The cry from the cross

However a feeling of utter abandonment in the face of a violent death more accurately reveals the depth of suffering of such a one. Jesus thus drunk the cup of suffering to the dregs and this empties the idea that he was aloof to what was happening to him.

Gregory Nazianzus wrote: "That which is not assumed is not redeemed." If Jesus did not experience what all of us would experience at the point of violent death then he would not have taken the full suffering of the creature upon himself and he would be left a partial saviour. The Word would not have become flesh in its completeness.

He would be aloof, either brave or stoic or only seemed to suffer. He would have represented religious man girded up by faith so that he could face suffering and death as Socrates did. He would have become the model of fortitude possessed by certainty.

There is certainly enough of this in the lives of the saints that constitute a kind of boastfulness on behalf of the Church. Can we really believe that St Lawrence, in the middle of being roasted on a grill, said "turn me over, I am done on this side"?

The purpose of such stories is to gird up the Christian community but they also produce in us a dread that we would fail such a test. We fear that we would become a screaming mess and disgrace ourselves.

So it seems that we are caught between two different views of who Jesus is. Is he the spiritual master who is in complete control even after hours of excruciating pain and the abandonment of his disciples? Or is he like we fear we would be, our being completely devastated?

There are instances in the bible in which the truth is told even in the face of deep political concern. Such an instance is the description of the great king David as an adulterer and murderer. We find the actors of the Old Testament very human i.e. very flawed.

This is in striking contrast to the political world we have produced in which to be human and flawed is fatal. Personal truth has been sacrificed on the altar of public righteousness.

I think that Luke and John are to be resisted and that we should ponder deeply Mark's brave decision to place the cry in Jesus' mouth. He has hit on the essence of the passion narrative. Jesus dies like us, not as a spiritual master but as one who loved his life and was filled with dread at losing it in violence. Is this not what the agony in the garden of Gethsemane is telling us (that Luke faithfully includes), that what Jesus did by walking to Jerusalem was bitterly hard.

We in the Church must be aware of false comfort. The psalms of lament are suitably read at funerals. In all dying we are caught between assurance and despair. All dying is a taking away, a loss of connection with those we love and hence a destruction of what constitutes life itself.

While raging against the dying of the light is futile an overconfident facing of death betrays the truth of who we are.

There is comfort in hearing the cry from the cross in that we know that He was even here at the lowest possible situation of the human spirit when everything is counted as loss.

He has experienced Hell. He is there when we experience Hell. What more could we ask?