by Dr. Lani Wilson
Good day, prayer and fasting faithful. Thank you for your steadfast uplifting of our little Deep East Oakland outpost. Funny how prayer becomes more and more like an outrageous act of resistance as one adds more years to life, isn’t it? Not a small thing…
The word given this week is abandon. We are familiar with this word; it can mean to give up completely or quit early; it can mean to leave or desert; and it can mean to surrender to desires or wishes completely (Apple Online Dictionary). In our codified, post-modern, digitized, pixelated, instantly-satisfied culture, abandon is almost a shock word, used for rare effect. It’s an extreme, a last resort, a real “game-changer,” if you will. Used in relation to human beings, it is the most heinous of emotional wounds: To be abandoned. Is there anything worse than this? To be deserted, left? And how do you recover from abandonment? Better yet, is there recovery from abandonment? Is recovery the solution or is it merely a response?
For a short time I abandoned you, but with great compassion I will gather you.
Isaiah 54:7 (NET)Your Redeemer God says: "I left you, but only for a moment. Now, with enormous compassion, I’m bringing you back.
Ibid. (TMB)I will not abandon you as orphans, I will come to you.
John 14:18 (NET)"I will not leave you orphaned. I’m coming back.”
Ibid. (TMB)Around mid-afternoon Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"
Mathew 27:43 (TMB)For the music director; according to the tune “Morning Doe;” a psalm of David. My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? I groan in prayer, but help seems far away.
Psalm 22:1 (NET)
The Hebrew Bible abounds with references to God abandoning Israel because the people would not obey. Yet, God promises to return, to never leave them even though S/He has left them to the dire consequences of their behavior. In the New Testament, Jesus promises to come back and not leave the disciples alone. Dying on the Cross, beseeching God, pleading with Him because God has abandoned Him in His most painful, human moments, we hear Jesus’ wrenching words. But, interestingly, there is no record that God answers Him. There was always that gap in the reportage of Jesus’ excruciating, physical demise in that most horrific public capital punishment of crucifixion: We never hear Jesus confirm that God has answered Him. It didn’t feel like a rhetorical question, one that we would bandy about hundreds and thousands of years later as to the mindset of The Christ or God, YHWH, Jehovah. It was a straight-up question about why God would desert Him, as if Jesus didn’t expect to be left there, alone, abandoned. When He submitted to the arrest, the beatings, the torture, the scourging, the march to Golgotha, the nails, Jesus knew all that was coming, but in the versions in English translated from the Greek, Jesus seems anguished and perplexed: “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?” So why would He even plead with God? Was it to show us that we can question God? Was it to display His ultimate humanity? If so, then why didn’t God answer Him? Ultimately, the question becomes how could God not respond to Himself?
The English words ELI ELI (Strong's Concordance Number #G2241) in their literal meaning in the Greek language are "God, God." The meaning of the word LAMA (Strong's Concordance Number #G2982) is "Why." Lastly, the exact meaning of the word SABACHTHANI (Strong's Concordance Number #G4518) is "You have left (forsaken, abandoned) me." Strong's says that these Greek words are transliterations of Hebrew and Aramaic words. Transliteration is the attempt to make a word sound the same in another language. For the verse in question, the New International Version (NIV) has "Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani." The King James Version (KJV), New King James Version (NKJV), New American Standard (NASB) and the Holy Bible a Faithful Version render the phrase as "Eli Eli lama sabachthani." The NIV is the only popular Bible translation that says the first two words Jesus cried out are "Eloi Eloi."
biblestudy.org
We can see in the abovementioned explanation of the meaning of the phrase that transliteration doesn’t mean that these were Jesus’ exact words in Aramaic or Hebrew: Transliteration is not translation. Thus, there continues to be disputes whether these words signaled a separation between God and the Son and/or God and humanity. The fact that it is recorded only in Mathew and Mark also lends itself to varying interpretations.
Does the New Testament give good grounds for understanding the death of Christ as the Father’s rejection or as the sinner’s separation from God? The verse itself, of course, occurs only in Mark and in Matthew. In Mark it is the only utterance from the cross. In Matthew, it is augmented by a ‘loud cry’ at the point of death. The absence from Luke and John is sometimes explained as the result of a deletion by the early Christian community, which was scandalized by what sounded very much like a cry of despair. The difficulty here, of course, is that, while this is possible, there seems to be no evidence for such a development, beyond the fact that the two later gospels do not contain the cry.
Yocum, J. (2005). A Cry of Dereliction? Reconsidering A Recent Theological Commonplace.International Journal of Systematic Theology, 7(1), 72-80. doi:
10.1111/j.1468-2400.2005.00152.x
We must remember also that the gospels report that some thought He was crying out to Elijah, “Eli” being a shortened version for “Elijah” in Hebrew, “Eliyahu.”
Furthermore, in both Mark and Matthew, the cry is given in both the original and in translation (though, the form in Mark is not recognizable as either Hebrew or Aramaic). In both cases the ‘Eli’ or ‘Eloi’ is misunderstood as an appeal to Elijah, in Hebrew, ‘Eliyahu’, or ‘Eli’ in its shortened form. The misunderstanding seems to carry as much weight as the quotation itself; his own people have taken a cry directed to God, so we are assured by the narrator’s translation, to refer to Elijah. It is worth noting how much space and detail is given to this event within what is otherwise a very economical narrative. At the very moment in which Jesus cries out to God in the extremity of his suffering, the bystanders think he is somehow appealing to the legendary figure of the prophet Elijah.
Yocum, 75.When some of the bystanders heard it they said, “Listen, he is calling for Elijah!”
Mark 15:25 (NET)
For our purposes, it is enough to say that we may never know exactly what Jesus said on the Cross at the moment before His death as recorded in the Gospels. For example, there is also debate about whether Jesus was merely repeating the first half of Psalm 22:1 (as cited on page 1), a more personal petition, or was He confirming His position as the traditional scapegoat offering in His Hebraic tradition. Or was He affirming His redemptive position, taking the place of sinful humanity before God? What we do know is that it was powerful enough in intent to be debated 2,000 years later.
We might positively assume that the issue of abandonment was left open for us to ponder because Jesus’ next recorded words were to give up His Spirit to God. Luke records that Jesus said,
“Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And after he said this he breathed his last.
Luke 23:46 (NET)
There is no record of God answering Jesus’ question. Abandonment by God or abandoned to God?
John Bowlby, a 20th century English psychologist is known as the “Father of Attachment Theory;” a theory that simply says that the bond between mother (primary caregiver) and infant has ramifications for the rest of the infant’s life.
The importance of motherly love has been recorded throughout history. A mother lovingly cradling her baby is one of the most potent visual and emotional symbols in all cultures. The most venerated symbol of Christianity itself, after the Cross, is the Nativity, with the Virgin Mary looking adoringly down at the Christ child cradled in her arms. So important is motherly love in most cultures that the lack of it is felt intuitively to be catastrophic for the fate of the child....John Bowlby, the mid-twentieth-century English psychologist, is widely credited with having put a “scientific” name to motherly love and to the widely held assumptions as to its importance to the mother’s child. He called his premises Attachment Theory. Bowlby’s primary thesis is that the success of all relationships or “attachments” in life is dependent of the success of the first one, namely, of the bond between the infant or small child and his mother or primary caregiver
Richard Brodie, John Bowlby: The Father of Attachment Theory, www.childdevelopmentmedia.com
Bowlby’s theory is central to understanding how human beings develop healthy relationships. In essence, any missteps in this primary bond in the first months and years can lead to long lasting problems throughout life. Most serious of all is the lack of attachment: This means that an infant does not form the necessary trusting, reciprocal connection with the mother (primary caregiver). In other words without a primary attachment, human beings grow up without the ability to connect with other sentient beings: Living things become objects. Psychologically, then, abandonment before attachment appears hopeless because if you never know what you’ve lost, how can you recognize it when it reappears? But if you suffer abandonment after attachment has occurred, could there always be the possibility of reattachment? Bowlby and his colleague Mary Salter Ainsworth developed the theory of attachment, and this led to his work with Colin Murray Parkes on the four stages of grief and bereavement: DAGR, denial-anger-grief-resolution. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross famously added “bargaining” (after “anger”) later as she developed the five stages of death and dying.
Is it possible that we are supposed to struggle with what Jesus said on the cross (probably in Aramaic) about abandonment because the human experience is rift with attachments that are disrupted and often die? Is the very first attachment the soul-full one we have with God whenever we believe life begins? Are we both the creator and destroyer of our attachments to ourselves and others? Can the church as a living institution abandon God without realizing it? Shouldn’t we expect that we are going to tear at fragments of attachment and even sometimes abandon The Christ because we are so human? Shouldn’t we acknowledge those highly probable occasions, expect them, and plan for them? Are we so afraid to acknowledge this human frailty that we march on as if it hasn’t and will never happen? Isn’t that fantasy? It seems that fragile human beings exist in that space between Jesus asking God why S/He abandoned Him and “I commend my Spirit.”
The difference between abandoned by God and abandoned by people is that when we abandon God and/or each other, we feel the full weight of its pathos and finality: Betrayed, stunned, numbed by pain, alone. If and when we feel abandoned by God, there is always the promise of recovery, reclamation in Isaiah 54:7 and John 14:18: God will return to us, eternally, unfailingly, firmly. Note that Jesus said in John, “I will return to you.” He will come to us as we are lost and alone; He will come to us. On the cross, Jesus begged God to tell Him why S/He had abandoned Him. And then He turned around and poured His Spirit into the hands of God. Do we do that when we have been abandoned by others? Not usually. Probably never. We cry; we moan; we sob; we rage. And then we resolve never to let it happen again. We build a little wall around that space and promise to never let our guard down. Then we get abandoned in a different way, a different place, a different circumstance, and we build another little wall around another little space and resolve never to let that happen again. If life is a series of gains and losses and if the losses can be seen as mini-abandonments, how much of us is walled off and how much is open? If God mysteriously seems to abandon us, do we wall Him off, too? Do we vow never to let ourselves trust God again, just in that particular area of sensitivity? Jesus said, “I will come to you.” How do we remind ourselves of that and teach that to others as life tosses grappling hooks into our fleshly souls and we have to wait for Jesus to return? Dr. Renita Weems has some words for us.
How do you describe a journey that leaves you feeling sometimes as though you’re not getting anywhere, that you’re no better off than you were when you first started? How do you follow someone you can’t always recognize? Perhaps we’re all fooling ourselves and are only spinning straw into words by pretending to be able to describe the inner journey. Perhaps the wisest thing to do is to take God’s cue and be silent.
Renita Weems, Listening for God: A Minister’s Journey Through Silence and Doubt, 1999.
What are we really doing when we tell ourselves and teach others that God always answers prayer when we know that many times the answer is an abandoned silence?
What about those of us who are beyond the first blush of the spiritual journey, who after a period of dramatic awakening now feel as if we have hit brick wall and our prayers have been met with silence? It is comforting to know that even in the book that passes itself off as the word of God, there are testimonies of people who railed at God for what sometimes felt like God’s cruel refusal to speak.
Weems, 19.
Our only reassurance is that The Nazarene said that He would return to us. The finality of abandonment we experience between each other, that space between “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani” and “Into thy hands I commend my Spirit” is really where we grow and grieve, trust and despise, leap and fall as Christ-ians. Maybe that is where we are abandoned and found, over and over and over again.
I had to fall in and out of love with God a thousand times before I finally figured out that it was all right to fall in and out of love a thousand times, that just because God is silent doesn’t mean that God is absent.
Weems, 22.
And it doesn’t mean that we have been abandoned….because he said, “I will come to you.” Who else promises always to come to us? Who else? Even in our abandonment?
And all the church said, “Amen.”
Amen.
