The Crucified God

"Why Have You Forsaken Me?" by Hannah Garrity of A Sanctified Art, LLC

This weekend we move from Lent into Holy Week.

On Palm Sunday, we hear the joyous and raucous shouts of "Hosanna to the King!" from the crowds as they throw palm branches and cloaks through the air in celebration.

Only days later, that same crowd will be bloodthirsty as they scream "Crucify Him!" when given the opportunity to save him. All the male disciples save one will abandon him. And the women will stay close, as women so often do, when he is led up to the Skull to die.

We can do a forensic review of events: noting that it is physically possible to sweat and weep blood when someone is under enough stress. That the crowds were given the choice between the Messiah and a man whose name means "Son of the Father" in some sort of cruel irony. That they must have beaten him half to death already by the time he was placed on the cross because he died in three hours from a death that should take days. And that there are so many prophecies fulfilled by various versions of what happened that they are sometimes hard to count.

But aside from all the details we so often miss in this essential story of our faith, there is a more essential message of the cross that we tend to intentionally ignore: our God chose to stand in our place for every way we have ever and will ever denigrate, dominate, and destroy one another. Our God placed on firm display some of the worst of who we are - just as Christ also showed us the depths of who God is. And, as no other ancient God would ever have done, our God chose to become human, be executed for treason and sedition by a "law and order" government, and literally die. (Even the parallels we can see across the world religions find gods whose sacrifice is far more for self-serving than helping humanity.)

And yet, we have continued to kill in Jesus's name for the last two-thousand years. We have slaughtered "others" who we deemed unworthy. Claimed that there is only "one" way to God when our own religion has over 45,000 sects and used that as an excuse to cast out, denigrate, and destroy anyone who disagreed with us. We have baptized in blood so many who have lifted up groups of people who were being harmed or who spoke truth to power about unjust practices. To this day, we continue to do all these things and more to retain power, when Jesus showed us true leadership by washing his followers' feet.

And every time we do any of these things against our fellow humans, we hold the hammer that drives the nails in deeper. We press down the crown of thorns. We grip the spear with white knuckles as we desecrate his body.

Holy Week is not for the faint of heart, because we will come face to face with the very worst of ourselves. And yet, even in the most shadow-filled moments we will see God's Love shine all the more brightly - drawing us closer to the dawn where we can choose to do better.