Held

If the deepest truth of Jesus in this forsaken moment is not strength of heart or resolve or incredible faith, what is it that allows Him to cry out my God, my God in the same breath as forsaken?

It's relationship.

It feels like it's impossible for us to understand something like this. How could Jesus have any thought of the relationship when He also declares that it is God who has turned His back on Him somehow? How could the love of the Father and the Son persist through such torn darkness? Is Jesus foolish or naive to still consider this "forsaker" His God? The whole thing is ludicrous! Or is it...?

It feels like it's impossible to understand, but the truth is that we can actually understand this quite well because we see it on a micro scale in our own parent-child relationships. (And remember - we are dealing here with both a man-God relationship AND a parent-child relationship.) But it's the parent-child relationship that allows Jesus to continue loving God even when He feels forsaken.

Let's bring this down to our level. A human father is teaching his human son how to ride a bicycle without training wheels. Both are excited about the outcome - the freedom to ride bikes like a big boy. Both are a little apprehensive about the process - the boy is not sure about things, and the father knows that a fall or two is coming. Sure enough, a few feet down the road, the boy falls. He skins and bloodies his hands and knees as he hits the pavement. And he gives his dad...the look. It's the look that says, "Why did you let go? Why did you let me fall? Do you see my bloody knees, father? These are your fault..." And the son is troubled by the father.

At the same time, he comes running to him. The son seeks comfort in the father's arms. In this moment of pain and failure, his father's embrace is the only place he wants to be. He doesn't want to talk about riding bikes right now. He doesn't want to think about trying again. But he wants his daddy to hold him, to mend his wounds, to wash clean his scraped up hands and knees, and to reassure him, even in this moment...especially in this moment...of the love that is shared between them. He does not trust his daddy to hold the bike, maybe, but he trusts his daddy to hold him.

And this is not some feat of super strength on the son's part. It's not because his heart tells him that he ought to continue to love and trust his father. It's not because something in him thinks he needs to forgive his dad for the pain he's feeling right now. That's the furthest thing from his mind. And it's not some act of incredible faith. Ask the kid in this moment. Ask him how he feels about his father's trustworthiness when it comes to bikes. He's not ready to get back on there, not even if his daddy is holding him steady on two wheels. So it's not that he has some weird, unexplainable faith in his father at this point.

It's all about the relationship. This man, this strong, incredible, amazing man that this child has spent his whole life growing up with, this man who just let him take a hard, bloody fall on the pavement, also happens to be his father. He also happens to be the man who reads him bedtime stories, gets him a cup of milk, sneaks cookies in the middle of the night, takes him to school, goes fishing with him, lets him help in the woodshop or in the garage, teaches him how to laugh and to love and to cry and to question. Yes, he just fell, but they have a million other moments together that help to reshape this one, that help to redefine this one. And at the very moment that his flesh is torn, even though there's a part of him that cannot ignore that it was his father who let him fall, he instinctively turns and cries out, Daddy!....

This is what we see on the Cross, in most dramatic fashion. (Yes, even more dramatic than a young child who has just fallen off his bike.) This is what we see in Christ. At the very moment that His flesh is torn, even though there's a part of Him that cannot ignore that it was His Father who orchestrated this whole thing, He instinctively turns and cries out, MY God, MY God...because this is still His God. And in the very breath that this man feels betrayed by His God, this Son clings to His Father. 

My God

As we try to understand these words of Jesus on the Cross and the theology of forsakenness, we must start with the very words themselves, as they give us a tremendous clue to yet another paradox of God revealed in Scripture. Look again at the words:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

This is where Jesus, even in His humanity, far surpasses us in ours. Most of us, in times of trial or trouble, put distance between ourselves and others. Most of us, in the grips of pain, take a step back. It's instinct. Most of us, in the clutches of heartache, in the moments of felt forsakenness, do not cry out my God, my God.

We simply cry out God.

For this reason alone, we cannot ignore what Jesus is saying here. We cannot dismiss these words as simple rhetoric or hyperbole or even poetry. There is a depth of meaning here that we cannot escape. In the toughest of times, in the hardest of trials, as His body hang limp and wounded on the Cross, even after a prayer in which He prayed for there to be any other way, anything else He could do to fulfill His purpose, Jesus has the courage, the faith, the audacity to cry out My God, my God.

This God was still His God.

I struggle with that one, more often than I'd like to admit. (Although I must also say I struggle with it less the more I know about God, the more I come to trust Him.) It's far too easy for me and you to pull back a little bit, to come further into our pain, and maybe we still cry out to God, but not to our God; He's only our God if He figures us a way out of this. He's only our God if He comes through. He's God; that much, we'll still give Him. But is He our God? Let's see how this thing plays out.

Isn't that how we do it? Aren't we always holding God hostage to His own performance? Aren't we always waiting to see if God is going to do anything God-like before we claim Him as our own, before we give Him stake in our hearts again? And don't we, at the moments that we feel most forsaken, boldly claim that we probably don't even have a God any more. This God...this God is still God. He's just not ours.

So even in these words, even in these troubling words from the Cross, Jesus is declaring something about His Father. He's declaring something about Himself. He's saying something about the relationship that we can and should have with God, something that seems far beyond what our flesh is either willing or able to do. Something far beyond what our minds can understand. This...this is the ultimate betrayal and yet this is also my God. 

How can this be? How can we wrap our feeble, finite minds around something like this? 

It's more than strength of heart; we need not wish that our hearts were simply stronger. As someone with a pretty tough heart, let me tell you that toughness of heart never draws God nearer on its own. A strong heart still must seek Him with everything it's got. It's more than just solid faith. Faith itself wrests more on questions than on answers, which means that even the most solid faith questions from time to time. If you're not questioning, how can you ever believe? It's not even some supernatural, special God characteristic that Jesus has and we just don't have access to. Jesus does not set for us here an example we cannot follow. He does not call us to carry our crosses so that we can come to the place of forsakenness without anything to soothe our spirits. That would go against the very heart of God, the very heart that we know and love. 

So what is it? What is it that lets a man (and in this moment, He is still fully man, perhaps most fully man), cry out in a moment of utter betrayal, My God, my God, even when the words must also be, why have you forsaken me? .....

Forsaken

One of the most difficult words of Jesus is the word He spoke on the Cross, just before drawing His last breath. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

The reason these words are so difficult for us to comprehend is because of the deep theological thinking required to process them. What is Jesus referring to when He says He's been forsaken? What is He feeling? What does this mean for the Son of Man? What about the Son of God? What about the Holy Trinity?

Just a few hours before, Jesus had been in the garden of Gethsemane. He'd been praying for there to be another way, any other way, although He remained fully surrendered to the plan that God had had for Him from before time began. Not my will, but yours be done. He knew what was going to happen. He knew how it was going to happen. He knew everything that awaited Him just a few heavy steps away. When He cries out forsaken on the Cross, is it because He feels this final prayer of His has not been answered? Is it because this cup has not been removed? Is it because, like us, He prayed this fervent, honest prayer and was met, seemingly, by silence by the very Father who claimed to both hear and love Him?

Maybe in that moment, maybe in those final breaths, God somehow pulled away from His Son. Maybe at the very moment that Jesus felt He needed His Father the most, at the very time His eyes and His heart were crying out Abba, God Himself turned away. Jesus could not see the eyes of the Father; only His back. Only His shoulder. Only His drooped head as He looked the other direction. Is this what forsaken is? Is it possible for the Father to turn away from the Son so decisively without threatening the community of the Trinity? What can we possibly make of this if even the Father and the Son can turn away from one another? 

Maybe at the very moment that the entire world is being saved, Jesus feels profoundly what it is to be unsaved. There is no one there to take away His pain. No one there to cover His shame. He's beaten, bloody, bruised, broken, and naked. Maybe He's feeling a little bit of what we all feel - with all this amazing grace, with this incredible saving work happening right now, why is there no one to save Jesus? Why is there no one to rescue Him?

The theology here is thick. There are implications no matter how we come to interpret these words of Jesus, implications that can be either challenging or comforting, depending on how we are able to process it. Does the Trinity hold together even in this critical moment...or is it prone to the same relational stress that we are? Is Jesus still a Son...or just a sinner? Is God a good Father...or an omnipotent puppetmaster? 

Most pressingly, if even Jesus, the very Son of God, can be forsaken by Him, what possible hope is there for the rest of us?

And that's why we have to wade through these murky waters. That's why we have to ask these tough theological questions. That's why we have to figure out what in the world Jesus meant, what He was saying, what was really happening, at this moment when He cries out forsaken. It's absolutely crucial for our understanding of God, of Christ, and of ourselves. 

Thankfully, the very words themselves give us at least a good starting point....

Freedom

Today, America gathers to celebrate freedom. But freedom is not what most people think of it.

Most people think of freedom as this thing with no boundaries, this thing with no lines. Freedom is the ability to do, think, say, believe, pursue whatever it is that tickles your fancy; literally anything is possible with freedom. Anything short of this isn't really free. Anything with rules, guidelines, lines, or boundaries isn't freedom. 

But freedom requires precisely these things.

True freedom requires parameters, and to an extent, we know this. Even in perfect "freedom," you are not free to do things which are not possible for you. At any given time, you are constrained by the finiteness of your own being. That is, even in perfect freedom, you cannot fly. You were not made to fly. Even in perfect freedom, you cannot sprout flowers out the top of your own head; you are not a flower. So even at your most free, there are limits to what you can and cannot do, and these extend down into the deepest places of your heart and the most vibrant truths of our reality.

You are free to lie, but this freedom exists only within the confines of truth. If there is no truth, there can be no lie. So even in lying, you are drawn in by truth. You are free to break relationship, but this freedom only exists within the boundaries of closeness. If you are not close to someone else, there's no relationship to break. You are free to wander, but you can never get off the map; you will always be somewhere. You can't not be. You can't be nowhere. 

And each of us has within us some guides that set our special freedom, some things that are specific just to who we are. We can do many things, and we are free to do them, but they all come back to this place of our own identity, of who we have been created by God to be. You may do things which lie outside your own creation, but choosing to do them requires that you be created in the first place, and so you are limited, to some degree, by the very thing you are desiring to break free of. 

Kind of a bummer, huh? Not really.

We need these kinds of guides and boundaries; they are essential to this thing that we call freedom. Without them, what we have is something much, much less than free.

Imagine that you could go wandering and find yourself off the map. Imagine that you could become nothing at all. How would you ever get yourself back? You cannot simply manifest yourself into something out of nothing; it's not possible. Or imagine that you did not quite become nothing at all, but you became something much worse: lost. Would you not need to find yourself, or find some point of orientation, before you could do anything else? Sure, you might welcome being lost for awhile, but man does not best exist lost and it doesn't take long before his lostness becomes a driving force and all of a sudden, you are not free at all; you are a prisoner of your own lostness until you find your way out of it. Lostness drives everything you do, not freedom. Lostness demands that you be found, and any demand on your life limits your freedom.

When there's nothing to guide you, you don't gain your freedom; you lose yourself. You lose any sense of right and wrong, up and down, left and right, east and west. Without boundaries in place, you're a nomad...and a no one. You become ill-defined and then non-defined, becoming a vapor in the wind or a blur in the scenery. If truly everything were possible, how would you ever know what you were truly capable of? If you were free to do anything, how would you know what you were supposed to do? 

If you were free to lie without the confines of truth, how would you know you were lying? You wouldn't. And therefore, you are not free to lie after all. You're just babbling. Words with no meaning. Noise. Nobody pays attention, not even you. Living within the lines of truth creates your very freedom to lie.

So today, as we consider our freedom, let us consider also the things that hem us in, the guidelines and limits and parameters that make our freedom free - things like love. Things like grace. Things like truth. Things like sacrifice. Things like blood. Things like....

Happily Ever After

One of the greatest difficulties we have with the trials and troubles of this life is the myth of 'happily ever after.' It's the ending to all our greatest fairy tales, the closing caption to a thousand movies. We know our happily ever after is coming, at least in terms of eternity, but most of us want to rush it and make it possible here.

And we use our Bible stories to convince us that it's possible.

Take, for example, the story of Job. Job was a guy who experienced truly the worst that this fallen world could offer him. He was completely devastated over and over and over again, and after he proves his faithfulness one final time, God restores his fortune, replaces his children (and then some), and we imagine that Job then goes sailing off into the sunset without another care in the world.

In fact, it might be just Job that makes us think this is possible because the more I think about it, the more clear it becomes that this is not the story of any other character in the Bible. Every other story we have is of trial and heartache and struggle and not quite making it and failing and falling and finally dying when you just can't do it any more. But we all want a Job ending. We all want riches and blessing and peace and sons and daughters and livestock (maybe not livestock). We all want happily ever after, and if even a guy like Job can have it, then isn't that what God promises us? 

Isn't it possible that one day, life will just click...will just turn over...and there will be no more heartache, no more pain, no more trouble?

No. 

I mean, it's possible, yes. Anything is possible. But it's just not how the stories really go. It's not how things actually work. Not for Cinderella. Not for Snow White. Not for Beauty and the Beast. Not even...for Job. 

See, we've got happily ever after wrong, at least as it's possible here in the flesh. Happily ever after doesn't mean that bad things don't still happen. It doesn't mean there aren't dark days. It doesn't mean we somehow get a pass on all the fallenness of this broken world and get to live with butterflies and rainbows until we die and go to heaven. Happily ever after doesn't mean smooth sailing.

It's just a steady ship.

We have to stop thinking that perfect is out there, that it's just one knight in shining armor, one noble steed, one faithful step away. It's not. Perfect is an illusion. Happily ever after doesn't mean a life without sadness. Without regret. Without grief. Without pain. Not here. Not this side of heaven, not east of Eden. 

But we can get this happily that draws us back into itself. That becomes our home base, that becomes the place where our hearts come to rest. We can get this happily that becomes like gravity, always pulling us back down to blessing when life seems to be getting out of hand. Job had all his riches restored, all his land, all his possessions, all his livestock, all his offspring restored back to him in fantastic measure. 

But it still rained. Harsh winds still blew. He probably stubbed his toe a few times after that, caught a few colds, lost a few sheep, harvested some small crops, fought with his children, worried about them, wondered about them. There were probably nights that Job was restless and couldn't quite fall asleep, nights when he laid awake thinking about all the heartache that he knew. And yet, I think that in times like these, Job always came back to blessing.

He always came back to the goodness of God. He always came back to abundance. He always came back to the intimate knowledge of what it's like that very first moment you see the light at the end of the tunnel, and the way the light's warmth just wraps around you when you finally come out of it. He always came back to how amazing this God of his is. So even with a throbbing toe, an aching head, a thinned herd, a fallow field, a difficult child, a sleepless night, a restless heart, Job came back to this place called blessed, and that was his real happily ever after. 

This is what we have to wrap our hearts around - that happily ever after, so far as we can have it, isn't some hedge of protection that keeps all the bad things away. It's a fundamental shift of the heart that changes the forces of gravity, that finds a way to keep pulling us back into blessing again and again and again. So that on our sleepless nights, on our tough days, in our hard moments, we aren't stuck sitting in the dust scratching our weary flesh with broken bits of pottery, but we are rejoicing in our fields, feasting with our families, and staring up at the stars in the sky knowing...knowing that God is incredible, that grace is amazing, and that this, even this, is our happily ever after. 

This side of heaven, of course.