As his suffering continues, the Gospels of Matthew and Mark record Jesus referring to his God rather than the intimacy of Father at other times on the cross.

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• Episode 4: My God, My God, Why Have You Abandoned Me? Part I - Transcript

  Episode 4: My God, My God, Why Have You Abandoned Me? Part I - Transcript

  Author: Archdiocese of Brisbane

  So far in these podcasts, we’ve looked at and explored the first three of the seven last words of Christ. And we come now to the fourth of them. And you could say that the fourth is the heart of the of the seven last words of Christ. And in many ways, it is.

  And the fourth word we hear from the dying Christ is, ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’ Found in both Matthew’s gospel and Mark’s gospel.

  So, the first of those words that we have already explored addresses God as Father. With the note of intimacy that that entails. And we will see that the last of the seven words also addresses God as Father with that same sense of intimacy. But here at the heart of darkness, as it were, it is ‘my God, my God’.

  Which still implies a relationship, there’s not the same sense of intimacy. It is not just God or oh God, but my God. So, the ‘my God’ implies relationship, even in the moment of what seems to be abandonment. And again, I stress the importance of this distinction between what seems to be and what is. This is important for the whole Bible. But it’s intensely important as we stand on Calvary. Because in the world of what seems to be this is a disastrous devastation, destruction, death. But in the world of what is, it’s something quite different. It’s triumph and victory and life and birth.

  So, you can say that the whole of the Bible is intended to lead us out of the world of what seems to be, in that sense, the world of illusion, into the world of what is, the world of truth. And that is certainly true of the seven last words of Christ. Which as I have said in an earlier podcast. These are interpretative words, Christ interpreting his own death for us. So that we can, in fact, move out of the world of what seems to be and into the world of what is, out of the world of illusion and into the world of truth.

  Now, the cry of abandonment. Represents a kind of totality of suffering. And when you think of Christ on the cross. There is nothing he hasn’t suffered. This strikes me more and more as I contemplate the crucified. That it represents a totality of suffering when you think of it. I mean, physical pain, I state the obvious. Of the most intense kind.

  But also hunger and thirst. When was the last time the dying Christ would have eaten? The Last Supper, I imagine. It was a long time before this. The intense thirst. And we’ll hear the cry of thirst on Calvary. So, hunger and thirst. But also, the ritualised humiliation that crucifixion involved. Some of you, perhaps many of you, would have seen Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ.

  There was certain things in that film which were not particularly edifying, but there were certain things that the film got exactly right. And one of them was the sense of crucifixion, not just as what happened on the mountain, the death itself. But the whole process of humiliation that led up to the death. And you see this clearly in the passion narratives of the four gospels.

  So, Jesus has suffered the most gross humiliation. And a ritualised form of it. And then abandonment by his disciples, by his friends. They run away. The betrayal by Judas, which is worse than abandonment. The mockery of the crowds, and so on it goes. We are dealing then, at this point, when we come to the heart of the seven words and the heart of darkness. With a totality of suffering that speaks to the totality of human suffering.

  But in such a moment, there is still that relationship. Even in a moment of what seems to be utter abandonment, seems to be. God is most intensely present. Now, this touches upon the whole theme of the interplay between presence and absence in Holy Scripture, in the Bible.

  If you go to a famous text like 1 Kings 19. There you find the Prophet Elijah hiding in his cave on the Holy Mountain, Mount Horeb. Because the murderous King Ahab and his even more murderous Queen Jezebel are after the Prophet’s blood. They want to kill him. So, he takes refuge in the cave on the Holy Mountain.

  And in this moment where he seems to be abandoned and alone and his life is under threat. He’s told that God will pass by. In other words, he’s not abandoned by God. As he comes into his cave on the Holy Mountain. God is going to be present in this moment.

  But then we’re told God was not in the earthquake or the great wind or the great fire. None of those things, all the drama. God was not present in those. But then we are told the Prophet hears the voice. And here I quote the Hebrew just as it is. But hears the voice of a thin silence. I’ll say it again. He hears the voice of a thin silence.

  Now it’s translated in all kinds of other ways, still small voice and whatever. But I see no reason why it shouldn’t be translated exactly as it is in the Hebrew. The voice of a thin silence. In other words, a voice that is born out of silence or a presence that’s born out of absence, or what seems to be absence.

  And then after the exile, for instance. In the temple in Jerusalem, in the holy of holies, the epicentre of the divine presence. There was nothing, no statue, The Ark of the Covenant had vanished. And in 63 B.C. when the Roman General Pompey conquers Jerusalem, and he’s very keen to see this famous temple on its mountain. And he storms up onto the Temple Mount and then into the temple building and through the first chamber and the second chamber. And there was the great embroidered curtain that protected the holy of holies, which only the high priest could enter.

  And Pompey bursts through the embroidered curtain. And is astonished to see that there was nothing, not even a statue as Pompey, good Roman that he was, would have expected. At this epicentre of the temple. So, it was a place of absence. And yet it was still the epicentre of the divine presence.

  And if you look at the mystical literature of Christianity, someone like John of the Cross comes to mind. John of the Cross’ poems celebrate in the most intense and sometimes an almost sexual way, the union of the soul with Christ. A mystical marriage, you might say. But the word that pulses through John of the Cross’ poems is in Spanish nada, nada, nada, nada, nada, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Well, there’s certainly something that’s being described. And what John is getting at in his poems is this interplay of presence and absence. And if you find this theme so often in the Bible, it was because in the life of the chosen people, they had often experienced what seemed to be the absence of God, the exile being the archetypal example.

  But it was precisely in those moments that God was most present. Not in any conventional or predictable way. But precisely where God seemed to be most absent, God was in fact, most present. So again, what we are hearing on Calvary with this fourth word. Reaches deep, deep, deep into the Bible and beyond.

  So, this moment of what seems to be utter abandonment, the totality of suffering. Is that moment of presence, of God. The question that Jesus asks, ‘my God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’ Now this, too, reaches far and wide into the Scripture. Because questions on the lips of God in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New have a particular kind of function.

  If in the Old Testament, if God asks a question. It’s not God searching for knowledge, which He doesn’t have. Because it’s a given of Old Testament narrative that God knows everything. And that’s the difference between, the essential difference between God and the human being. God does know everything is omniscient, the human being is not. But the human being can, with God’s help, grow in knowledge without ever becoming God.

  So, if God asks the question, it’s not that God doesn’t know the answer. It’s we who do not know the answer. Classic case being in Genesis Chapter 3 after the fall. God is walking, we are told in the cool of the evening in his garden, his paradise.

  And the recently fallen Adam and Eve are hiding from God. We are told. I mean, could you imagine anything more absurd than hiding from God? But that’s what they’re doing. And we hear from God the first question in the whole of the Bible, on the lips of God. And the question is, where are you? Now, the force of that question is not which banana tree are you hiding behind. As if God doesn’t know where they are physically, that’s not the point of the question or the force of it.

  The question, in fact, is a symbolic question. Because what it really means is, human being, where are you in the scheme of things? And that’s the question the human being has to answer. Are you God or are you nothing? That’s what the serpent has put to them. If you’re not God, you’re nothing. So, take your pick. And they pick, oh, well, let’s try and be God. And they end up nothing. Or is the truth of the human being that you are a creature, but a creature, an earth creature, but possessed of a unique and magnificent dignity. As a co-creator with God, God calls you into the circle of his own magnificent creativity.

  Place yourself in the scheme of things, human being. Where are you? Because if you don’t find your way to that truth, to that your true place in the scheme of things, then you are never going to return to the garden. Because you will only return to paradise in so far as you succeeded in answering that question. Where are you in the scheme of things? And the truth is we are a creature created by God. But possessed of a unique and magnificent dignity as a co-creator with God.

  Now, what is true of God in the Old Testament that God always knows, and we don’t. So, God asks a question in order to summon or invite us or urge us to grow in knowledge and to enter a truth. So that we come closer to God. What is true of God in the Old Testament is true of Jesus in the New. Jesus is as much in the know as he is in control. Both are important.

  So, if Jesus asks a question in the New Testament. It’s not again in search of knowledge, which he doesn’t have, he knows. And time and again this sense of the omniscience of Jesus is reinforced in the narratives of the New Testament.

  So again, ‘my God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’ It’s a question. Placed on the lips of Jesus, as we shall see the words aren’t original to Jesus and that’s important to know but we’ll come to that in just a moment. But it’s Jesus who knows in fact, the answer to that question, whatever its provenance. It’s we who have to come to an understanding of the God who is never closer to us than when we seem to be abandoned. Who is never more present to us than when we seem, than when God seems to be absent.

  Now, I said the words are not original to Jesus. They are in fact the opening words of Psalm 22. So here Jesus is using the words of the only Bible he ever knew, what we call the Old Testament. The words of the Psalter, which was the great school of prayer, in which Jesus of Nazareth learned to pray. Same for us, they remain the Psalms, the great school of prayer.

  So, let’s just look at how Psalm 22 and by the way, Jesus, like any devout Jew of his time, would have had an astonishing capacity to memorise the Scripture. Could have recited possibly even the whole of the Bible that he knew by heart.

  And this has always been important for the Jewish people. And if you went into the Jewish quarter in Jerusalem today. And walk through that part of town, you would see possibly a Rabbi with a group of boys. It would probably almost certainly be just boys. And he would be giving them their religious education classes, we might call it. And what he would be doing is getting the boys to recite the Tanakh, as they would call it, the Torah, the Nevi’im and the Ketuvim, the Bible, the Jewish Bible. To recite it by heart. Now, you might say that’s crude pedagogy, but it’s got very powerful historical roots. Why memorise the Bible, the whole Bible? Well, because they’re always burning the scrolls. But if they burn the scrolls and if it’s written on our hearts and on our memories, we can write the scroll out again. So, in memory, remembering in this sense becomes a kind of indestructibility.

  And that’s why when so many other religious communities have gone down, down, down into the dust through time, Judaism has not. It’s a kind of strategy to survive, not just survive. But a kind of fidelity to the revelation. Faithfulness to the word of God that has been given to them.

  So, remembering is crucial to biblical religion, and that includes Christianity. So, Jesus in this culture, which was a largely oral culture. And in oral cultures, people do have an extraordinary capacity to remember that we’ve lost because you see, as we have become more efficient with the mechanical storage of data, and this is supremely true with computers. Our capacity to remember has dwindled. And I know this very personally. The combination of that and the aging process can be quite challenging to the capacity to remember.

  So here he quotes even in a moment where it must have been almost impossible for him to speak physically. We are told he quotes the first line of Psalm 22. I’ll just read you a bit of the beginning and then I’ll take you to how this Psalm ends. The Psalm begins like this. ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why do you stand far off, so far from my words of anguish? I am a worm and no man. Scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me deride me. They curl their lips. They toss their heads. Like water I am poured out, disjointed are all my bones. My heart has become like wax, it is melted within my breast. Parched as burned clay as my throat, my tongue cleaves to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death. A band of the wicked besets me, they tear holes in my hands and my feet. I can count every one of my bones. They stare at me and gloat. They divide my clothing among them. They cast lots for my robe.’

  And no wonder we take up this Psalm on Good Friday. And you can see, just from what I’ve read. How important this Psalm was in interpreting the death of Jesus. And here Jesus himself offers it as a key to interpreting or understanding properly his death. Because what he describes there in fact, is a fairly accurate description of what he himself is suffering.

  But that’s not where the Psalm finishes. It goes on. ‘But you O Lord, do not stay far off. My strength may hasten to help me. Rescue my soul from the sword, save my life from the jaws of the lion.’ Now those words imply a belief that God can act to rescue and save. So, this is where the Psalm takes a turn.

  And then it goes on. As it moves towards the end. ‘You are my praise in the great assembly. My vows. I will pay before those who fear him. The poor shall eat and shall have they fill. They shall praise the Lord those who seek Him. May their hearts live on forever. All the earth shall remember and return to the Lord. All families of the nations worship before Him, for the Kingdom is the Lord’s. He is the ruler of the nations. They shall worship Him all the mighty of the earth. Before him shall bow all who go down to the dust. And my soul shall live for him. My descendants serve him. They shall tell of the Lord to generations yet to come. Declare his saving justice, to peoples yet unborn. These are the things the Lord has done.’

  So, in other words, a Psalm that begins with a cry of what seems to be abandonment. Ends up with a great cry of praise. And a death that seems so intensely personal and restricted in its scope. In fact, is seen to have a universal scope, all the nations. So, the Psalm expands in praise and in a sense of who God is. So, that you see in this Psalm, the rhythm of the paschal mystery itself. It begins with a heart-rending description of abandonment and human suffering. But ends by placing its faith in God’s power to rescue and save. And moves then finally, to a great cry of praise that is universal. In other words, this God rescues and so is not just me or my little group, but all the nations on earth.

  And that’s why Christianity always ends a Psalm like this with glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Because once you see the way God works and the rhythm of the paschal mystery that we’re exploring here on Calvary. The only proper response is the great and ecstatic cry of praise, which is the language of paradise.

  So, Psalm 22 is crucial in this act of interpretation. Coming from the cross. Now, throughout all the passion narratives. We have, not only Psalm 22 echoed, in fact quoted in this case, but they’re all over the place in the four passion narratives. You hear echoes, allusions, citations of the Psalms. And the question is, what’s going on? Well, clearly the Psalter was a key interpretative resource. That’s clear.

  But it also suggests that the Passion of Jesus has about it a ritual, almost liturgical character, because the Psalms were written for the temple. Temple worship, the liturgy of the temple. And the fact that the Psalms are everywhere on Calvary suggests that this death has about it a ritual liturgical character. It’s rooted in the worship and story of a faith community. Which is what happened in the temple.

  So, the crucifixion itself, I have already said, was ritualised humiliation and suffering. But the Gospels ritualise it in very different ways. As the proclamation of God’s great deeds and praise of the God who saves and rescues. So, it becomes a kind of a liturgy of glorification and life, not humiliation and death. And you see this in John’s gospel particularly, the one we read on Good Friday. Where a death which seems to be so utterly dishonourable and shameful. Becomes a kind of a liturgy of glorification of God.

  And Calvary therefore becomes the new temple location, the new Temple Mount. Is this mount of death outside the city. I mean, this is an overturning of everything we’re familiar with. God turns the world on its head. So, Calvary becomes the new temple location, the epicentre of the divine presence, and even the epicentre of the divine glory, the kabod, the doxa. In this most shameful seeming place.

  So, the place of death becomes the place of sacrifice, which the temple was. And on this Temple Mount, this new Temple Mount, which is the dark mountain of death. The holy of holies, the epicentre of the divine presence and glory. Is the body of the dying Jesus. How extraordinary. His body is the heart of the temple. And this has all kinds of implications. That we shall explore when next we meet.