Introspection: The Words After the Last Words

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The Words After the Last Words

Don't fear, because I am with you;
don't be afraid, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you,
I will surely help you;
I will hold you
with my righteous strong hand.

Isaiah 41:10 (CEB)

Sometimes its so hard to pray
When You feel so far away
But I am willing to go
Where you want me to
God, I trust You

From "Let the Waters Rise" by MIKESCHAIR

According to the Gospel of Matthew, shortly before Jesus breathes His last breath on the Cross, He cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"¹  These last words are sometimes called Jesus' "cry of dereliction."  The implication, I recently heard, is that God is, at this moment, derelict in God's duty.²  God has apparently abandoned the beloved Son with whom God was once "well pleased."³  Personally, I do not believe that Jesus was truly forsaken by God when He was crucified, but I also do not believe that the Incarnate Christ could be fully human if He had never thought, at least for a moment, that God had forsaken Him.

On most days, I read a Bible passage and spend some time reflecting on it.  On Holy Saturday, the day after Good Friday, I did not read a Bible passage.  Instead I read Friedrich Nietzsche's Parable of the Madman, in which the titular character cries out, "God is dead.  God remains dead.  And we have killed him."⁴  It seemed like an appropriate thing to read on the day we remember that, for a period of time, the body of the Incarnate God lay in a tomb after He was killed by the human beings He loved and came to Earth to save.

In Nietzsche's parable, nobody who can hear the madman's distraught ramblings still believes in God, but only the madman is actually grieving the loss of God.  Unlike everyone else, he understands that, if we lose our faith in God, we lose more than doctrines and dogmas.  We lose everything we had that was rooted in our faith in God, like our purpose, our hope, and our moral compass.  According to the madman, losing God is as catastrophic as untethering the Earth from the Sun and letting it drift into the darkness and emptiness of space.⁵  Nietzsche was not writing as a man of faith; he just understood that atheism comes at a cost.

On Holy Saturday, I spent some time looking back on my own journey of faith, wondering if my own faith in God has "died" in some way.  For a number of years I've been aware that my faith just isn't what it used to be.  That said, I don't think it was "what it used to be" for very long.

Almost fourteen years ago, God got me out of a job I hated and led me to a job in which I could take pride.  Not long after that, God called me away from a faith community in which I was feeling more and more out-of-place and led me to a new community in which I could continue to grow.  I had begun to cultivate spiritual gifts that had lain dormant within me.  At that time, there was a lot of positive movement in my life, so it was easy to believe that God had a purpose and a plan for my life.  Then I started to feel like I was repeatedly letting people down.  Maybe people expected too much of me; maybe I expected too much of myself; or maybe I'm just selfish.  I cannot always tell which case is true.  My life stagnated, and it has remained stagnant for a number of years.

Does God still have a purpose and plan for my life?

Did God ever have a purpose and plan for my life?

There have been a number of things that have shaken my faith in God, like the pandemic and other horrors that are allowed to happen in this world and the hateful behavior of many people who claim to be Christians.  What has shaken my faith the most has been my own unfaithfulness, be it real or imagined.  A big difference between Jesus and myself is that I would never have to ask why God has forsaken me, because I feel like I've given God plenty of reasons.  I cannot speak for everyone, but, as far as my own life is concerned, if anyone has been derelict in his duty, it has been I and not God.

On the morning of Easter Sunday, before I went to church, I read the account of the Resurrection in the Gospel of Matthew.  Matthew tells us that, on the Sunday morning after Jesus was crucified, two women visit Jesus' tomb.  When they arrive, a messenger of God appears and unseals the tomb so that the women can see that Jesus' body is no longer there.  The messenger tells them that Jesus has been resurrected from the dead and then instructs them to tell His disciples to meet Him in Galilee.  The women leave the tomb, and they are met by the risen Jesus himself.⁶

Following the women's instructions, the Disciples meet Jesus atop a mountain in Galilee.  Jesus says to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you."⁷  The Disciples had all forsaken Jesus in His darkest hour,⁸ and at least one of them had denied even knowing Him.⁹  Even now some of the Disciples doubt what their eyes are seeing, but Jesus is still calling them to be His messengers, as He has prepared them to do all along.

Finally, Jesus says, "And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."¹⁰

These are the words I needed most this Easter.  The Good News of Easter is that the Gospel story ends not with a cry of dereliction but with a renewed calling and a promise of presence.  The failures of the Disciples did not nullify their purpose, and my own failures, whether they are real or imagined, do not nullify my purpose, whatever that happens to be.  The God who is with us on the mountaintops of life goes with us through the valleys, and God does not abandon us when we fail but rather continues to call us to our sacred purposes.


Notes:

1. Matthew 27:45-50 (NRSV)
2. Adam Hamilton.  "Final Words."  Church of the Resurrection, 04/02/2023.
3. Matthew 3:17
4. http://www.historyguide.org/europe/madman.html
5. ibid.
6. Matthew 28:1-10
7. Matthew 28:16-20a
8. Matthew 26:56b
9. Matthew 26:69-75
10. Matthew 28:20b

The Holy Women at the Tomb was painted by William-Adolphe Bouguereau in 1876.