There are many reasons why one should study the seven last words of Christ, but this week’s words from the cross are, by far, the most challenging of all.  All the rest make sense coming from the mouth of our Savior, the Son of God – forgiving us, promising us a better place, urging us to create community -  but these words … while, in a way, they make perfect sense from a human point of view… somehow they do not make sense coming from the Son of God.  Racked by unrelenting pain and taunted by his enemies, Jesus calls out using the words of the Psalmist, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  Forsake:  to give up on, to walk away from, to abandon.  In that moment, our Savior, the Son of God, felt abandoned by God.

Most of us can relate.  We’ve been in a place where we too have wondered where God is, where we’ve felt like God is not there for us, where we’ve felt utterly removed from God – lonely, desperate, and abandoned by God.  We’ve witnessed disasters like 911 and Katrina and Haiti and collectively, we’ve turned to clergy, to the Bible, to one another and wondered where God stands in the rubble of our lives … wondered whether God is punishing us … whether God is warning us … whether God is comforting us … whether God is dying with us buried underneath insurmountable obstacles.  We’ve sat surrounded by our own misfortune, been victimized by people we once trusted, been up to our behinds in alligators and yearned for a miracle with none in sight and wondered whether anyone is up there, out there, hearing our cries for help, hearing our pleas for mercy, hearing our shouts for justice, whether anyone in heaven or on earth cares.

But Jesus?  What is the world coming to when the Son of God, Jesus who is our Christ himself feels like his God, his heavenly Father, has deserted him, forgotten him, forsaken him?  Is God truly that unfeeling, uncaring, brutal and callous, that God would intentionally will his only begotten Son to die, even for us?  Is God truly so inept, so weak in the face of human power, that God would fail to prevent or stop such a horrible thing from happening?  Is God truly too busy with the heaven’s affairs that God would neglect the prayers, the pleas of Jesus, a devoted innocent; would stand aside, aloof and numb, and allow such injustice to go on?  And if God is so … what does that mean for us?  Jesus’ words tear at the very fabric of our faith, demanding our attention, insisting upon an answer. 

I confess to you this day - I’m not even suggesting that I know the answer.  These words are among the most troublesome for me in the Bible.  But I do know this:  every time I find myself in one of those places, as if upon a cross, wondering where God has run off to … when I come to my senses, I discover that the issue boils down to choices, my choices – good or bad – and that the feeling of forsaken-ness has less to do with God abandoning me, and more to do with my abandonment of something … God, or myself (my values, my integrity), or others. 

The story of the Prodigal Son is familiar to us.  The youngest son grabs his inheritance from his father, goes off and parties the money away, ends up working for a pig farmer, homeless, hungry, and desperate.  To use contemporary language, sitting in that pig sty, the youngest son hits ROCK BOTTOM.  Three things are worth noting here: 

1.         First, as in our time, a son would normally receive his inheritance at the time of his father’s death.  So to grab the inheritance early, the son would have had to instigate the early division of the family estate … a brash, rebellious, proud disregard for his father’s authority, no less a total lack of concern for his father’s well-being.  Perhaps a family feud made him angry.  Perhaps his father demanded something he was not willing to give.  Perhaps he just simply gave up on his family, disinheriting himself.  In any case, he abandoned his family, severed ties with them, became as dead to them.  He chose to forsake them … and so when he hits ROCK BOTTOM, he assumes that they have forsaken him, too.

2.         Second, we don’t know how long it took the youngest son to hit ROCK BOTTOM but it isn’t likely to have been a quick process.  He put his family, yes, but also himself through quite the ordeal, making – not one – but a series of poor choices, probably with clear indications along the way of the ultimate consequences of his choices, until finally, sitting in pig poop, watching the pigs eat better than he could, he finally “woke up” – the Bible says “came to his senses.”  He realized that his life had become so pathetic and in that realization, he found himself ready to set his pride aside and crawl home to face whatever consequences there were.

3.         Finally, as it turns out, the youngest son isn’t the only prodigal in the story.  Prodigal is an word that means “recklessly extravagant,” “wastefully lavish.”  It is clear that the son is all this and suffers tremendously for it, but the other prodigal – the father (at least from the perspective of his other son) is also “recklessly extravagant” and “wastefully lavish.”  Both of them make choices … and their choices are prodigal.  The father suffers too for his prodigal choices … even as he welcomes one son home, his relationship with his other son is placed in jeopardy.

In the story of the Prodigal Son, not one but three men face the feeling of abandonment – understand themselves to be forsaken … the younger son is forsaken by himself (having lost his life, his identity in riotous living), the father is forsaken by both sons consecutively (first having lost a son to the temptations of the world and then having lost a son to the temptations of the flesh), and the older son is forsaken by his father (having lost respect for this man who would neglect the saints to celebrate such a sinner). And if you believe, as most people do, that this parable is an allegory for our relationship with God, this means that the sense of forsakenness goes all the way around.  In as much as we sometimes feel forsaken by ourselves and even forsaken by God – abandoned and left behind – God too feels forsaken by us.

It seems to me that if I feel abandoned, forsaken, neglected, I ought first to determine who I have forsaken … for reasons of pride, for reasons of haughtiness, for reasons of insensitivity.  If I feel utterly alone, perhaps I should ask myself where I have erected walls and sealed off doors.  When I am wondering where God is, maybe I need to ask where I’ve gone off to.  When I am sitting in pig poop (hey, you know, we’ve all been there), perhaps I should review to see how I ended up there.  And when I feel like I am on the cross … alone and afraid, crying out to my God, momentarily wondering what purpose my pain serves, maybe … just maybe … I … like that Psalmist should argue it out.  Hear selected verses from Psalm 22 and its companion Psalm 23:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?  Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One … in you, our fathers put their trust, they trusted and you delivered them.  They cried out to you and were saved; in you they trusted and were not disappointed … for (the Lord) has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help … posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord.  They will proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn – for he has done it.  The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures, leads me beside still waters, and restores my soul.”

Perhaps on that cross, in the throws of death, Jesus momentarily second-guessed himself, wondered if he had misunderstood something.  Forsaken by all but a few intimate friends and family and, ironically, his greatest enemies, maybe he wondered whether God had deserted him as well.  He made choices – choices to resist temptation, choices to take great risks, choices to eat with sinners, choices to tip over tables and confront Pharisees, choices to talk with women and touch those whom others rejected.  Were they the wrong choices?

Flipping through the television channels the other day, I came upon a new reality show called Tool Academy.  Now most of you know my opinions of reality shows … but this one has a twist that I actually can appreciate.  It is a competitive reality television show featuring "unsuspecting bad boys" (or “tools”) who have been sent to "relationship boot camp". The “tools,” all of whom have been nominated by their respective girlfriends, initially think they are taking part in a competition for a title. They are interviewed under that pretense … and as you can imagine they are more than happy to parade their prowess in front of a camera.

However, shortly after arriving they find out the truth: they are actually being entered into a "charm school" which focuses on teaching them how to behave as boyfriends. Their interview video is shown, not only to their girlfriend, but in front of the entire class as well as a relationship counselor.  As you can imagine, this is particularly painful and awkward for everyone, especially the “tools.”  Face to face with their own confession, quite a few of them back-pedal, saying things like “Well, I didn’t really mean that,” “I was just fooling around, making a joke, being cool, playing to the camera.”  Maybe so … but no one seems all that entertained, amused or particularly impressed.  With some, it is hard to tell whether or not they indeed would have interviewed differently had they known what was at stake.  Each week those eliminated risk losing the very one they claim to love.

Sometimes I wonder if we realize what we are saying when we confess, too.  I wonder about that printed confession … and whether we just read it aloud without considering what it actually says.  I wonder about the silence … whether it is filled with prayer … or with something else.  When we confess our sins, do we ever make stuff up just so that we can get through the awkward moment and receive forgiveness?  When we confess our sins, do we feel pressure to come up with something big, something to justify the receipt of God’s mercy?  Do we scramble for things to confess because we believe we are, for the most part, sinless?  Do we sweep together the fine particles of sin to present before God, vowing to clean the bigger ones ourselves as if God wouldn’t notice? 

And what of our other confession … our confession of faith?  When we read aloud the Brief Statement of Faith or the Apostles Creed as we do every Sunday, do we actually read those words and own them?  Do we really even know what we are confessing?  Do we really affirm what is there?  When we affirm that Jesus was condemned for sedition, do we understand that sedition is a political crime, that Jesus was a political prisoner, unjustly condemned for stirring up trouble among the people and instigating a revolution?  Do we really affirm that we belong to such a gang?  Do we really mean what we say?  And what would we say … if we were actually held accountable for what we confess?  Would we confess differently if we knew what was at stake?

We are not created to be the “tools” of idols, unsuspecting and ignorant bad boys and girls, bent to outdo one another in our sin.  We are created to be responsible for what we say and do … and to use our God-given abilities to discern what is in line with our faith and what is not.  We are called to be accountable not only to our brothers and sisters but perhaps more powerfully to God in Jesus Christ who was good enough to dies so that our sorry and sinful lives might be spared.  What I say in a moment of confession does matter; it is not just words because those confessions, whether of sin or of faith, convict me to a life sentence of making good and making it right.  Our confession … words, not for show … but for life.  Amen.