, cried when you were sad, wondered if you mattered? So did, he. So did, he. You, we, have a place in him.[ii]
This is the Christmas present God gave us in the tiny baby born in Bethlehem. We called him, Emmanuel, God with us. God is still with us, with us in Jesus the forsaken one hanging on the cross. With us, with the virus-infected one waiting for a ventilator, with the doctors and nurses who know first-hand the deadly power of the virus and their own vulnerability, with those who love the patient and can’t be near him or her, with the cleaning staff, the check-out clerk, with the isolated elderly, the bored teenager, the stressed out parents, the laid-off worker wondering how to paid the rent, the high school and college seniors mourning the loss of graduation, with you and me when we wake in the middle of the night awash in sorrow, worry and grief. On his God-forsaken cross, Jesus is with us.
Others have been there. St. John of the Cross spoke of the believer’s dark night of the soul, while Marin Luther talked about the hidden God. And in a concentration camp prison, the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that his generation might have to live as if there were no God but always in the presence of God. The Christmas baby, now all grown up cries out “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” God incarnate. God crucified. God to be resurrected. ☩ Amen.
[i] Richard Lischer, Good Friday – Tenebrae, March 25, 2005, “He was Forsaken,” Duke Chapel, Duke University.
[ii] Ibid.