35. Mark 15:33-36
When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “Listen, he is calling for Elijah.” And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.”
There is some debate in Christian circles about Jesus’ cry of despair from the cross. Some, recognizing it comes at the beginning of Psalm 22, point to the end of that Psalm which concludes with words of confidence and trust. Jesus, this line of reasoning goes, is expressing his unrelenting trust in God by crying out with the words of the Psalmist.
While I appreciate the picture of Jesus and his faithfulness this interpretation tries to preserve, I nevertheless do not agree with it. Jesus may indeed be consciously or unconsciously using the words of a Psalm. That, it seems to me, rings true of a man whose whole life was shaped by the prayer book of his people. But I think we misunderstand the import of this moment if we imagine he draws from the Psalms to express his confidence and trust.
Rather, I think Jesus grasps for these familiar words because they are all that is left to him to articulate his despair and desolation. He feels, at this moment, utterly God-forsaken and cries aloud in anguish. Why does this interpretation matter? Because to look at it the other way – Jesus exemplifying perfect trust to the end – keeps him removed from us. He does not fully know what it is to be human because to be human is precisely to feel, at times, the full gap and weight of our distance from God.
Read as a prayer of fidelity, the challenge is for us to live up to it, to make this prayer our own, so that in our darkest and most painful moments we also can cry aloud to God in trust and confidence. But read as a prayer of despair, the exact reverse is true. The point of this difficult part of the story, that is, is not to inspire us to become more like Jesus but to comfort us that Jesus has become entirely like us.
Death is fearsome, even terrifying, as it threatens to rip us away from all that we know and love. God, in Jesus, experiences this pain, fear, anguish, and despair. God in Jesus, that is, now knows perfectly and experientially what it is to be human. Why? So that we humans may at some point know perfectly and experientially what it is to live with God.
Prayer: Dear God, remind us in our darkest and moment difficult moments that you are with us, staying with us, holding on to us, loving us, through death into new life. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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