Text: Mark 15:20-41
Title: Why Have You Forsaken Me?
Date: June 29, 2008
Last week we left worship with the image of Jesus on the cross and the sermon unfolds, we pick up with the same image. We have just heard Mark’s account of the crucifixion. He tell that 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?”
It seems at this moment Jesus appears to be abandoned even by God. He is not depicted as a heroic martyr with his eyes firmly focused on heaven. An example of this would be the stoning of Stephen found in the 7th chapter of Acts. When they heard these things, they became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen. But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.“Look,” he said, “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”
Although pain will be afflicted and death with occur, this account, as well as Rembrandt’s interpretation of the stoning of Stephen, is far different then the image of Jesus on the cross, abandoned by his disciples and by his own words, abandoned by God.
This is today’s question as we have been focusing on some of the questions that Jesus asked throughout his ministry. And if you have not been able to be present for this series, you can hear or read them if you go to our website at www.fccsanangelo.org, click on the “online sermons” and go from there.
Who has not felt these very words that were spoken by Jesus? When the waters of life are rough, when the wind blown rain of grief stings the heart, when the pain of disappointment feels as if rocks are pounding the soul, when the torture of despair is more than we can stand, who has not felt these very words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Forsaken means to renounce or turn away from entirely, to abandon.
By the 1950s, C.S. Lewis had become a famous figure and the most popular spokesperson for Christianity in the English-speaking world. He was married to poet Helen Joy Davidman who died at the age of 45 with bone cancer. After her death, he wrote the classic book entitled A Grief Observed. In this book, he writes his anguish and faith’s struggles as he copes with her illness and then death and I wish to share with you a portion of his struggle. He writes, “Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing God, so happy that you are tempted to feel God’s claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to God with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels — welcomed with open arms.
But go to God when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is God so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?
Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about God. The conclusion I dread is not 'So there's no God after all, ' but 'So this is what God's really like. Deceive yourself no longer.'
I feel a deep indebtedness for Lewis’ courage to write what so many feel but are afraid to say aloud and at times, afraid to even admit to the self. But again hear the words of Jesus on the cross. Does this mean that Jesus lost his faith? Does this mean that God actually abandoned Jesus or abandons us? After all, what does this do to God’s promise to be with us, Emmanuel? Is it not God’s promise to always be with us?
Well, of course it is, but that does not keep us at times from feeling abandoned. The words that Jesus says were not his own. By this I mean he was quoting from Psalm 22. Sort of like the time when my mother and I were riding Space Mountain in Disney World. It is a roller coaster that is in a dome, and it is pitch black, expect for the stars and meteorites that are coming at you. We were being tossed every which way and in the midst of people’s screams and laughter you could here my mother praying, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want……I kid you not. When the ride was over, and we were leaving the area this lady comes up to us and says to mom, “thank you for being there for me. Not only was I hanging on to the rail, but I hung on to ever word you said.”
It is common to turn to scriptures in moments of fear, pain and even feelings of abandonment, as Jesus did and as the Psalmist did. The opening words are, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.”
In these haunting words, the psalmist complains of being forsaken, yet notice he still addresses God as “my God.” The psalmist, as well as Jesus, may feel forsaken but as you continue reading this lament, they both know it is more about them than it is God. Now what do I mean by this?
What we have in this question is not a faithless question, but faith asking a question. The psalmist begins with a cry of abandonment but when you keep reading, you will find him remembering a better day; a day when God heard the cries of the Hebrew people and delivered them. “To you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.” But then the reality of the moment creeps back in, the pain is felt and the psalmist feels so alone, so unworthy of God’s presence. But the scenery changes again. The psalmist remembers when God was very present in his personal life, a presence that started in his mother’s womb.
Throughout this psalm there is this ebb and flow, this back and forth, between the present and the past, between reality of feeling abandoned by God and the remembrance of God’s trustworthiness; God’s promise. Finally, the psalmist comes to the awareness that indeed God had not forsaken him but is with him and had been with him the whole time.
Psalm 22 is a guide for us when we utter the question, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” Shake your fist at God, let out that fear and pain, all that emotion, and then take a breath and remember a time when you felt God’s hand upon you. Shout to the heavens, “Where are you God, why don’t you answer me God?” Shout until you are hoarse if you have to. Then take in a deep breath, sit for a moment and remember when you felt God’s hand upon you. Keep this dance moving within you and then be still and wait for the awareness, the feeling, the presence of God’s hand upon you once more. Hear within you the words of the same psalmist who writes, “God did not hide from me, but heard me when I cried.” God was with me all along.
I know most of you are familiar with Mary Stephenson’s poem Footprints. It is so commonly known, I have never used it in a sermon, that is until today. But it is so fitting. “One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there were one set of footprints. This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints. So I said to the Lord, “You promised me Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there have only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, you have not been there for me?” The Lord replied, “The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand, is when I carried you.”
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