Cry
 

³³ When the sixth hour came, darkness fell over the whole land – until the ninth hour. ³⁴ And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloï, Eloï, lema sabachtani?’, which translated means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ ³⁵ Some of those standing there who heard this said, ‘Listen, he is calling for Elijah!’ ³⁶ One of them ran up, dipped a sponge in vinegar, put it on a reed, and gave it to Jesus to drink. As he did so, he said, ‘Let us see if Elijah comes to take him down.’ ³⁷ But Jesus cried out in a loud voice. Then he breathed his last. ³⁸ At that moment, the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. ³⁹ When the centurion, who was standing opposite Jesus, saw him die in this way, he said, ‘Truly, this man was the Son of God.’
 

Jesus was a Jew. He believed in the one God of Israel and came from a region called Galilee; it is part of what we now call Israel. This region had not always been Jewish. Judaism spread northwards from Judea, the region to the south where Jerusalem is also located. Jesus knew the Torah, the part of the Bible that we find today in the Old Testament comprising the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy; it is the part of the Bible that Christianity shares with Judaism. The Gospel writers outline Jesus’s life of faith: Jesus prays, he fasts, he reads and interprets the Bible, he visits the temple, learns and practises the customs, and cares for the marginalised, the sick and the elderly. However, he brings with him certain emphases that some might misinterpret as revolutionary. His central message: the Kingdom of Heaven is near; it is imperative to realign one’s life with this nearness and to sharpen one’s focus on it. He calls this repentance. This repentance is essential so that the path does not lead further away from God, but back towards him. Yet Jesus is absolutely convinced that God is very near. And he feels it himself. It is a power that flows through Jesus – and not only that, it also flows out from him to others. It is so strong that Jesus is able to raise the dead to life again.

The Gospels show in fast motion how, in the last three or four years of his life, Jesus’ life is completely permeated by God and the message of God’s closeness on earth, shaping his entire life and actions.

And yet, in the hour of his death, Jesus doubts God’s presence.

Jesus’ cry is a lament already foreshadowed in the Old Testament Psalms: Psalm 22, verse 2 contains this exclamation, which expresses absolute abandonment by God in the face of impending death and persecution. Through this cry, Jesus is portrayed in all his humanity, in all his human nature: as a man who has been mistreated, hanging on the cross, whose experience of suffering leads to a sense of being utterly far from God.

Loneliness, a sense of being lost and forsaken – this is what Jesus feels and cries out in his mother tongue, Aramaic, as a lament: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ It is the final emotion conveyed by Jesus. And these are the last words recorded in the Gospel of Jesus – for the time being.

This sense of abandonment in the man who is supposed to be a model of faith is deeply unsettling. The cry pierces to the core. It echoes long after into a world that is itself mistreated and full of mistreatment.

Shortly before his agonising death, Jesus lacks God’s presence. God is not there. Jesus asks: Why have you forsaken me? This is a question that only a person of faith can ask. For Jesus had felt God’s presence. Now, however, no longer.

Today, this cry sounds absurd. It rings in the ears of many who feel abandoned, who are lonely and lack the strength to cry out themselves, yet would not even know what good it would do, because they do not believe that there is anyone there to hear this cry. It would be foolish to cry out, because it would not concern anyone.

Many have never felt God’s presence; they have never believed that God can be near, have never felt secure in prayer, or found focus on what is essential through fasting.

Yet this cry also echoes in a world full of loudmouths who seek to retain power and control through their shouting; who allow no closeness to others because they fear for themselves. People who inflict verbal violence on others through their shouting: towards children, partners, colleagues or people around them.

This cry of a man who gave his life for others (Mk 10:45) is barely audible to those who seek but do not find. They do not hear the profoundly human longing that Jesus himself cries out with his last breath: the longing to be saved; to be carried out into another, better life, without suffering and without death.

This cry is an expression of a strong personal faith. The cry has an addressee: ‘My God’. However, Jesus’ personal God is not to be understood in an exclusive sense. Rather, it marks the closeness that Jesus wishes to feel, just as the Aramaic language, which is Jesus’ mother tongue, does. The intimacy conveyed by this stands in tension with the feeling of abandonment. Yet it is an expression of faith that provides support even in life’s most difficult situations, even if it is a lament directed at this God. Jesus’ faith sustains him, even in the darkest hour of his life. The ability to call upon this God, even if it is a question, helps Jesus, even if it is the last thing he will say.

As a Jew, Jesus knows the Psalms; whether the evangelist puts these words into his mouth or whether the words of the Psalm were truly cried out by Jesus on Golgotha, we do not know. But Jesus’ great faith is nourished by the tradition of the Psalms.

His death marks a turning point in history. The whole of creation reacts to it, for the earth begins to shake. It is a soldier who utters a profession of faith and manifests the divine sonship, that is, Jesus’s immediate closeness to God. Yet the centurion can only do this in retrospect: ‘He was the Son of God’.

And now?

The earthquake is the cosmos’s response to what has happened. Death has won, for the time being – but only for three days.

For, according to biblical tradition, Jesus’ cry is not the very last thing of Jesus. In chapter 16 of the Gospel of Mark, he encourages people to believe: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation! ¹⁶ Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved (Mk 16:15f.)”.

It is the risen Jesus who speaks to his friends as a new person and thus also becomes the object of faith. In a different form, but with a clear promise and a mission, he seeks to encourage, not to deter. He will be found again in Galilee – the place from which he came. That is how the text puts it. The disciples would find him there, it says.

So back again, so that they can move forward. This ‘back’ is where the disciples know their way around, their home, where they can feel safe. But they must not forget what has happened and must take the good news with them.

The theologian Michel de Certeau formulates his understanding of the biblical texts as follows: “In fact, [Jesus’] call … is known only through the response given to it. It has no expression of its own. Jesus is accessible to us only through texts which, in speaking of him, recount what he has evoked, and thus merely describe their own status as believing or retrospective writings” (Michel de Certeau, The Weakness of Faith, 264.230).

The future of the disciples is open, but it is marked by the acceptance of suffering and death, which are overcome through faith in God and Christ. Death is not the end. The death cry is not the end. But without it, this future cannot be attained. The path to the future succeeds only if it includes death and suffering and does not exclude them.

Jesus’ faith shows that it can find expression even in the darkest hours. As a cry of abandonment.

Aleksandra Brand