The Cry

Who could ever forget those awful clips of 9/11, of airplanes smashing into buildings while crowds of people below screamed in terror? What is burnt into my memory is one particular clip where you could actually make out people yelling in fear, “Oh my God, what is happening? My God, this can’t be happening. My God, where are you?”

It’s painful but not strange to hear people calling out to God. Even the staunchest of atheists can yell out for divine assistance as reflex action in times of fear, or pain, or desperation. That’s not strange at all. What does seem strange to us, however, is the thought of God crying. For that’s how Matthew’s Gospel ends Jesus’ life. With a loud sob of desperation, a yell of fear, a cry of abandonment.

That is a strange thought. I mean, this is God after all. We expect God to be powerful and to use power. In fact, that’s why, gathered around Jesus’ cross we find these mocking crowds. People saying things like, “C’mon down from that cross. If you are God, if you are the Messiah, then show us. That cross shouldn’t be able to hold you. You saved others but you can’t even save yourself! Show us your power!”

And so as Jesus shifted on the cross, as he gathered himself to speak, the crowds fell silent – waiting. The disciples tensed up, ‘let this be the moment, show your power’ they might have thought, and they waited as well. They all waited … and then … God cried. Not a sign of power, but one of desperation!
“Eloi, Eloi. Lama sabacthani.’ ‘My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?”

Now this is strange, even mysterious. It doesn’t sound divine to cry like that, it sounds human. But it shouldn’t be strange. Painful to hear, yes, but not strange. I mean we all know God HAS power, that God created with raw, effortless power. But God has shown again and again that when it comes to saving us, when it comes to finding us, that when it comes to bringing us back into relationship with him, God will not use power.

For God will not force us, he will not kick down the doors of our hearts; he will not leave us without any other choices but him. No. He will love us. And he will reach us by loving us. And that is why God cried! As Jesus said over and over to his disciples – he was prepared to take his journey of love right to it’s inevitable end point, he was prepared to face all of life with us, even those vinegar bitter tasting moments, even if it meant facing death.

Love isn’t really love until we truly share each others experiences, until we learn to walk together with someone through difficult moments. Of course, love is laughing together, but love is also crying together. … and that is why God cried. Jesus’ cry of abandonment on the cross is painful for us to hear, but it is also the most loving thing we will ever hear.

The Cry reminds us that God chooses to share all human experiences with us, even the very worst. The Cry reminds us that what was holding Jesus to the cross while the crowds mocked him was not force, it was not nails … it was love. Choice held him there!

God cried that Friday because that is the way God chooses to reach us, find us and bring us back to him. God shares our deepest places of hurt, he experiences our greatest fears, and he walks through our worst places of abandonment and loneliness. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is the cry of one who has nothing else to give and nowhere else to turn, of one who has done all that has been asked of him in the face of loneliness and betrayal. It is also the deepest cry of God’s heart.

Craig Kocher says that this desperate, anguished, gut-level cry is the cry of parents who receive the phone call of their nightmares. It is the cry of the patient diagnosed with AIDS. It is the cry of a refugee with no place to call home. It is the cry of a family waking up to no feed to eat. It is the cry of a child, orphaned by a road accident. It is the cry of all humanity, longing for a day when tears and crying and death will be no more.

In this cry from the cross, God in Christ goes to the very depths of our sadness, abandonment, sin and death. When God cried he showed us the true power of love for in that moment Jesus gathered up all of humanity’s cries and tears in his own breath and nailed them to the cross in his own body.

And this is why the church insists on calling this Friday ... Good.

For this is the moment when the story turned forever. The Cry is sin’s last gasp effort to maintain control over the world and keep the divide between God and humanity. The Cry is death in the final throes of death, one last fruitless attempt to claim victory over life.

The Cry is that moment when love washed over sin, grace won over loneliness and Life defeated death. The Cry echoes on through history, and weaves its way through all our human experiences, and if we listen carefully this Easter weekend, we will hear it too.

We will hear its good news and feel its embrace. For no matter how we feel, the truth is that we are not alone, and we never will be. We are not abandoned, for God is here.