Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 Hebrews 10:16-25 John 18:1-19:42 Psalm 22

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
and are so far from my cry
and from the words of my distress?

This is the first verse of Psalm 22, the psalm we read in unison.  Authorship of the psalm is assigned to David; it is subtitled a plea to be delivered from relentless enemies. Like many of our psalms, it addresses relentless assaults by enemies.  In David’s case, as in ours, these relentless enemies take widely varying forms – humans who seek to bring us harm, physical threats to our health, emotional weaknesses, addictions, the voice of Satan seeking to redirect our path. There are many situations in which we can relate to David’s desperate feelings of being abandoned and forsaken by God.

The Passion Narrative from the Gospel of Matthew assigns these same words to Jesus as he dies on the Cross.  It is always concerning and distressing to us to think of Jesus, the Son of God, God come to earth in the human person of Jesus, crying out to God as if he has been abandoned and forsaken, as if God has separated himself from Jesus, as if God has no concern for suffering.

Does God not hear the suffering of his people?  Or, does God indeed hear and suffer for us?  If so, how does God suffer for us?  And, how do we know if God suffers for us?  Our reflection on this sacred period between Jesus’ death on the cross on Good Friday and his Resurrection on the third day is fertile ground for discussion and theological study.  In that reflection, we are confronted with the reality of Jesus’ suffering and seeming abandonment by God.

I spent yesterday in the waiting areas of Virginia Oncology Associates as my dear friend was undergoing her fifth of six chemotherapy infusions.  As a bystander – an outsider, fortunately, from that select group of cancer patients, the bonding and comradery are obvious.  Regardless of age, or race, or status in life, the goal of cancer treatment endurance and survival rendered each one equal to the other. Shared remedies for side effects, regiment of treatment, attention to eating properly and taking medications as proscribed produced ongoing empathetic exchanges.  Even the medical providers who commit their expertise and compassion toward the healing and comforting of these patients, time after time, day after day, still cannot relate in the same way as these united in their combat against the common foe of cancer.

The experience brought to mind the wonderful accounts of Father Damien of Molokai – accounts that illustrate this phenomenon better than most stories we could share.  Father Damien had been called as priest to Molokai to minister to the people of this Hawaiian Island.  You might recognize that island as the one set aside as a leper colony up until much too recently.  For decades, suspected victims of leprosy were ripped from their families and transported by force to the island where they could be held in captive isolation to prevent the spread of leprosy.

Father Damien was called and went willingly, well understanding the risks. Without fear, he administered Communion to gaping mouths, he held hands disfigured and missing fingers, he bandaged weeping sores, he prayed with them through sickness and death and buried them, all the time knowing the risk – all the time feeling that he could not completely nurture these so desperately ill because he himself was not a victim of leprosy.

Inevitably, after some decades of faithful ministry to the lepers of Molokai, Fr. Damien contracted the disease.  For him, there was an inexplicable sense of joy that he could now suffer in solidarity with those he so loved.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
and are so far from my cry
and from the words of my distress?

How many times have we uttered those same words in desperation?  Today we come to acknowledge that God in Jesus Christ is united with us in that desperation; today we acknowledge that God knows our earthly suffering; today we give our most intentional thanksgivings for God’s love so true and unconditional that he was willing to take human suffering upon him – to be bound to us in our suffering; today we pause and focus on this enormous sacrifice – this enormous way of pain that our Lord suffered – – for us.

Jesus lives out the long-ago prophecy of Isaiah, bearing our infirmities and carrying our diseases.  God came to earth in the human person of Jesus Christ, to live and die, to suffer pain and to be tempted by sin as we are tempted.  Because he came, suffered, and died, we are assured that he is bonded to us in our own earthly suffering.  And even in our grave desperation, we are not forsaken by God; God is never separate.

Until we experience the way of the pain of the cross as we do today, and come to a clearer understanding of this enormous sacrifice, until we better understand the cost that was paid for our redemption, we cannot rejoice with the fullest of joy on the Day of Resurrection.

Jesus joins us here today; Jesus shares our sorrows; we share his sorrows.  Jesus takes our sorrows upon him; today we take his sorrow upon us.  In the Incarnation of the Word made flesh – Jesus Christ, we are assured of that bond; we are assured that God will never forsake us.