Lenten Meditations 2007 - #7: My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

The God-Forsaken God

Venue: The Bakers' Place

‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

The cry from centre-stage is from a god-forsaken man. As a centring cry, it has much gravity, echoing as it does in the cries of the abandoned and the suffering, the outcast and the oppressed, across time and space – cries which demand some kind of response from us, as well as from God. And if we dare take the unusual step of believing that Jesus really means what he says, then the echoes are seismic ripples of a theological earthquake, whose epicentre is the question, ‘Where is God at the cross?’. But then, where was God in Auschwitz? Where is God in Baghdad? Where is God in Helmand province, or Harare?

Where is God at the cross? Jesus’ experience of abandonment is, in reality, an event which takes place ‘within God himself’: ‘the cross of the Son divides God from God to the utmost degree of enmity and distinction.’ God with us is forsaken by God within all. Yahweh turns his face from his beloved Son and his presence is wholly absent. And in that present absence, God suffers absolutely with and in and for the absolute suffering of every abandoned, forsaken, desperate, broken human life. In that event, somehow, are taken up ‘all the depths and abysses of human history.’ ‘The Fatherlessness of the Son is matched by the Sonlessness of the Father.’

Where is God at the Cross? If we look hard enough, might we uncover some trace of God who is not absent but present? When ‘God with us’ becomes god-forsaken, does God’s absent himself completely? Incredibly, it is a god-forsaken God who is dying, hung by Roman nails and human pain. But God is also present in the presence of the forgotten, the unseeable, the overlooked and suffering. God is forsaken but God cannot ultimately abandon5 and presents Himself in the small, faithful remnant of women and men who watch, from a distance, and accompany the body of Christ from cross to tomb. Briefly God forsakes; God turns away for a moment. But the silence of God at Golgotha is not utter abandonment. In some sense it is God’s holding God’s breath: the answer to Jesus’ cry comes not immediately, but two days later. It is only with ‘the resurrection of the Son abandoned by God’ that God is re-united with God ‘in the most intimate fellowship.’¹