“My God. My God. Why have you abandoned me?”
One of the struggles of reading the Passion narrative for me every year
is God’s silence in the midst of his Son’s suffering.
Even more disturbing than that silence is Jesus’ silence.
Jesus is questioned time and time and time again and he remains silent.
Pilate thinks he has the power.
All the guards think they have the power
and yet he remains silent.
Inside of me, I’m asking
“Well why don’t you just give it to them,
blast them, give it to them now!”
Don’t you feel that way?
Don’t you want some justice to come down from heaven;
some righteousness come down,
some blast of fire from heaven---just boom!
Yeah, that’s the God I want.
That’s the God who is strong!
And yes! That’s it!
But that is not what we get.
We do not get that.
We get a God who is silent.
We have a savior who is silent in the face of all of this.
So, we have to make sense of it.
We have to plumb into this some way and say “Why?”
Ron Rolheiser, a Catholic priest from Canada,
has done a great job in breaking it open.
He says, you know for three years,
Jesus in his public ministry was active.
He healed others.
He preached the gospel.
He walked; and he talked
and he came to all who would be willing to listen.
He healed the broken.
He visited the disenfranchised.
He touched. He was active.
But then came the agony in the Garden
where it was switched.
He went from active ministry to passive
and thus we enter into the Passion,
which is the root word for passive.
He remains passive to what happens.
That is what it looks like on the surface
but actually what is happening underneath is
all this hatred, all this bitterness, all this ugliness and vileness.
He takes it in.
He absorbs it.
He transforms it.
And gives back blessings, kindness, gentleness, love and forgiveness.
In the silence, he transforms the ugly into the beautiful.
He transforms the curses into blessings.
He transforms the hatred into love.
And the cursing and the unforgiveness into forgiveness.
We are called to enter into that same silence this week,
not to fight and to ask for vengeance and strength
but to let go and enter and submit into the silence of Holy Week.
Ponder over what Christ did; and to follow what Christ did.
We are called to do the same.
This week as we enter into this holiest of weeks,
we are called to enter into this week in silence
and to take in all the cursing and hatred in the world;
all the ugliness; all the bitterness; all the envy
and we are called to hold it, transform it
and give back, give back beauty, blessings,
gentleness, kindness, love and forgiveness.
And that will require every ounce of strength for us
but that is what we do.
We come to imitate Christ in his silence
because his silence is an active silence;
it is one that transforms;
one that liberates;
and one that redeems.
This week, let us enter the silence.
“My God. My God. Why have you abandoned me?”
