Forsaken With Jesus
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Matthew 27: 46
No one feels so alone as the one who feels deserted by God. And it is a cruel irony that the one who rejoices most in God's presence is the most bereft when God is gone. By this measure, could anyone have felt so deserted, so all, all alone, as Jesus on the cross?
And yet, a Jesus who would feel the full range of human circumstances had to experience the sense of being forsaken. He came to live among us, not as God in a human costume that could be shed whenever things began to get hard or rough. Rather, in Jesus, God came as human to the bone, which means human enough to experience doubts, bone deep despair, and even perceived absence of God.
The Apostle's Creed contains ths affirmation: "Jesus Christ was crucified, dead and buried, He descended into hell." The last part of that statement used to trouble me, until one day someone told me that for her it is the most treasured part of the creed, "because hell is where I spend much of my life."
Hell--a sense of being forsaken, a place of despair. We have been there. And Jesus has been there with us. And, having been there, Jesus transforms the experience of any and all who have been in hell.
One who would rescue those trapped in a mine shaft must enter into the danger and darkness of that place himself. How else can those who are trapped be saved, if the one who knows the way out is not willing to be trapped with them? Before a savior can share his light with us, he must first enter into our darkness.
The story of Jesus despairing on the cross is the story of a God willing to experience our hopelessness so that we might have hope. It is the story of a God willing to share human defeat, so that we might, in turn, share God's victory.
Jesus, thank you for sharing in human life--in all of its glory and misery--so that nothing we experience is stange to you. Amen.
Martin B. Copenhaver is Senior Pastor, Wellesley Congregational Church, UCC, Wellesley, Massachusetts.
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