(BECKY FROM OFF-STAGE) From the beginning of time my creation was intended for the purpose of relationship. From wood ticks to woodchucks, from swordfish to swordtails, from pineapples to pine trees, from nursing babies to nursing homes I seek the interdependence of all and the desire of all to freely unite with me. Yet in their freedom to pursue their own desires, the very creatures with greatest potential for intimacy are the creatures that so frequently divide with enmity!

And so I entered into their midst, freely submitting to all that unites and divides in order to cultivate rather than coerce my relationship with them. My very identity of all-inclusive love ultimately left me no other path, than this path to a cross. Now their divisive choices threaten to separate me even from myself. Even though there has been suffering from the beginning of existence, when it happens personally, we feel forsaken. I turn outward and encounter the pain of lashes, thorns, nails and spear… I turn inward and encounter the even greater pain of betrayal and hatred from the very ones I am committed to love. And so I can only exclaim with the lament of a psalmist, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

(DAN CONTINUES) During this Lenten season our worship series examines aspects of life depicted by different people that Jesus viewed from the perspective of the cross during the crucifixion: like the Roman soldier and people who cause us pain, or the crowd who add insult to injury, or the disciples that remind us of good friends who are distant, or next week the Marys and those who offer healing. Today is less tangible as we view God from the cross. Within Christian tradition we believe that God was in Christ, therefore Jesus’ feeling of being forsaken was the despair of not only being abandoned by others and by God, but the despair of losing a part of his very identity in the process. In our most painful moments, isn’t that what we feel as well?

Marilee Stevens opened our Worship Committee meeting on Thursday evening with a probing reading from the book Coming Down the Mountain by Thomas Hart. In a segment entitled “Turning Points” he observes, “Life is difficult, and scarcely ever stops challenging us. But there are times when something happens that shakes us up completely, and ends by changing the course of our lives. We say goodbye to a familiar place, and move to another city. We change careers. We are seriously injured or stricken with an illness. Our marriage reaches an impasse. Our parenting days come to an end. We retire. Our world is suddenly upended. These are all deeply challenging events. What they have in common is that one way of life is coming to an end, but the new way of life has not yet been revealed. What used to work will work no longer, but what we are supposed to do now we have no idea. In fact, we wonder if we can carry on at all. There is a crisis of meaning. We feel out of control and afraid.”

At least one company makes a good profit on this pervasive experience of feeling forsaken. Despair, Inc. has cornered the market on pragmatic pessimism. While some companies peddle pithy motivational materials, Despair markets a line of “demotivational” products, all designed to feed the collective pain of the forsaken. Their web site explains, “We believe motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That’s why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!”

Despair, Inc sells a wide array of products like the Pessimist’s Mug – a glass mug with a line in the middle that says, “This cup is half-empty” and black gift envelopes imprinted with a frowning face and an Art of Demotivation guidebook. But the centerpiece of Despair, Inc. is the poster collection – beautiful photos with depressing captions. Here are some of the sentiments that ring all too true:
• A tree bent by the wind, saying: “ADVERSITY: That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.”
• A sand castle being washed away by the tide, and beneath it: “BITTERNESS: Never be afraid to share your dreams with the world, because there’s nothing the world loves more than the taste of really sweet dreams.”
• A purple sunset with the phrase, “DESPAIR: It’s always darkest just before it goes pitch black.”
• A sunken ship, with the message: “MISTAKES: It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.”
• A lightning storm, saying: “PESSIMISM: Every cloud has a silver lining, but lightning kills hundreds of people each year who are trying to find it.”
• A glimmering jewel, with the line: “PRESSURE: It can turn a lump of coal into a flawless diamond, or an average person into a perfect basket case.”
• An agonized tennis player, with the words: “STUPIDITY: Quitters never win, winners never quit, but those who never win AND never quit are idiots.” Finally, a
• A dew covered lawn, saying: “UNDERACHIEVEMENT: The tallest blade of grass is the first to be cut by the lawnmower.”

Despair, Inc. taps into the truth that all of us know and few of us want to admit. And that is, if feeling forsaken was a grim reality for the divine on Good Friday, we humans can certainly fall prey to it most any day of the week. No amount of wealth, no measure of insurance and no low-fat, oat bran-fueled diet can defend us against loneliness, suffering and feeling forsaken. Good or bad, rich or poor, conflict and calamity are just a word, a mistake, an accident or an illness away. While it makes for humorous office art, feeling forsaken can be debilitating – what’s the point of growing, the lawnmower will just cut us all down anyway…

I was at a clergy meeting this past Thursday and sat next to my colleague, Rev. Gloria Roach-Thomas at lunch. We were sharing some of the joys and struggles of our respective ministries. She serves Camphor Memorial United Methodist Church a small, predominantly black congregation in St. Paul. Despite the homogeneity of race, she described the difficulty of trying to build community with such diverse cultural backgrounds between African-Americans and a variety of black African immigrants. Members are distant and guarded one from another and then she went on to describe why this can be the case. Some of the urban poor have been direct targets of discrimination. A Liberian immigrant’s husband was beheaded and his head impaled on a fencepost as a warning to other rebels. Another refugee witnessed her pregnant friend detained by soldiers who placed bets on whether she was carrying a boy or a girl. The soldiers then chopped her open with a machete, yanked the tiny child from her belly, gleefully exchanged money and cast them both in the ditch to die. Gloria reflected, “How can I teach them to reach out to others, when this is what they have experienced at the hands of others?”

Then Gloria described a turning point in one forsaken life. A newcomer to her congregation, a 33-year-old singled mother with six children started attending church last fall during the annual pledge drive. She came by herself and sat by herself. After a couple Sundays the young woman stopped Rev. Thomas and asked what “that word was she kept using…that s-t-e-w-a-r-d…s-h-i-p word”? Gloria explained that it’s what we give of ourselves and of what we have, out of gratefulness for all that God has given us. The woman listened quizzically, but intently and then about a month later toward the end of November, Gloria received a phone call from this young mother of six. She said, “Pastor, I’ve been getting better using my food stamps and I’ve got a few saved up, so I’m going to take care of another family for Thanksgiving Dinner. Is that stewardship?”

As far as I’m concerned that’s stewardship and fellowship and worship and discipleship and just about every other kind of ship you can think of because in the midst of feeling forsaken, it keeps us afloat by centering on a purpose above and beyond ourselves. Our crucifixion story for today from the gospel of Mark is often read too narrowly, as if it were just one single, isolated, physical event that happened to someone else long ago. Truth is that in our living, we are also dying in some way or other. The cross assures us that there can be meaning and purpose even when feeling forsaken. It’s been said, “What God whispers to us in our pleasure, God shouts to us in our pain.” And what God is shouting is “Here I am!” The answer to the pain of feeling forsaken is often not an answer to the question of “Why is this happening to me?” but an answer to the question, “Who is with me?” May we receive the assurance of God’s presence and re-present God to others in distress!

March 18, 2007 Old Testament: Psalm 32. Gospel Reading: Mark 15:33-39