Godspell: The Original Soundtrack of My Faith--Matthew 27:46
Day 13
The finale to Godspell, (which honestly I don’t remember ever getting to–there was always bike riding, baseball, or some other pursuit), pushes me now to examine a precise moment of the Gospel that has troubled me– even since those early days of singing the Godspell songs in Sunday school and around the house.
Why does redemption (particularly mine) have to work this way?
Jesus on the cross. (Or from the movie, a chain link fence). Pain, anguish. A jeering crowd.
[JESUS]
Oh God, I'm bleeding
Oh God, I'm bleeding
[ENSEMBLE]
Oh God, you're bleeding
[JESUS]
Oh God, I'm dying
[ENSEMBLE]
Oh God, you're dying
[JESUS]
Oh God, I'm dead
[ENSEMBLE]
Oh God, you're dead
Jesus, in this time of great pain and anguish, asks what we all ask when we see the limits of our lives.
Matthew 27:46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabaktanei?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”
And in that moment, which remains very confusing to me, (but less so as I work through the song, the visuals, and meditation on verse 46), it appears that God forsakes Jesus.
Or maybe, Jesus, because as man as well as divine, would have felt the terrible aloneness of His impending death.
G.K. Chesterton points out in Orthodoxy the absolute confusion that necessarily must flow from Jesus’ last moment:
“And then followed an experience impossible to describe. It was as if I had been blundering about since my birth with two huge and unmanageable machines, of different shapes and without apparent connection—the world and the Christian tradition. I had found this hole in the world: the fact that one must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly. I found this projecting feature of Christian theology, like a sort of tail, a sort of spearhead, like a diamond, like a star, like a point that was somehow more pointed than the universe. When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, not at the cry from the Cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God.”
How can any young boy just getting started with faith, a faith that is his, get past the startling realization that God will leave you to hang on a cross?
But that’s the world talking, I suppose.
The world wants us scared of what Chesterton calls the “projecting feature of Christian theology”
That of being forsaken by God–apparently for God.
Dr. Tom Neal, in You Want It Darker, describes God’s terms:
“God cannot redeem what he does not make his own, what we refuse to surrender to him—the meadows and the sewage. Prayer that emerges from such a radical depth of honesty is that of very few, it seems to me—those from whom all has been taken. But it alone achieves a depth of redemption.”
On the cross, when the whole world went dark, maybe that’s where hope shines brightest.
Or maybe for my gardening Karen, maybe hope blooms fullest in the most hopeless of spaces.
We won’t ever know unless we trust Him.
Finally, they carry Jesus aloft and away to mourn, but also to pray. And to hope for some bit of love and meaning in their lives.
Amen to that, you crazy, hippie kids.
Thank you for a perfect introduction to my faith. 🙂
Lord, remind us of Jesus on the cross when we feel forsaken and when doubt clouds our hearts. Teach us to find hope in His sacrifice.
Lord, grant us the courage to cry out to You in our pain, knowing that You are near, even when we cannot feel You for the confusion of the world.
Amen.
PS. Karen and I were wandering through The Mole Hole a while back and I spotted a book on display that looked interesting to me. Why such a book would be among all the beachy, overpriced and generally useless tchotchkes is beyond me–but there it was. I took a picture of it and then returned to the picture months later.
I’ll be starting Bearded Gospel Men: The Epic Quest for Manliness and Godliness, tomorrow.
God willing. 🙂
Onwards!