“Eloi,
Eloi, lema sabachthani?” --Mark 15:34
On
Sunday, the Christian world once again begins our journey down the Via Dolorosa, Latin for “The Way of
Sorrows” or the “Way of Suffering.” For
eight days, we accompany Jesus of Nazareth from the gates of Jerusalem, through
the gates of hell and on through the broken gates of death to
resurrection. The journey begins and
ends in celebration and rejoicing, but in between, Jesus endures challenges
from without and within, evades the cunning traps of religious leaders,
experiences the betrayal of friends, the cruelty of power, the disdain of the
masses, the agony of torture and a slow and horribly painful death. In the end, after all that he has faced, he
cries out the haunting first lines of Psalm 22, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabchthani?”
which means, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” He cries out the words of every human being
who has ever experienced challenges from without and from within, traps, betrayals,
cruelty, disdain, agony, torture or painful death. He cries out the words of humankind held in
bondage by the brokenness, evil and mortality of the human condition.
In
that moment, in that moment, I
believe God, the great Creator of the vastness of the universe, identified most
fully and completely with all God’s human children. With you.
With me. With your neighbor next
door and on the other side of the world.
And that saves us. Makes us
whole. Frees us for eternity and for
right now.
Paul
puts it this way in Romans 8, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able
to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (vs. 38-39)
It
is a promise and a guarantee that God stands with us, steadfast, unshaking,
unwavering, in the darkest and most awful moments of our lives… even and especially when we feel totally and
completely forsaken by everyone and everything -- even God. Oh, and also in all those hard or even
sort-of irritating times short of that.
That’s
the wonderful, mysterious paradox of the cross.
That’s the wonderful, mysterious power that allows us to transcend all
the crap the world throws at us and gives us the capacity to love and the will
to act with compassion, mercy and forgiveness.
If
we simply skip from the gates of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to the broken gates
of the empty tomb on Easter Sunday, I am afraid it’s easy to miss the point and
the passion and the power of the whole week. To understand, we need to go through the gates
of hell with Jesus… or more accurately,
we need to hear, once again, that he willingly goes through the gates of hell
with us.
I
encourage you not to skip the observance of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday
this Holy Week. Walk the Way of the
Cross. Feel the cry of the One who was
forsaken for the sake of the world in the depths of your soul… and then…
Well,
we’ll talk about that next week.
Peace,
Bishop
Mike
Thank-you
for reading. Blessed Holy Week.
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