Forsaken

Often when I pray, it feels like no one is listening. That I am just a young man, walking through the woods, 12 gauge yoked across his shoulders, talking to himself. If God responds he must do it through the wind, the harmonized hum of many different insects, birdsong, creek water. But there are days that I am not convinced of this. God is silent. God is not real.

These past few days in particular have held this sense of abandonment from the Father stronger than most. At church last Sunday, while everyone else recited the creeds, I stood there quiet, staring at the floor. Not out of spite, but out of hopelessness.

I resonate with what the kid from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian says about his relationship with God. That is, I don’t believe he much had me in mind.

But it is not just myself and the kid who have felt this way—there’s also Jesus.

In our oldest Gospel, Mark, Jesus’ last moments are recorded as such:

At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”'

—Mark 15:34 NRSVUE

Matthew and Luke used Mark as a direct source to write their own Gospels. While John may not have had Mark in front of him, he seems to be somewhat familiar with the Markan story. Matthew keeps this final quote by Jesus in his Gospel, but Luke and John change it.

It’s difficult to say which author got it right, or if any of them got it right. There are a few things to consider. Mark 15:34 is one of the few instances where Mark provides us with Aramaic—Jesus’ language. Does that make it more likely to be historical? Difficult to say.

A better argument for the authenticity of this quote, I think, would be to invoke the criterion of embarrassment. A first-century Christian writing the passion narrative would not likely invent a moment where Jesus — the son of God, the one closest to the Father — cries out in despair and feels abandoned. The hero of the story should go to the cross with certainty, not doubt. That this moment made it into the Gospel anyway is, by that logic, a point in its favor. I don’t quite agree with this line of thinking, but it’s an argument.

I actually speculate that none of Jesus’ followers were present to hear his final words. I think the men had fled and the women watched from a distance. It’s likely that they feared for their own lives after Jesus’ arrest, so Golgotha would have been a risky place to stand around.

Now, something else that’s important. This quote appears in the Old Testament.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night but find no rest.

—Psalm 22:1-2 NRSVUE

So perhaps this is where Mark got it from, as opposed to tradition passed down by eye-witnesses. Although it’s possible that Jesus said this with it also being in the Old Testament. There’s no real reason they have to be mutually exclusive.

Regardless of what really happened, the Jesus of Mark and Matthew felt abandoned by God.

And so I don't feel so alone in that. If it happened to him, the one who, depending on your theology, was either God's son or God himself walking around in skin, then maybe the feeling is not a sign of weak faith or a broken mind. Maybe it is just what happens sometimes. You are on the cross and the sky is empty and the silence is total, and there is nothing to do but say it out loud.

I am not on a cross. My suffering does not compare. But the emotional logic is the same: you believed in something, you gave yourself to it, and now it has gone quiet on you. That particular ache does not seem to require crucifixion to be real.

The difference, I suppose, is that Jesus got an answer eventually. Or so the story goes. I am still waiting on mine.

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Art: Christ on the Cross by Hercules Brabazon Brabazon