Reflections on the Passion: Part 2
Good Friday, 29th March, 2002
The Rev'd Dr Colin Holden
Assistant Priest and Archivist, St Peter's, Eastern Hill
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
It doesn't matter whether you call yourself catholic or evangelical, classical Christian theology of quite different streams agree in seeing the suffering and death of Jesus as a unique event in human history. It is also the central point for one of the Christian religion's distinctive attitudes. We believe that through this particular event, God's relationship with us is changed. We say that this is a crucial part of God's saving or redeeming of us. We then go on to claim that, somehow, suffering and pain – these signs of an appalling degree of distortion and disorder – can be redeeming. Certainly some of our strongest critics consider this as a distinctive Christian view of human experience. We have been criticised, rightly or wrongly, for treating pain and suffering as somehow a good thing if only approached rightly. We have been criticised for being willing to tolerate, or encourage others to tolerate, pain instead of fighting uncompromisingly for its elimination from people's lives in many different ways. At worst, we have been accused of providing a rationalisation for those more or less unbalanced individuals who enjoy seeing others deprived of all kinds of enjoyment, and want a religious excuse for doing so.
Yes, we do claim that, somehow, suffering and pain – these signs of an appalling degree of distortion and disorder – can be redeeming. But we have to be very careful how we make that claim. If we want to ask the question: what do we mean when we make this claim, we still find basic guidelines as we reflect on Jesus' Passion and death, and at this point, I want to focus our attention on the often quoted cry from the cross.
These words have been reflected on a great deal across the past century, a period in which theologians have been concerned to remind us of the completeness with which the humanity of Jesus is to be identified with ours. In particular, it has been treated as an indication that Jesus experienced the sense of isolation and despair in the midst of apparent failure to the fullest extent possible for any of us. Whatever the bigger picture of these events may have been, from His point of view at that moment, it was a total waste, and His impassioned cry expressing this was accepted by the Father as a valid and authentic one, not rejected as a rebellious cry or as an unacceptable statement of doubt. If we understand Jesus' cry against the total darkness of his suffering in this way (and representative at the highest level of the experience of darkness by all of us) that alone should warn us that there is something seriously unbalanced about explanations of the Passion and death of Jesus that conclude that suffering is in any real sense good for us or others. It is inconsistent to suggest we should let suffering happen to others as part of furthering their development, making up for their failures, let alone to wish for it. That is to misunderstand the statement that Jesus' suffering redeems, or that suffering can have a redemptive value.
Nor does it help us to try to explain the significance of Jesus' Passion and death by making comparisons that suggest that, somehow, He suffered more than anyone else has ever done – though I have certainly heard preachers talk about Jesus' suffering in just this way, The experience of the last hundred years, or even less, has rightly made us reticent about using comparative terms about human suffering deliberately inflicted on others. There has been a relentless procession of situations like the Holocaust, Stalin's gulags, the killing fields of Cambodia and similar situations involving the protracted abuse of large numbers of people – mind numbing in both the numbers of people being deliberately destroyed, and the length of time such systematic abuses have continued. Modern historians may differ among themselves as to the precise details of the figures involved, but the most conservative estimates are evidence of a degree of suffering that is beyond any individual's imagining.
How can we speak of this at all, without lapsing into various levels of inanity? We might return to that cry from the Cross, and a rather different interpretation of its significance.
If we look at the whole psalm – which we recited as part of the Maundy Thursday liturgy as the altars were being stripped – it begins as a cry of existential despair and isolation, but moves towards a statement of hope, a statement that this suffering is indeed real, but is not the ultimate. Was Jesus trying, despite the impossibility of doing so, to recite the whole psalm, as a statement of something more than isolation and despair in the darkness? We cannot be certain of His intention at that point. What we do know, is that
in the darknesses of the past hundred years, the cry of isolation and anguish has been made by many hearts; but even those who have constructed the most dreadful concentration camps have not been able to prevent some of their victims from being aware of the presence of God there. In the most dreadful shame of our own age, we have found new insight into the words of the psalmist, 'Where can I escape from Thy spirit? Where can I flee from thy presence? If I climb up to heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in Sheol, again I find thee'. Pain distorts and destroys; it does not of itself improve us: but it cannot of itself exclude God, though we may well find it difficult, if not impossible, to respond to Him in that state.
The search for meaning is a profound driving force. Many members of my own, and of a younger, generation refrain from involvement in institutional worship of any kind, not because they are totally lacking in any spiritual awareness, but because, rightly or wrongly, they are not satisfied that institutional Christianity is primarily concerned about spiritual issues. A certain integrity drives them to find out for themselves by taking up their own spiritual paths. Because this approach leaves aside much wisdom based on the inherited experience of communities, if they continue their explorations, they may well discover or rediscover many things previously known, including this truth, that the greatest darkness and isolation cannot exclude God. As we pray in the solemn intercessions for all who act with good intention, motivated by conscience, ethical values and a desire for justice, we pray for them, just as we pray for those who share our faith, that we might all come to an awareness of God, despite those darknesses and evils that can offer so powerful a barrier to our sense of His presence.
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