All Things Beautiful #6 – Ken Williams

“Jesus/I AM is Beautiful – part 2”

“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?’” (Mat. 27:46 NRSV). Luke and John did not include Jesus’ dying wail of agony in their gospels. I’m grateful Matthew and Mark did.

For years I could not imagine why the Word, through whom we came into being, why he became flesh and chose to suffer the violent, humiliating agony of crucifixion. I appreciate the psalmist’s incomprehension,

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” (Psa. 8:3-4 NRSV)

Comprehend or not, it’s now a moot point because the Son of God has done this. I do not mean to question God. This is all good even though it boggles my imagination. Incomprehensible but apprehensible.

There is something that is oddly reassuring shared in the detail that Matthew and Mark preserved in their gospels. Did they hesitate to write something this intimate, private, delicate, without permission? How many dying people ask that their final words remain confidential? Once again, it’s a moot point since Matthew and Mark included Jesus’ dying words, and I’m grateful to be included in this private moment. There is something simple, something so easily identifiable as human. Didn’t God intend all people to consider this?

It was 61 years ago, when I first heard Jesus’ dying words. I was a twenty-year-old sailor, painfully aware of my sinful, broken young life. I was a new convert in a church, and the pastor used Jesus’ cry to prepare us for their annual celebration of the Lord’s Supper. I didn’t know anything about Jesus’ gospel and tragically, neither did this church’s denomination. They thought it necessary to remind us regularly that God’s Son paid a horrible price for “shameful humanity”. They required self-examination and repentance, to be “worthy”, before receiving the elements of communion at the Lord’s Super.

I left that church known for shaming its members. I learned that many other Christians churches are just as abusive. Years later I considered Jesus’ final words, uttered after his cry of derision. John recorded in his gospel, “…it is finished. Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (John 19:30a). The Son of God, destined to be the Lamb of God, before the foundation of the world, became flesh to take away the sins of the world (John 1:29b). That was 2,000 years ago! What!?

I have done and thought shameful, harmful things but listening to Jesus, when he said, “…it is finished…” enabled me to see that our Father, like his Son, was too busy rejoicing that I was alive, not dead, and he welcomed me home to celebrate. God created us in his image and cannot shame us as this world does. It’s against his nature of love. He watches for our return home (Luke 15:11-32).

So, like the boy named Sue, “…I come away with a different point of view”.

I listened carefully to Jesus’ cry of anguish. He included us in his crucifixion! I’m not referring to his dying so that we can live; I mean he included us with the Triune God that neither forsook the Son of God, nor humanity. Jesus felt and spoke as we do when our suffering becomes unbearable. He gave us the gift of knowing the Son of God is as human as we are. He has not forsaken us even when it feels like it. Beautiful!

Stay tuned for All Things Beautiful – 7

Ken and Nancy Williams served for some 25 years in pastoral ministry, and then almost another 20 years serving and mentoring other pastors.  With the heart of a pastor Ken continues to write and blog from upstate New York where he and Nancy live close to their grandchildren.