“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Matthew 27:46

This week our reflection on the Fourth Word is written by Serena Lee.

It’s a cry I often prayed through several years of long-suffering. Growing up, I don’t think I really understood why Jesus said this while he was dying. Didn’t Jesus know and anticipate this kind of pain? Didn’t he know his death would bring glory to God, and save humanity from eternal punishment? Little did I know that my struggle with borderline personality disorder would render me so hopeless that these words of Jesus would become my daily cry in the midst of my darkest seasons. I was grasping for any relief from my psychological pain. But most of the time, I felt like I was drowning, and God was nowhere near.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by the intense fear of abandonment, unstable relationships, and impulsive behavior stemming from the inability to cope with strong emotions.  Having grown up in a fairly fundamentalist, Asian immigrant church context, I didn’t feel like I could be a good Christian while also struggling with BPD. After all, I often blamed my friends for not caring about me, and attempted to manipulate them by exaggerating the depths of my woes to force them to show me an even greater extent of love and loyalty. I harbored resentment towards people I loved, and confused them when I pushed them away even though I wanted them to stay. It felt like I was riding a roller coaster, my mood constantly swinging, and my “frantic efforts” to avoid real or imagined abandonment became my new obsession.

In the first few years of my struggle with BPD, I found no relief in Christian faith. Honestly, I didn’t try because many Christians would “comfort” me by saying that I just needed to trust in God more, perhaps believe in the “peace that surpasses understanding,” or focus on the joy of the Lord. It wasn’t until my senior year of college when I went through one of the darkest periods of my life that I finally cried out to God, blaming him too for abandoning me. I poured out my anger, my bitterness, and all my resentments towards God and asked him, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” I was so expectant of abandonment from all those I loved, that it seemed as though God finally decided to leave me too.

Admitting to myself and to God that I was angry was the moment I now recognize as my first step towards recovery. In my anguish, I found relief. In my bitterness, I found understanding. As uncomfortable as it was engaging in my deep anger towards God, I felt a freedom to be completely naked before Him, my heart and my mind pouring out laments everyday. He is, after all, my God. He is my God.

Using this very prayer gave me great comfort knowing that Jesus enters into my loneliness and fear of abandonment. It felt like Jesus created this prayer for people like me- people plagued by fear, anger, and confusion. More importantly, it seems that Jesus prayed this prayer because He needed it. Up until the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus had never been separated from His father throughout eternity, before time and space. Can you imagine the kind of anxiety Jesus had while he prayed, sweating blood and tears? Can you imagine the heaviness He felt while carrying His own cross up the hill, knowing that Father was nowhere to be reached? Can you imagine Christ in shock and disbelief that His own Father actually turned away from the Son in his most excruciating, painful hour? Perhaps Jesus was unprepared to accept the reality He had theoretically understood before agreeing to suffer for humankind.

God did not answer Jesus’ tireless supplication. Defeat is on its way, and God appears to have abandoned His one and only son. And yet, as much as Jesus feels indignation towards God, still he uses a personal pronoun “my” to describe the Father, demonstrating that the relationship with God still exists and has significance despite the fact that God will not save him from his suffering and imminent death.

Of course, we know how the story ends. But if we skip over the significance of Jesus’ lament on the Cross, the resurrection loses its compelling power to transform lives. As the Church, we need to be able to sit in the discomfort of lament in order to become more human. That is, Jesus’s death on the cross reveals that the goal as Christians and as humans is not to be joyful, peaceful, or strong all the time, as many of us grew up believing. Rather, allowing ourselves to change in thought, in emotions, and in resilience brings us the freedom to accept seasons of adjustment in our relationship with God. We can be filled with joy before the Lord, or sit in anger. We can hold both peace and anxiety. We can live in doubt and in faith, hold lament in one hand, and hope in the other. This is humanity the way Christ has exemplified for us. This is beautiful.

Paradox — by Serena Lee

What a relief to be at peace

with the reality of warring virtue and vice,

Spirit and demon,

voice of God and voices of untruth,

anxiety and serenity,

depression and joy.

To live in the in between,

the already not yet, 

is the path that leads to sanctification, to healing

to full freedom

I am looking forward to those very things.

“‘If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, 28 then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters.” (Leviticus 26:27-29)

A few months back our daughter Carissa heard the song “I Wanna Go Back” on the Fish and got hooked. She kept asking to hear it. And pretty soon Janet and I got hooked too. If you don’t know the song here’s the music video:

It’s one of those songs that gets stuck in your head, the kind you find yourself singing under your breath throughout the day. That’s what happend to me. I kept singing the chorus over and over: “I wanna go back to Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so…”

So catchy.

Aside from its infectious melody, the song reminds me of a story about the Swiss theologian Karl Barth. He was visiting the states as a guest lecturer at Princeton Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago.

During his trip, a student asked him if he could boil down his life’s work as a pastor and theologian into one sentence. According to church lore, he looked at the student from behind his thick black rimmed glasses and said, “Yes, I can. In the words of a song I learned at my mother’s knee: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

The story is often told to remind us not to miss the forest for the theological trees. There is an enormous depth to the Christian faith, and we can sometimes get lost in its limitless intracacies and complexities. But all our inquiries ought to lead us back to the simple truth at the core of our faith, which begins, “God so loved the world…”

But for many, we find that we cannot simply “go back.” Either because of things we have experienced or the questions that incessantly gnaw on us, we are pushed to a place where what used to work for us no longer does. To “go back” would be akin to what Jesus says about sewing a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. The new will pull away from the old, making the tear worse.

When what we grew up with no longer fits, it is important to hear in our questions and doubts a necessary voice pointing the way forward (if we will let it). We are not trying to go back so to speak, but as C.S. Lewis puts it, “to go further up and further in.” Biblically we might say, we are not trying to get back to Eden, but onward to the New Jerusalem.

Most Christians I look up to have gone through some kind of crisis of faith. And this crisis is often a scary thing because we find ourselves deconstructing all that we once believed good and true. But the critical distance that is created here is often bridged by what philosopher Paul Ricoeur coined, “the second naivete.”

In the second naivete we are able to engage faith in a different way than we did in the “first naivete.” We don’t simply accept everything at face value or on a surface level. In critically reflecting on our beliefs we are brought to a place of informed engagement. We are able to reengage our beliefs. And we find that there is now an imaginative depth added to what we once believed. The story we used to hear in a pre-critical way is now charged with a more dynamic and vivid range of meaning.

For those of us who find ourselves in a place of doubt and uncertainty, may those doubts and uncertainties be the place of struggle and growth that brings about a second naivete. And in so doing, may we find that what can be wholeheartedly sung by an eight year old girl is also deep enough to encapsulate a lifetime of theological investigation…

Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.

Amen.

As we enter into Holy Week, here is a reading schedule that follows John’s narrative of Jesus’ last days:

Monday (4/10): John 17 (the whole chapter)

This chapter can be read as a last will and testament of sorts. It expresses Jesus’ final wishes in the form of a prayer. He prays for those he will soon leave behind and not only for them, but also for those who will one day believe because of their witness. In other words, Jesus lifts us up in prayer as well.

In pondering this passage it may be helpful to do some deep work on the things that Jesus hopes for his disciples (which includes us). In doing so, may what Jesus wants for us reorder our disordered wants and loves.

Tuesday (4/11): John 18:1-27

These verses are filled with betrayal. There is Judas, of course, who (in)famously betrays Jesus with a kiss (Matthew 26.48, Mark 14:44, Luke 22:47). Then there is Peter, who denies Jesus not once, not twice, but thrice. Both fail to remain true to Jesus, but they do so for different reasons under different circumstances. In spending time in this passage, we might consider how we are vulnerable to the same pressures that pushed Judas and Peter to turn their backs on the one they both called Lord.

Wednesday (4/12): John 18:28-19:16a

As we continue on in John 18, we find Jesus being interrogated by Pilate. If Peter’s denial of Jesus shows us a certain kind of cowardice, we are confronted with another kind in Pilate. It is a kind that is able to hide behind power and security so as to put off making a decision on the truth Jesus testifies to. Is it possible that there is a little Pilate in us, refusing to accept or putting off the truth that confronts us in Jesus?

The other character that finds a prominent place in the narrative is the mob who cries, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” (John 19:6). Pilate’s failure stems from a fear of upsetting popular opinion. Those who demand crucifixion seem to be enraged by the audacity of this poor carpenter from Nazareth who would dare upend and uproot their expectations of what a Savior should be and do. At least they understood that’s what Jesus was up to. The question we might put to ourselves is, “Are we as perceptive as they?”

Thursday (4/13): John 19:16b-42

Here we come to the crucifixion. Jesus is lifted up on a Roman cross between two criminals. John also tells us that some soldiers took his clothes and divided it among themselves. So there hangs the King of the Jews, bloodied and beaten and naked for all to see. And there at the foot of his cross there is a new family forming, of those who come to mourn the death of the crucified King. In reading this portion of Scripture, may we count ourselves among those gathered there and may we spend some time reflecting on just what is meant when Jesus breathed his last and said, “It is finished.”

Good Friday Service (4/14): The Seven Last Words of Christ

Our hope is that our journey through John 18-19 will prepare us well for Good Friday. If you’re in the area Christ Kaleidoscope will be holding a service from 7PM to 9PM at Rancho Senior Center (3 Ethel Coplen Way, Irvine, CA 92612). We will be designing prayer stations based on the 7 last words from Christ.

May we blessed by the reading of God’s Word this Holy Week.

Grace and Peace.

Luke 15:11-32 (MSG)

Then he said, “There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, ‘Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’

“So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any.

“That brought him to his senses. He said, ‘All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.’ He got right up and went home to his father.

“When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: ‘Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.’

“But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants, ‘Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time.

“All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day’s work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, ‘Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast—barbecued beef!—because he has him home safe and sound.’

“The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ‘Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!’

“His father said, ‘Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours—but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!’”

Human – Jon Bellion

Merciful Father,

you have created us in your image

and called us, your creatures,

to live out your love, hope, and desires in your world.

Absolve your people from their offences, 

that through your bountiful goodness

we may be delivered from the chains of those sins. 

Give us peace from our fears and frailty

and give us hope in our struggle with being human.

Remind us that we are more than the sum of our failures and fleshly desires.