Why oh Why?

(To the Sources)

‘… My God, my God, why have you forsaken me…’ (Matthew 27:45)

From Matthew 26:14-27:66 (Year A: Palm Sunday)

Some year ago I watched a TV interview with a survivor of the Holocaust. In the course of the interview, which was evidently conducted in what I believed must have been Yiddish and sub-titled, I recall the interviewee declaring with great anguish three words that sounded very much like ‘Lama?, Lama?, Lama?’ I immediately recognised these words as attributed to Jesus in his dying moments and recounted in this Gospel passage. It was a haunting and plaintive please. Why, Why, Why?

Why indeed? Hearing the words of Psalm 22 on the lips of the dying Jesus is shocking. But, it must also be recalled that in the same Psalm there are these lines (22:24):

“For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.”

That these words are reported in Aramaic might suggest a special status and originality to what was said? After all why not report them in the language in which the rest of the Book was written?

Whatever the context and meaning it is clear that this cry of despairing plea shows the depth of human suffering in the final moments of a terrible death.  There is no point in sanitising this. It is real life for many as they struggle with death, sickness and despair.  It also speaks to those who meet great trials in their lives where an inexplicable darkness, pain and anguish grip a person and overwhelm that person to that point that they cry out something very similar to what Jesus cries here.  This line could be understood as a type of prayer for all those struggling with emptiness, pain, hopelessness, defeat. Go one step further and think of it as the ‘prayer’ of an atheist or an agnostic.  And there is something of an a-gnostic in every theist and atheist (if we are all completely honest with ourselves). 

If there is one point that can be taken here it is that God has been put to death on a cross and God is forsaken. Now if that isn’t radical theology what is?