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The cry from the cross

By Peter Sellick - posted Thursday, 24 March 2016


On Palm Sunday, listening to the passion narrative according to the gospel of Luke I was reminded that Luke suppresses the seditious cry from the cross "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Mark, the first gospel to be written placed these words in the mouth of Jesus dying on the cross from the first line of Psalm 23.

Matthew includes the cry and John, like Luke, omits it. The last words of Jesus in the gospel of Luke are "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." The last words in John are "It is finished."

Thus Luke and John replace this terrible cry that would seem to sever the relationship between Jesus and God, with words that suggest that he was in complete control right to the end. Luke uses a pious expression and John has Jesus indicate that the work he was sent to do was finished.

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We are faced with two ways of understanding the man Jesus. The first, that takes seriously the cry from the cross, would have Jesus going to the absolute depths of human suffering: unmitigated abandonment and hopelessness in which even a gracious God rejects the sufferer. Jesus experiences Hell. The full weight of human sin that separates humanity from God is placed upon him.

This scenario would empty any attempt at theologising. The death of Jesus empties everything.

The second way tempts Docetism, (Jesus only seems to suffer). This Jesus embarks on the work of the Father, goes to Jerusalem where he knows he will be in trouble. He accepts what they do to him and is never broken by it. He remains in control.

Why did Luke and John suppress the cry from the cross? The words are seditious because they undermine the understanding that Jesus died as the Christian martyrs died, in control and full of hope. Given the persecution of the early Church this was crucial. The victory of Christian faith was thought to be that Christians were unafraid of death.

But this conclusion is political. It seeks to shore up the Church and in doing so obscures a crucial insight into the passion narrative: that Jesus really did go to the depths of suffering that included the abandonment of God.

If we take the cry from the cross seriously then we must conclude that Mark is telling us that Jesus felt the abandonment of the God he called "Father" and to whom he prayed directly, as an intimate. He experienced a collapse of faith and died in utter despair.

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There is no way of knowing whether the cry from the cross accurately described Jesus' state of mind near the point of death. All we have is Mark placing the words in his mouth in an attempt to plumb the depths of the event. All we can do is to examine what it means theologically, how it affects our understanding of the Christ.

According to John and Luke the death of Jesus is an achievement, a finishing of his work in the world. Jesus never loses control.

This is quite different from a Jesus who dies in utter abandonment not only by his disciples but also by the God he thought he knew intimately as full of grace and mercy. There is the danger that the cry from the cross will ruin the whole enterprise.

However a feeling of utter abandonment in the face of a violent death more accurately reveals the depth of suffering of such a one. Jesus thus drunk the cup of suffering to the dregs and this empties the idea that he was aloof to what was happening to him.

Gregory Nazianzus wrote: "That which is not assumed is not redeemed." If Jesus did not experience what all of us would experience at the point of violent death then he would not have taken the full suffering of the creature upon himself and he would be left a partial saviour. The Word would not have become flesh in its completeness.

He would be aloof, either brave or stoic or only seemed to suffer. He would have represented religious man girded up by faith so that he could face suffering and death as Socrates did. He would have become the model of fortitude possessed by certainty.

There is certainly enough of this in the lives of the saints that constitute a kind of boastfulness on behalf of the Church. Can we really believe that St Lawrence, in the middle of being roasted on a grill, said "turn me over, I am done on this side"?

The purpose of such stories is to gird up the Christian community but they also produce in us a dread that we would fail such a test. We fear that we would become a screaming mess and disgrace ourselves.

So it seems that we are caught between two different views of who Jesus is. Is he the spiritual master who is in complete control even after hours of excruciating pain and the abandonment of his disciples? Or is he like we fear we would be, our being completely devastated?

There are instances in the bible in which the truth is told even in the face of deep political concern. Such an instance is the description of the great king David as an adulterer and murderer. We find the actors of the Old Testament very human i.e. very flawed.

This is in striking contrast to the political world we have produced in which to be human and flawed is fatal. Personal truth has been sacrificed on the altar of public righteousness.

I think that Luke and John are to be resisted and that we should ponder deeply Mark's brave decision to place the cry in Jesus' mouth. He has hit on the essence of the passion narrative. Jesus dies like us, not as a spiritual master but as one who loved his life and was filled with dread at losing it in violence. Is this not what the agony in the garden of Gethsemane is telling us (that Luke faithfully includes), that what Jesus did by walking to Jerusalem was bitterly hard.

We in the Church must be aware of false comfort. The psalms of lament are suitably read at funerals. In all dying we are caught between assurance and despair. All dying is a taking away, a loss of connection with those we love and hence a destruction of what constitutes life itself.

While raging against the dying of the light is futile an overconfident facing of death betrays the truth of who we are.

There is comfort in hearing the cry from the cross in that we know that He was even here at the lowest possible situation of the human spirit when everything is counted as loss.

He has experienced Hell. He is there when we experience Hell. What more could we ask?

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About the Author

Peter Sellick an Anglican deacon working in Perth with a background in the biological sciences.

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