From the Daily Lectionary for Wednesday in the Eighth Week after Pentecost
Matthew 27:45-54
From noon on, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “This man is calling for Elijah.” At once one of them ran and got a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed his last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many. Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”
Throughout Matthew’s passion narrative, I have been arguing that this is not just about the shaming and death of Jesus, but the shaming and death of a people. Matthew again in this passage quotes Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Psalm 22 is a national lament, a mourning over the demise and death of the Judean monarchy. It is a lament from a far earlier time. The death and rebirth of the people of Israel is a defining pattern in their troubled history. History is always trouble, is it not?
The apostasy and greed of the Jewish leadership, and the brutal occupation by the Romans, between whom there was dark complicity, have engendered once again the perfect storm which would deal a fatal blow to the Jewish state. Indeed, after the occupation of Rome, for many centuries, the Jewish people have been scattered about the Mediterranean Basin, and parts far afield, torn from their roots, left to wander as refugees.
Matthew is not writing history here. He is writing theology. Psalm 22 quite unexpectedly ends as a song of praise. Matthew’s audience would know that. They would know that when things fall apart, there is always the possibility of new life. Their history is testimony to that reality. Jesus’ resurrection is the theological proclamation that death is not the end, but a beginning; that the Love of God is unquenchable, and persistent in its pursuit. Death is finite. Love is forever. There is life germinating in the ashes of our ruin.
We are coming to an end in this country. Our troubles tell us so. There are many things about us in this land that must die: our lust for wealth and power, our racist institutions, our self-absorbed and arrogant individualism. If we persist in such apostasy we as a nation will die, just as the empires come before us. We may choose to live in the finitude of death, or we can live for Love which has no end. The reason we gather as a community of faith is to remind ourselves of this reality; to remember the pattern; and to encourage each other to give ourselves to it; that in our end is our beginning, a new day brimming with possibility. Pray without ceasing, good people, that it may be so.
A Prayer of Thanksgiving (BCP p. 836)
O God, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the truth of his word and the example of his life; for his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying, through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom. It is in his name we pray. Amen.
