Jesus cried from the cross, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" (My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?")I've struggled with God's abandonment of Jesus on the cross for most of my ministry. Last week, while rereading Jurgen Moltmann's great book, The Crucified Messiah, an idea struck me and I wrote it down on the back endpapers. What follows is nearly verbatim and is very much a work in progress.
THE ABANDONMENT OF JESUS on the cross is God's abandonment of his former self, the god of religion. God rejects the god of religion by actively participating in his own death (remember: "the Son of Man must suffer, be rejected, and be killed"), only to be raised up by the new God of grace and hope on the third day.
In the Flood, God promised Noah he would never again seek to destroy the world by water. Indeed, God made water a sign of redemption by saving the world through the water of Baptism. Once again, God is at work in opposites. But God never promised never to destroy himself — or at least the god of religion as claimed by humanity.
At the cross, God confronted the "powers and principalities" of religion (c.f. Walter Wink). Both the Jews who demanded Jesus' death and the Romans (the world) who carried out the death sentence were hyper-religious cultures. Both claimed to know who God is and how God would act, thereby thinking to control God. But in his abandonment and in the death of the righteous Jesus on the cross, God slipped away from the grasp of both the Romans and the Jews.
The Jews thought they knew God and that they were in control of the terms of being righteous. They thought God would consistently reward the righteous and punish the wicked. At the cross, they jeered Jesus, saying, "If you are the Son of God come down from the cross. If you are righteous, won't God come to save you?" But God was silent. "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?!" Jesus cried. God abandoned Jesus and he died with those painful words on his lips. God slipped away from the religious. Jesus was righteous, but God punished him as the worst kind of criminal. Jesus was the true Bar Mitzvah (son of the law) and Barabbas (son of the Father) — true Son of God and true son of man, yet God abandoned him.
The Romans, too, were a culture wrapped in religion, although theirs was a religion of the state and the religion of power and authority. The Roman Caesars had claimed divinity and ultimate power for themselves and the state, which was merely an extension of Caesar himself. Rome thought it had the power to define righteousness. Rome claimed it had absolute control over life and death of the millions under its control from Scotland to the gates of India. This was a control over life and death that extended even to the how of one's death, the circumstances, the amount of pain and suffering the criminal would endure. Their power even extended to defining the meaning of one's death. One could die as a noble hero of the state, thereby building the power of the state religion, or one could die a horrible death as an example for those who would oppose the power of the state (i.e. beheading, the stake, the cross, etc.).
But again, God slipped though their fingers. Jesus died too quickly. ("Is he already dead?" they asked.) He hadn't suffered enough to be a good "example" of Rome's religious authority over death and life.
In the end, Jesus died as a victim of the powers of Religion and the State. Jesus died to the powers of ethical religion (righteousness, obedience, compliance, law). His death proved the Jews right (or at least that is how they saw it). God punished the wicked and those who would upset Religion.
Jesus died as a victim of the powers of the State. His death proved that Rome could do as it pleased, exercising full control over life and death and its meaning.
In the end, however, neither were able to control Jesus' (God's) destiny. He died to Religion of both kinds. He died under the sign, "King of the Jews," crowned by thorns, robed in slashes. He was enthroned on the cross, surrounded by his court — two thieves, and a group of women, the men having fled. Put on the cross by the State, he died as the state's victim (scapegoat) and as the state's vassal. But he died before Rome could exercise its full power (days on the cross serving as a lesson to those who oppose Rome).
God abandoned Religion's blasphemer and Religion's insurrectionist. God abandoned humanity's God.
For God to make a new creation (Paul), God had to ("must") begin with himself by putting an end to the false God of Religion and raising up a new God of grace and mercy, not righteousness and authority.
Thus, so far... (continued at A Choice of Crosses)
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