The Church of the Redeemer

Good Friday

April 18, 2003 

 “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  These are words of despair, cried out during times of crisis, words of isolation when we feel so truly separated from God and all those around us, words of total hopelessness brought on when our bodies and spirits are too tired to continue battling the problems of everyday life.

            “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” These are the words of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who sat at the foot of the cross on that first Good Friday.  Her pain is the pain of any parent who has stood idly by and watch a child suffer.  I can only imagine an inkling of what she felt that day.  These words she shares with countless mothers who over the past months have hugged their sons and daughters good bye as their children left to fight in Iraq.

            It is a bond they have forged with Mary through their shared sense of anger and betrayal with God.  It seems hard to believe that anyone could have envisioned their motherhood ending in this way.  Motherhood after all should be a difficult yet joyous task and for Mary an especially easy one.  God asked her to bear his son, the Christ and she happily accepted this request as she rejoiced and proclaimed the greatness of God.  But on this day, the great  God she joyfully declared almost thirty-four years earlier must have felt impotent, weak as her son hung dying on the cross, as she felt her heart being ripped in two and she wondered why she had ever agreed to bearing such sorrow and pain.

            “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” These are the words of Andrew, Peter and James as they watched the events of the passion unfold.  How could we have been so foolish they thought as they heard Roman soldiers pound the nails through the hands and feet of Christ?  How could they have been so foolish to give up their families, their boats and their nets to follow Jesus?  What betrayal they felt that day as they wondered if their God was truly dead, and the man who hung before them a cruel hoax.  What went wrong, they wondered.  Just weeks ago the Rabbi’s ministry was going so well.  People were coming in droves to hear him speak.  So many people had been healed.  How could it have ended this way?

            “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  These are the words of the saints, such as St. Theresa of Avila and St. Francis of Assisi who, after years of being spiritually connected with God, almost to the point of feeling at one with God are suddenly plunged into spiritual darkness, the connection they once felt, totally disconnected and their nearness to God now thousands of miles away.  And they wonder, as they struggle with their sense of isolation and despair if they will ever feel as close to God again.

            “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” These are my words and your words.  They are the words of the newly unemployed scrambling for work as the stocks they depend on continue to plummet and their severance runs out.  These are the words of the nameless street person who sat next to me at the Cathedral Tuesday afternoon, whose thin blanket was unable to keep him warm during last night’s colder than usual temperature.  They are the words of Iraqi families huddled in shelters while American bombs and anti-aircraft missiles seemed to explode all around them.   And, these are the words of American Soldiers who were ambushed and held in Iraqi captivity for three weeks.

            “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  This is the symphonic chorus sung by humanity plunged into the darkness and despair of evil as evil brings us to our breaking point, ready to turn our backs on God, because we think God has turned from us. 

This is the experience we share with Jesus and that is what makes this Friday, Good Friday, because on this day, God, in the form of Jesus, willingly plunged himself into the total depths of human despair so he could understand our propensity turn away.  Our proclivity to sin has puzzled God since the fall of Adam and Eve.  Why we would turn from him towards the indulgence of Sin.  So often we have been told that Jesus died because of our sins.  To sine degree this is true, what is not true however, is that Jesus did not die just because of our sins but for our sins.  There is a difference.  To die because of our sins implies the need to pay a price, to have suffered as a consequence of our behavior.  Although these assertions have been part of popular theology since the Middle Ages, it does not tell the whole of the story and has placed a burden of guilt upon us that was never intended by God.  Christ died for our sins.  An act of free will, motivated by God’s incredible love for us and God’s desire to bridge the chasm of lost understanding that formed between God and humanity at the time of the Fall.  Through Jesus, God now understands how easy it is for us to become discouraged and fall away from him.  Through Jesus, God now understands how easily we feel separated and isolated from each other and from him.  Through Jesus, God now understands how painful and scary it is for us to feel so forsaken and far away from God.  All are the realities of human life our creator in Heaven did not understand before God sent Jesus to live and die as one of us.

    At the beginning of his Gospel, St. John wrote the now familiar words, “God so loved the world that he gave us his only begotten son.”  God gave us Jesus to better understand our experience; God gave us Jesus to bridge the gap that stood between God and us.  And Jesus fulfilled God’s mission for him by stretching out his arms on the cross of humiliation and shame, that is why St. John in his telling of the passion does not end with the Psalmist cry of despair, but with the words of victory, “It is finished!” for Jesus’ work on earth was finished and a new relationship between God and humanity was opened for us on that first Good Friday.

The Rev. Craig R. Swan

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