Teaching Tuesday: Dying Breaths - Forsaken?

The cross is not simply the horror and the tragedy and the pity of it all. It is the death of this specific man, who is God and who therefore undergoes in his death every death. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? Here God cries out to God.

All the while they mocked him.

“You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself by coming down from the cross!”

“He saved others, but he cannot save himself.”

“Let God deliver him if he cares for him, for he said “I am the Son of God.””

With slight variation, all four Gospels report a threefold mockery. In this story, things happen in threes. In Gethsemane Jesus prays three times and three times comes back to find the disciples sleeping. Peter denies him three times. The three mockeries at the end of Jesus’ life match the three temptations by Satan at the beginning of his ministry. Satan prefaced his temptations with, “If you are the Son of God…” And so the echo at the cross: “if you are the Son of God…” Satan is there at the cross. Is it possible that he is winning after all?

The past is returning with a vengeance. Mary had whispered to the baby, “You will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and of your kingdom there will be no end.” Now in his death struggle the words of Mary and the angel, almost word for word, are thrown back at him, spittle-sprayed with derision.

In Matthew’s account, the connection between the three temptations and the three mockeries are especially clear. Back then in the wilderness he could have met Satan’s challenges. He could have changed the stones into bread, he could have jumped safely from the pinnacle of the temple, he could have held political sway over the world. And so now he could have met the challenge of those who mocked, he could come down from the cross and silenced those who are ridiculing his claim to be the Son of God. But had he done so in the wilderness, and if he does so now on Golgotha, he would not be who he claims to be, he would not be the Son living out in perfect obedience the Father’s will. Only as he remains on the cross to the death does Jesus prove that he is indeed the Son of God.

It is called the passion narrative, and we are reminded that the word “passion” is from the Latin, meaning “to suffer.” In a time when “passion” is associated with heavy-breathing romance and the selling of perfumes, we are caught up short by the reminder that to love is to suffer and the suffering is not always sweet. In real love, the stakes are high, it is risking all. Before the beloved, in the presence of God, Jesus is exposed in the full extremity of his loss.

“…Jesus cried out in a loud voice…” The cry is reported in both Mark and Matthew. The Greek word used suggests that he screamed with a loud cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Why? Why this? It is as though something had gone horribly wrong. It was not supposed to be this way.

The Letter to the Hebrews assures us, “For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning.”

Recall again St. Paul’s astonishing assertion, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

He knew no sin, but he knew the consequence of sin. He died. “Yes, of course he died,” many Christians might respond. But there is no “of course” about it. The bitter, brutal agony of his dying is the wrenching reality at the center of the Christian narrative of salvation.

The passion narrative is not simply a playing out of a script that begins with the statement that “Jesus died for our sins.” His dying is not just a necessary preliminary to the good news of the resurrection. The cross is not just what happened to him – it is who he is. “We preach Christ crucified,” Paul declares. The God whom we worship is a crucified God.

Christians [have long] contemplated what it means that God has died. Imagine the worst. The worst that could possibly happen has already happened. Far beyond plague or nuclear annihilation or the withering of the last flower or the death of the last child – it happened on a certain Friday afternoon outside the walls of Jerusalem. There we turned on the One who embodied all the light, all the love, and all the hope that ever was or ever will be. This is what we did to God. In the unflinching realism of Christian faith, there is nothing to be done about it, there is no undoing of it, there is only the possibility of forgiveness.

In Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” Kurtz, a slave-owner who has spent his days trafficking in human misery, cries out as he dies, “The horror! The horror!” We, too, have looked into the heart of darkness and seen the horror. To be sure, at the heart of darkness there is also hope, because the worst word is not the last word.

But once again we are tempted to rush to Easter. Stay a while by the cross.