“My God, My God, Why Have You Left Me?”

Mark 15:33-36, CEB - From noon until three in the afternoon the whole earth was dark.  At three, Jesus cried out with a loud shout, “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani,” which means, “My God, my God, why have you left me?”

After hearing him, some standing there said, “Look! He’s calling Elijah!”  Someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, and put it on a pole. He offered it to Jesus to drink, saying, “Let’s see if Elijah will come to take him down.”    

 

            Earlier in Mark 15, we were reminded of the fact that the details of the crucifixion recall many Old Testament texts such as Psalm 22 and 69.  The most poignant of these allusions is Jesus’s last words from the cross in Mark:

            “My God, my God, why have you left me?”(Psalm 22:1)

Psalm 22 is a the lament of a righteous sufferer.  Originally, it referred to David, but after Christ’s quoting of it from the cross, it is forever the owned by Him. 

            Most commentators on this cross moment highlight the fully human aspect of Christ’s lament – the feeling of despair, loneliness, and absence of God’s presence.  This is entirely appropriate, for Jesus almost certainly felt all of those things.  In Mark’s account, no a single disciple is present for this terrible moment; all of them have abandoned Him.  He has no allies in this crowd.  His physical suffering is incomprehensible.  How could anyone NOT feel that God had abandoned them?  In this moment, Christ connects with our darkest moments of despair and then some.  He knows our situation all too well.

            Yet there is more to this Psalm 22 quote than just abandonment and despair.  Mark intends for us to hear not just Psalm 22:1, but the whole Psalm.  This is why all the allusions to Psalm 22 are included in Mark’s account.  Let’s recall them once more:

Dogs surround me,

             a pack of villains encircles me;

              they pierce my hands and my feet.

All my bones are on display;

            people stare and gloat over me.

They divide my clothes among them

            and cast lots for my garment. (Psalm 22:16-18)

The villains, the piercings, the people gloating, and the gambling for clothes are all tied together by Jesus’s utterance of verse 1 just before He dies.  Not only those parts of Psalm 22, but all of it.  Hear the end of the Psalm. 

            Every part of the earth

             will remember and come back to the Lord;

            every family among all the nations will worship you.

Because the right to rule belongs to the Lord,

            he rules all nations.

Indeed, all the earth’s powerful

            will worship him;

            all who are descending to the dust

            will kneel before him;

            my being also lives for him.

Future descendants will serve him;

            generations to come will be told about my Lord.

They will proclaim God’s righteousness

             to those not yet born,

            telling them what God has done.(Psalm 22:27-31)

 

            My encouragement today is for you to read the whole of Psalm 22 again and meditate/reflect on how all of it describes the meaning of this moment on the cross in Mark 15.

 

Question:  What is God doing in your spirit and mind as your explore the connections between the crucifixion and Psalm 22?

 

Prayer:  (adapted from the end of Psalm 22) Jesus, what You on the cross is known in every corner of the world.  Billions have come to You because of what You did.  People from every nation on earth worship You.  Every new generation will be told of Your sacrifice until Your kingdom is made complete.  Praise be to Jesus forever and ever. Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for leaders in government (local, state, and national).

 

Song:  At the Cross – Chris Tomlin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUvpBphq5og

How is Such Cruelty Possible?

Mark 15:29-32, CEB - People walking by insulted him, shaking their heads and saying, “Ha! So you were going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, were you?  Save yourself and come down from that cross!”

In the same way, the chief priests were making fun of him among themselves, together with the legal experts. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself. Let the Christ, the king of Israel, come down from the cross. Then we’ll see and believe.” Even those who had been crucified with Jesus insulted him.

 

            Meditating on this passage allowed me to notice a surprising detail I had always missed before now.  The chief priests begin their mocking of Jesus, by saying, “He saved others. . . “ They freely admit that Jesus saved others.  They knew and acknowledged Jesus had saved others, yet they were determined to see Him killed nonetheless.  This makes the irony in their next statement pretty thick:

            “Let the Christ, the king of Israel, come down from the cross. Then we’ll see and believe.”

They just acknowledged they had already seen and believed.  In their attempts to mock Jesus, they inadvertently condemn themselves. 

            It is particularly curious anyway, the disposition of people comfortable with publicly mocking a man hanging on a cross taking their last breaths.  As I try to take my own frequent advice and put myself in the place of the villains in the story, I imagine that in order to do such a thing, I would have had to nurture and develop an intense hate for someone.  To revel in another human being’s horrific demise, I imagine that I would have to see them as something other than another human being.  And as soon as I realize that truth, I realize that I am capable of such awfulness. This is because I know I have been guilty at times of dehumanizing my foes. 

            Doing so is a defense mechanism, a way of convincing myself of my rightness in feeling so hateful towards another.  This defense persists admirably until I see clearly in these narratives of Jesus on the cross that Jesus never allowed Himself such mechanisms.  Jesus had more reason to foster hate for these people standing around Him gawking at His suffering than I ever I have in all of my half-century of life.  He had been beaten and battered until He could no longer stand.  He had a crown of thorns shoved into his skull.  He is hanging on one of the most tortuous execution devices ever devised.  And having innocently endured all of that, He is now being mocked and teased by people who have just admitted His amazing deeds, yet want Him dead anyway.  Putting myself briefly in Jesus’s place, I cannot imagine not intensely hating the people doing this. 

            Yet Jesus never indulged the hatred.  In Mark’s account, he simply absorbs the animosity and remains silent.  He persists in loving all, even those who hate in return.  We often proclaim the cross as the God-designed victory over death.  Of course it is that, but it is also the victory of love over hate.  Mark’s message to the heavily persecuted church that he wrote this gospel for is that Christ’s victory over hate can be theirs as well.  Obviously, that powerful message is for us as well. 

 

Question:  Is there any resentment built up in your heart that perhaps you need to let go of in order to choose the path of Christ instead?

 

Prayer:  Jesus, we praise You for the perfect love You showed in Your life and in Your death.  We confess we fall short of loving the way You do.  Empower us by Your Spirit to let go of our resentments and be free of the toxicity that poisons our soul.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for people you are tempted to harbor resentments toward today.

 

Song:  He Never Said a Mumbalin’ Word - Tesfa Wondemagegnehu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM8SULN_G_w

Rufus and Alexander, Sons of Simon

Mark 15:21, CEB - Simon, a man from Cyrene, Alexander and Rufus’ father, was coming in from the countryside. They forced him to carry his cross.

 

            I wish we knew more about poor Simon, the man conscripted to carry a cross that had overwhelmed Jesus.  There are many stories and traditions that have grown up around him since that fateful day, but none rooted in verifiable evidence.  We don’t know if Simon of Cyrene was a Jew, a sympathetic gentile to the cause of Jesus, or just a bystander who happened to be by the path of the the awful procession to the cross that day.  In any case, Mark intentionally mentions him by name.  The question is why.

            Most likely, it was because of Simon’s sons, Alexander and Rufus.  By the time the Gospel of Mark is written and begins to be circulated, Alexander and Rufus are adults and are followers of Jesus.  Mark mentions them because Mark’s audience would have known who they were.  Alexander and Rufus were living breathing connections to the account Mark is giving of Jesus.  They were witnesses to the crucifixion.

            What a ghastly thing for children to witness.  I feel quite sure that terrible images were burned into their little brains that day that would be with them the rest of their lives.  What fear must have strangled their hearts as their father is torn away from them to get involved in this atrocity known as Roman crucifixion.  I can’t think about very long without having to distract my mind with other thoughts.  Children should not see such things.  Yet children often do even to this day.

            Some of the images that are burned into my brain for the rest of my life come from walking through an exhibit at the MLK Center in Atlanta some years ago.  It was a special collection of pictures drawn by the children of Sudan depicting the horrifying things they had seen in the genocidal campaign of the Janjaweed (translation, “Devils on horseback”) during the ongoing Dafur genocide.  I remember tears streaming down my face as I looked at the stick figure drawings showing their family members and friends being raped, brutalized, and burned alive.  Even as I recall it now as I write, the tears fall again. 

            Simon and his sons were forever changed by a seemingly minor detail of the passion of Jesus recalled in one verse in the Gospel of Mark.  I take comfort in the fact that this wretched moment became a catalyst for their journey towards God and the early Christian church.  I pray for similar outcomes for children all over the world who have “seen too much.” 

 

Question:  What are images “burned into your brain” that have changed you forever?

 

Prayer:  Lord, please protect, redeem, and deliver Your children who suffer even now.  Help them to know Your presence and transforming power.  Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for children in our country and around the world who have “seen too much.”

 

Song:  Jesus Loves the Little Children - Wilson World

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzK-bBCBHUI

Good Friday (post from Richard Rohr)

 Good Friday (post from Richard Rohr)

 

Today, I share a devotional from Richard Rohr that was written for Good Friday 2020 (at the beginning of the pandemic) that speaks deeply to me still.  My prayer is that it speaks to you as well

 

Fr. Richard Rohr, Director of the Center for Action and Contemplation

It is true that you are going to die, and yet “I am certain of this, neither death nor life, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, not any height nor depth, nor any created thing can ever come between us and the love of God” (Romans 8:38-39).

 

On Good Friday, we lament Jesus’ death while living in hope that death does not have the last word on our destiny. We are born with a longing, desire, and deep hope that this thing called life could somehow last forever. It is a premonition from something eternal that is already within us. Some would call it the soul. Christians would call it the indwelling presence of God. It is God within us that makes us desire and seek God. 

Yes, we are going to die, but we have already been given a kind of inner guarantee and promise right now that death is not final—and it takes the form of love. Deep in the heart and psyche, love, both human and divine, connotes something eternal and gratuitous, and it does so in a deeply mysterious and compelling way. We are seeing this now in simple acts of love in this time of crisis, such as people volunteering to make masks and deliver food, or people cheering hospital workers arriving for their shift.  Isn’t it amazing how a small act of love or gratitude can imprint a deeper knowing on our soul?

The crucifixion of Jesus is the preeminent example of God’s love reaching out to us. It is at the same moment the worst and best thing in human history. The Franciscans, led by John Duns Scotus (1266-1308), even claimed that instead of a “necessary sacrifice,” the cross was a freely chosen revelation of Total Love on God’s part.

In so doing, they reversed the engines of almost all world religion up to that point, which assumed that we had to spill blood to get to a distant and demanding God. On the cross, the Franciscans believed, God was “spilling blood” to reach out to us! This is a sea change in consciousness. The cross, instead of being a transaction, was seen as a dramatic demonstration of God’s outpouring love, meant to utterly shock the heart and turn it back toward trust and love of the Creator.

I believe that the cross is an image for our own time, and every time: we are invited to gaze upon the image of the crucified Jesus to soften our hearts toward all suffering. Amidst the devastating spread of COVID-19, the cross beckons us to what we would call “grief work,” holding the mystery of pain, looking right at it, and learning from it. With softened hearts, God leads us to an uncanny and newfound compassion and understanding. 

 

Questions:

What word or phrase resonates with or challenges me? What sensations do I notice in my body? What is mine to do?

 

Prayer for Our Community:

O Great Love, thank you for living and loving in us and through us. May all that we do flow from our deep connection with you and all beings. Help us become a community that vulnerably shares each other’s burdens and the weight of glory. Listen to our hearts’ longings for the healing of our world. [Please add your own intentions.] . . . Knowing you are hearing us better than we are speaking, we offer these prayers in all the holy names of God, amen.

 

Song:  Were You There?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpSScICWJ9M

How Do We Know What Crucifixion Looked Like?

 

How Do We Know What Crucifixion Looked Like?

 

Matthew 27:33-37, NIV - They came to a place called Golgotha (which means “the place of the skull”).  There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it.  When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots.  And sitting down, they kept watch over him there.  Above his head they placed the written charge against him: this is Jesus, the king of the Jews.

 

Crucifixion was ghastly.  For hundreds of years after Jesus was crucified, Christian artists never depicted this brutal execution method.  As horrible as modern Christians imagine the crucifixion was, early Christians worked hard not to imagine it.  Most of them had seen at least one crucifixion because they lived in a time and place where they were common.  It is estimated that Matthew wrote this gospel in 85 AD, approximately half a century after Jesus was crucified.  Still, there is no description of what crucifixion involved.  Matthew (nor the other Gospel writers for that matter) felt the need to include details because everyone already knew those details all too well.  We know the details because of historians like Josephus and others who knew that future generations would no longer realize just how barbaric the practice was. 

                Matthew did not have to paint a picture with words of what the crucified Jesus would look like for he knew his readers would already know the image well.  To that image, Matthew adds the sign hanging above Jesus’s head which listed the charge for which Jesus hung on the cross, “this is Jesus, the king of the Jews.”  Jesus had mounted no armed revolution nor challenged any ruler.  Matthew makes sure we know that Jesus hangs there for no legitimate reason, as if a legitimate reason exists for killing a human being in this barbaric way.  While Jesus hangs there, he listens as the guards who just nailed Him to the cross cast lots to see who gets His clothes.  In addition to painting the guards as completely unfazed by the cruelty they performed day after day, this detail also signals to us that Jesus hung on that cross naked.  The humiliation was complete. 

                After the winner of Jesus’s clothes was determined, they just sat here and watched Jesus.  This, of course, was their job.  No one must interfere with the execution, which normally would take about six to nine hours.  Other gospels suggest that Jesus didn’t last that long, for he had already been badly injured.  In any case, all who were present just sat there watching bleeding Jesus slowly suffocate to death over the course of at least three to four hours.   Can you imagine spending hours watching such a thing?

                Most of us can’t imagine that.  I’m pretty sure I would have had to walk away or at least look away.   Even in our culture that often glorifies and desensitizes us to violence, this is too much.  Gory deaths on TV take a few seconds, about the same amount of time as it takes to read the verses above.  We move on quickly.  My aim here in this reflection was to slow the process a bit, to invite us to feel the barbarism of this moment, to sit with Jesus’s utter humiliation and pain for at least a few minutes. 

                Why?  Because this moment is why Jesus said that He came:

“From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. “ (Matt 16:21-22)

The Son of God came to suffer and be murdered.  If that is why Jesus said that He came, then it at least merits our deliberate reflection.  So. my hope is that, as we encounter this awful moment over the next few reflections, we will give Jesus that – a few moments of making ourselves see what we’d rather not see or dwell on. 

 

Question:  What happens in you when you spend a few minutes thinking about the difficult details of the crucifixion? 

 

Prayer:  Jesus, it is hard to look upon You hanging on that cross.  Even so, we look into Your eyes as you willingly submit to it for our sake.  Help us to not look away.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for people that you are aware of that are suffering terribly right now.

 

Song:  When I Survey the Wondrous Cross – Kathryn Scott

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kimLXNhzZMA

Simon of Cyrene

 

Simon of Cyrene

 

Matthew 27:32, NIV - As they were going out, they met a man from Cyrene, named Simon, and they forced him to carry the cross.

 

I encourage you to watch/listen to the song first today.  It is a dramatization of the scripture.

Song:  Watch the Lamb – Ray Boltz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNT1AThOgME

 

Like many Christian songs, “Watch the Lamb” takes dramatic license to tell a powerful story.  Simon is named by Matthew, Mark, and Luke as the man ordered to carry Jesus’s cross, the assumption being that Jesus had been too badly brutalized by this time to carry the cross any further.  The presence of Simon’s two sons in the song is derived from Mark’s account who names Simon as the father of Alexander and Rufus.  We don’t know if the two boys were there to see their father carry Jesus’s cross, but it makes for a powerful song.  Some Christian traditions say that both Alexander and Rufus became missionaries and that Rufus is the same early Christian leader greeted by the Apostle Paul in Romans 16:13. 

In any case, this song does a masterful job at putting us inside the story of a man who not only witnessed the crucifixion, but was forced to participate in it.  Almost without fail, the song draws tears from my eyes since I first heard it decades ago.  It gets to me because I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like to be Simon that day, to be pulled into a drama that you had no knowledge of before that day.  It was no doubt an experience that would change his life forever.  It would change the course of his family forever.  All this happened because of something Simon was forced to do, not something he chose to do. 

I think of so many people I know personally whose lives were also irrevocably changed by experiences that were forced upon them (soldiers who were drafted, women who were raped, children that were abused, etc.).  I don’t pretend to understand that kind of suffering, but I am reminded that it exists every moment of every day when I read about Simon.  I’m also reminded that God in the flesh, a man we call Jesus, chose to enter into that kind of horrific suffering.  God did that, not because He was forced to do so, but voluntarily.  He could have stopped it, but as Max Lucado famously said, “He Chose the Nails” (2017). 

In this encounter with Simon, we see the suffering of humanity and the suffering of God meet.  Wherever we see people being forced to suffer, we can be assured that Jesus is there in the midst of it.  When we suffer, Jesus is there.  Likewise, Simon reminds us that we are invited to enter into Christ’s suffering.  Though it is not pleasant, allowing ourselves to be drawn into the suffering of Jesus is somehow redemptive in ways that are hard to put into words.  It is part of the reason that the church devoted a whole season in the Church liturgical year (Lent), to doing just that, considering the suffering of Christ for us.  Lent is a time to allow our suffering and God’s suffering to become intermingled, like that of Simon and Jesus.  This not only prepares us for the powerful and joyous celebration of Easter, but it somehow, in the mysterious grace of God, holds the possibility of our suffering being transformed into our freedom from all that would hold us down. 

 

Question:  What does the experiencing the story of Simon of Cyrene do for you?

 

Prayer:  God, thank you for entering into our suffering and for inviting us to enter into Yours.  Though we might not feel thankful for such an invitation, we thank you for it nonetheless.  May the intermingling of Your suffering and our suffering bring redemption and transformation to our souls.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for abused children, battered spouses, and others you know who have been forced to suffer through no choice of their own.

This is Going to Happen. . .for Real!

 

This is Going to Happen. . .for Real!

January 28, 2022 

Matthew 20:17-19, NIV - Now Jesus was going up to Jerusalem. On the way, he took the Twelve aside and said to them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!”

 

As we work our way through Matthew’s gospel, we have heard Jesus issue the above warning multiple times already.  But this time, it seems to take on some extra intensity.  Jesus and his entourage are headed toward Jerusalem now and Jesus knows that the events about which he has given previous warnings are going to be set in motion once they arrive.  So we see Jesus take his disciples aside.  Think about a time when someone has taken you aside to tell you something monumentally important.  This is one of those moments.  Picture the intensity on Jesus’s face.  Imagine the silence in the pause before He speaks.  Sense the stern tone in His voice.  This is a serious moment.

It's really going to happen.  They will get to Jerusalem.  Jesus will be arrested.  He will be found guilty.  He will be humiliated, beaten, and crucified.  Jesus needs them to know that, while they may have tried to ignore His previous warnings,  these terrible things are indeed going to happen and that fateful time has arrived.  The disciples can ignore this no longer.

I totally get the disciples’ denial.  It’s usually after the bad thing has happened that I look back and remember that some part of me felt the pain coming before it arrived, but I refused to acknowledge the signs.  I’m really quite good at mental avoidance.  And so in a state of denial, the bad thing happens and it is all the more devastating because I am not prepared.  Jesus is working to avoid that with his closest friends here.  While his warning is jolting and unpleasant, it is also an act of compassion.  He wants them to know for sure that they remember his warning so that they will also remember the promise comes with it.   

Jesus is going to die and His disciples will be there to see it.  But when they see it, they not only will remember that Jesus told them it would happen, but they will remember what Jesus told them would happen next.  He will be raised to life.  Some worse than they can imagine will happen, but it will be followed by something they will only be able to believe after they see it.  The worst thing they can imagine won’t ever be last thing.

For those who trust in God, that sentence is Eternal Truth.  The worst thing is never the last thing.  Daylight always comes even after the darkest night.  There is a profound calm after the worst of storms.  Tragedy never has the last word.  Death is swallowed up in the victory of resurrection. 

People who know me know that I talk about this Eternal Truth a lot.  I do so not only because I want others to believe it, but because I need to remind myself of it all the time.  In the dark nights, in the midst of the storms, and when tragedy strikes, my tendency is to forget.  Jesus knows this about us humans because He is human.  So reminds his friends that God will always have the last word and God is good all the time.  So I remind myself and I remind you.  No matter how dark the night is or how terrifying the storm, God has the last word and God is always good. 

 

Question:  How do you regularly remind yourself and others about the Eternal Truth above?

 

Prayer:  No matter how many times it takes for it to sink in Lord, help us to know deep in our hearts that You will always have the last word and You are always good.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for people you know are experiencing darkness and storms right now.

 

Song:  Even If – MercyMe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6fA35Ved-Y