For May 8th:

“And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?”

           

If you have ever felt forsaken and asking “Why? Why me? or Why my loved one?”, this reading from Bread and Wine, Readings for Lent and Easter, 2003 reminds us that whatever we are facing, Christ has been there and on the other side of our forsakenness He awaits us with our own resurrection in Him.

CUMC Women’s Ministry

            “…For three hours he hung nailed to the cross, apparently in silence, locked in agony and waiting for death. And then he died with this cry (above verse), which expresses the most profound abandonment by the God on whom he had pinned all his hopes and for whom he was hanging on the cross…

            …He bore the judgment in which everyone is alone and in which no one can stand.

            …An experience of this kind can only be answered by another experience, not by an explanation. A reality like this can be answered only by another reality. It is the answer of resurrection: ‘For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will gather you.’…

            …Is this (Christ’s Passion) the end of all human and religious hope? Or is it the beginning of the true hope, which has been born again and can no longer be shaken?

            For me it is the beginning of true hope, because it is the beginning of a life which has death (sin, sickness, sadness, fear) behind it and for which hell (forsakenness) is no longer to be feared.

            At the point where men and women lose hope, where they become powerless and can do nothing more, the lonely, assailed and forsaken Christ waits for them and gives them a share in his passion.

            The passionately loving Christ, the persecuted Christ, the lonely Christ, the Christ despairing over God’s silence, the Christ who is dying was so totally forsaken, for us and for our sakes, is like the brother or the friend to whom one can confide everything, because he knows everything and has suffered everything that can happen to us—and more.

            …Our disappointments, our loneliness and our defeats do not separate us from him; they draw us more deeply into communion with him. And with the final unanswered cry, ‘Why, my God, why?’ we join in his death cry and await with him the resurrection…

            …Beneath the cross of Christ hope is born again out of the depths. The person who has once sensed this is never afraid of any depths again. His hope has become firm and unconquerable: ‘Lord, I am a prisoner—a prisoner of hope!’”

Jurgen Moltmann,

Bread and Wine, Readings for Lent and Easter, 2003; from The Power of the Powerless, 1983