“Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit”
Luke 23:44-49
April 5, 2020
Matt Goodale
Happy Palm Sunday to all of you. Or Palm Saturday or Palm Monday, depending on when you’re watching/reading this. No matter when you are hearing this message, it marks the beginning of our Holy Week journey. Holy Week is a time that we remember Jesus’s journey to the cross. And Palm Sunday marks the beginning of the end of his journey. On Palm Sunday Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, while a crowd of people laid palms and garments as a sign of reverence and expectation. Jesus’ following jubilantly exclaim: “Hosanna, hosanna in the highest”, expectant of what God’s Messiah had come to do.
None of them though expected what would happen just five days later on a cross at Golgotha. They expected signs, miracles, overturning of governments. But Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey was a sign of nonviolence – Jesus did not come like Alexander the Great did, riding into Jerusalem on a valiant steed to conquer. Jesus did not come to conquer with the sword, he came to die. Jesus himself is very aware of what awaits him, and we can sense it in his humble entrance to the city that would five days later reject him and require his crucifixion.
As we enter Holy Week, I encourage you to take the time to read the Passion narrative with this entrance into Jerusalem in mind (the passion narratives in each Gospel are: Matthew 26:30–27:66, Mark 14:26–15:47, Luke 22:39–23:56, and John 18:1–19:42; you can choose one Gospel to read or read them all). Allow yourself to occupy a place in the crowd during Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion. What sights do you see? What sounds to you hear? What do you taste and smell? What are you feeling? Were you present when Jesus entered the city on a donkey? What expectations do you have for this man you hoped was God’s chosen Messiah, the one who was said to come redeem your people? As you watch Jesus beaten, mocked and eventually hung, do you hang onto hope? Or does your hope dissipate like mist in the air? Surely this can’t be God’s Messiah, can it? What do you feel as you watch hope die on a cross?
Reading scripture and placing yourself in the story is an act of prayer, it’s an act of listening for God. What emotions, what doubts, what questions do you feel the Spirit tugging on and bringing to the surface? Even though we can’t be together in person this Holy Week, we can remain joined together in Spirit as we read the Passion narrative, knowing others are reading these same words, reimagining these same scenes, allowing themselves to live inside of them.
You can read a little bit of the Passion narrative every day this week leading up to Easter, or you can read it all the way through each day, reading from a different Gospel every time. It can be your spiritual practice for the week, giving space for God’s Spirit to move and speak in perhaps unexpected ways. Especially as we remain at home during this strange season of life, separated from most of our daily rhythms, our spiritual rhythms and disciplines are important to keep up with, so that we can be led to streams of water in the midst of our desert exiles and isolations.
Today, on this Palm Sunday, with Jesus’ humble entrance into Jerusalem and the rest of the Passion narrative in mind, I’ll be focusing in on Luke 23:44-49. Hear the Word of the Lord:
“It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!’ And having said this he breathed his last. Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, ‘Certainly this man was innocent!’ And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things.”
It was the sixth hour, or noon, on a Friday and there was a darkness that came and spread over the whole land. Luke tells us that the sun’s light failed on this day, as the tendrils of darkness pierce the light and pull a dark veil over the earth. This was a day when darkness seems to have won out. As Jesus hangs limp on the cross, a weapon of Roman state execution and a mechanism of fear, the crowd who stands by watching must wonder whether the light will ever be seen again. No more than a week ago Jesus had come riding into Jerusalem as the people shouted, “Hosanna!” which means “Save us.” This man, Jesus, who many claimed was directly sent by God was supposed to bring hope to Jerusalem. But this execution that the crowd now witnesses is anything but hopeful. This man was supposed to defeat the Roman system of power and fear, not succumb to it. This man was supposed to bring God’s salvation, a salvation the people had waited centuries for. But now on a crudely made cross, a weapon of state execution, on a hill called the place of the skull, as darkness covers the land and the sun’s light fails, the crowd watches helplessly as Jesus, along with their hope, dies.
It is easy for us, especially those of us who grew up in church, to read this story and not really let ourselves sit in the darkness of the moment because we already know the ending. We know that the cross is not the end of the story, we know resurrection is coming, and so we don’t allow ourselves to inhabit this moment in the story as fully as we could. What must it have been like to stand in the crowd and watch Jesus be murdered on a cross? What if you were one of the disciples or women who followed him, knowing and trusting that he was the Messiah, God’s Son, sent to save Israel, and now here on the cross hangs your hope, your teacher, your friend.
While it may take some effort to imagine ourselves fully in the story, overwhelmed by the darkness of the moment, not many of us need to imagine the scene for long before we start drawing parallels to times in our life when it felt as though darkness had spread over the land, blotting out all light, joy and hope. Maybe it was a death, a divorce, an illness, an accident. We’ve all had these moments when the sun’s light seemed to fail.
We are a people who know something about darkness and currently we are very aware of things that spread across the whole land. In fact, we are currently living through an event that for many people has blotted out the sun and has invited darkness to cover the land. As COVID-19 continues to spread without discrimination and despite our best efforts to contain it, as millions of people are filing for unemployment, as we are isolated from our friends and family, as we sit helplessly at home watching the death toll quickly rise in the US and abroad, as we worry for ourselves or for our loved ones, we can’t help but feel as though darkness is winning out.
In the midst of the darkness of the present moment and the darknesses we experience throughout our time on earth, we often wonder, “Where are you God?” “Why do you let this happen?” “Why don’t you heal, why don’t you redeem this situation?” Suffering and darkness have this ability to stir up questions, doubts and groans of the heart that otherwise remain locked away. Moments like the one Jesus’s followers experienced as they watched their Lord crucified unlock the deepest chambers of the human soul, and we realize how small, how powerless, how afraid we are in the face of darkness that blots out the sun’s light. Suffering and darkness of this kind can paralyze us.
When all we have to do is sit at home and watch news station after news station report on the growing spread of COVID-19. When every conversation we have inevitably turns to the strangeness and anxiety of our present time, we can be left with a sense of paralysis. What can we do? There is little we can do. Where is God? Not here it seems. Perhaps we feel much like Jesus’ acquaintances and the women who had followed him who “stand at a distance watching these things.” All we can do is stand at a distance and watch. Paralyzed. Helpless. Grieving. Afraid. Not sure what to think. Not sure where to turn. Our hope that we thought was hope turns out to be false optimism or forced positivity. In the face of tragic suffering and spreading darkness our false hopes prove to be empty.
After I received my undergraduate degree in theology I thought I knew what hope was. After four years of rigorous theological education and training I could articulate to you what hope was, according to any number of theological traditions. I thought I knew what hope was. And then I unwittingly took a job as a chaplain at a psychiatric hospital. A place that is more prison than hospital. A place that dehumanizes more than it heals. A place where suffering and trauma practically drip down the walls, where delusions are reality and hallucinations cling to the mind like a plague. I thought I knew what hope was, but I was sorely mistaken. As I faced such darkness that threatened to blot out the sun’s light, I found that my trite answers to the problem of pain no longer held up. I found that the hope I had was little more than optimism based on some theology I believed. The kind of suffering I witnessed there left me standing at distance, only able to watch, paralyzed by the shock and fear of what I was witnessing.
And so I went looking for better answers. And search far and wide I did. I’m still searching. But it turns out that our biblical tradition makes no attempts to definitively answer the problem of suffering. Many people will claim otherwise, sure. But if you read scripture with an eye for it, you will realize that it never directs us to figure out why we suffer and why darkness spreads across the land at times like a pandemic. Scripture doesn’t tell us definitively what to think about our suffering—it offers no answers to the problem of pain—but scripture does show us what to do with our suffering. Scripture directs us to lament. And Jesus, as he hangs limp on the cross, takes up this ancient biblical tradition of lament.
In three of the four gospels, Jesus’ final words on the cross are from psalms of lament. In Matthew and Mark Jesus cries out Psalm 22: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani…my God my God, why have you forsaken me?” And here in Luke, Jesus quotes the 31st Psalm, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Psalm 31 is a psalm of lament. It is a cry to God for deliverance.
Now, most of us have never learned the language of lament. It is conspicuously absent from most of our church upbringings. As Americans we do not like to lament. We prefer to solve problems. And the biblical tradition of lament makes no attempt to solve problems. Lament is a cry for help. It is a prayer for deliverance, either for oneself, or on behalf of another. Lament asks questions such as “How long O Lord?” or “Why God?”. Sometimes prayers of lament accuse God for God’s absence in the face of such suffering. But here is what many of us miss because we never grew up with the biblical tradition of lament: lament is always a defiant act of hope.
To lament is to look around at the growing darkness that blots out the light and to allow yourself to be deeply affected by it. To lament is to let your heart break for all the sick, the dying, the unemployed, the families torn apart by this nasty virus. To lament is to take suffering seriously. To look it in the face and allow yourself to mourn because of it. And then, you take the broken pieces of your heart and lift them up to God, saying, “Here, Lord take these pieces and make them whole again. I don’t understand why you’ve left us alone, I don’t understand why such darkness exists, but nevertheless I will cry out to you against the darkness as a defiant act of hope in the One who I know can pierce the darkness.” With Jesus we pray, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Into your hands do I trust the mess of what I see around me. Lament is an act of trust. Lament trusts that God does indeed see our suffering and will do something about it.
N.T Wright, a professor and theologian, published an article in Time Magazine this week titled: “Christianity Offers No Answers About the Coronovirus. It’s Not Supposed To”. In his article he also affirms the reality that the Christian tradition has never tried to offer definitive answers to suffering. It has always turned towards lament. Because even if Christianity could offer the best possible explanation as to why we suffer, an explanation can never help us deal with our pain. An explanation does not have the power to relieve our suffering. That is why during Holy Week we remember that God did not come down to give us answers, to give us explanations. God came to suffer with us, to die with us, to die for us.
Many of you will recognize the name Elie Wiesel. Elie was a Jew born a few years prior to WWII. Elie was only a boy when he was shipped off to a German concentration camp where he was imprisoned and exposed to horrific tragedies. In his memoir, Night, he recalls one such terrible event:
“One day as we returned from work, we saw three gallows, three black ravens, erected on the Applepaltz. Roll call. The SS surrounding us, machine guns aimed at us: the usual ritual. Three prisoners in chains – and, among them, the little [boy], the sad-eyed angel. The SS seem more preoccupied, more worried than usual. To hang a child in front of thousands of onlookers was not a small matter. The head of the camp read the verdict. All eyes were on the child. He was pale, almost calm, but he was biting his lips as he stood in the shadow of the gallows. This time, the Lagerkapo refused to act as an executioner. Three SS took his place. The three condemned prisoners together stepped onto the chairs. In unison, the nooses were placed around their necks. ‘Long live liberty!’ Shouted the two men. But the boy was silent. ‘Where is merciful God, where is He?’ someone behind me was asking. At the signal, the three chairs were tipped over. Total silence in the camp. On the horizon the sun was setting. ‘Caps off!’ Screamed the Lagerälteste. His voice quivered. As for the rest of us, we were weeping. ‘Cover your heads!’ Then came the march past the victims. The two men were no longer alive. Their tongues were hanging out, swollen and bluish. But the third rope was still moving; the child, too light, was still breathing… And so he remained for more than half an hour, lingering between life and death, writhing before our eyes. And we were forced to look at him at close range. He was still alive when I passed him. His tongue was still red, his eyes not yet extinguished. Behind me, I heard the same man asking: ‘For God’s sake, where is God?’ And from within me, I heard a voice answer: ‘Where is he? This is where – hanging here from this gallows…'”
I get chills every time I read this passage. I get chills, not only because my heart quivers at the thought of something so terrible, but because the voice Elie hears from within himself resonates deeply with my soul. Where is God? This is where – hanging from this gallows. Hanging from this cross. Suffering from this illness. Grieving over this death. Fearing this same virus. This is where God is. Suffering and dying alongside us. Suffering and dying for us so that we do not have to do so alone.
Most of the time when we talk about the cross this time of year we talk about how it dealt with our sin. We don’t spend enough time talking about how the cross dealt with our suffering. At the cross we see Jesus, the Word made flesh, suffering and dying. Suffering and death are no longer foreign to God. Suffering, fear, grief and death are taken up in the divine life. They are a part of God. With Jesus’ dying breaths, he laments. He joins his lament to ours, and together God cries out with us: “My God my God why have you forsaken me?”
When we take up the biblical tradition of lament during this time of uncertainty and fear, we can be assured that Jesus’ lament is joined with ours. We do not cry out alone. And we do not cry out without hope. We, like Jesus, trust that resurrection is coming. We trust that redemption and healing are on the horizon. But it was a long and dark three days spent in the tomb. We can’t skip right to hope without first taking suffering seriously. Lament cannot be skipped around or curtailed.
During this strange and anxious time, we must reclaim the biblical tradition of lament. We must not skip over suffering too quickly to get to resurrection. As the gospels bear witness to, human suffering itself is sacred, no matter the content. Because it is in our suffering that God meets us. Human suffering is what compels the Word of God to become flesh, to become incarnate and to dwell among us. God became human, entering into and taking upon himself all the suffering of humanity. As a chaplain at the psych hospital, I slowly realized that I was witness to what breaks the heart of God and to the reason why the Word became flesh–to dwell with us in our suffering. Suffering speaks to God’s greatest desire for our wholeness and it is only from the midst of suffering that hope is born. There is no resurrection without the cross; there is no hope without first taking suffering seriously. There is no hope, no resurrection without first lamenting. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, but what did he do beforehand? He wept.
While many of us are stuck at home, perhaps feeling helpless, maybe a little paralyzed, we can still choose to join our prayers of lament with the One who laments with us and for us. As we allow our hearts to break, as we lift up our prayers, our cries, our tears and our fears, with Jesus we pray: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Because we trust that suffering and death will not get the final word. We trust that the cross is not the final piece to the puzzle. We trust that lament is only a bridge, not the final destination. We trust that Easter morning is coming. Amen.