Biography
Dr. Bruce Thielemann served for ten years as Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Religion at Grove City College in Pennsylvania before accepting his present position as Senior Minister of First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh. Recently, he was the recipient of Pittsburgh's Man of the Year in Religion Award and in 1988 will travel to Australia to participate in their bi-centennial. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"The Cry of Mystery" 
The cathedral in Dijon, France is not architecturally distinguished. But there is one thing unusual in it. There is a sculpture of an angel, and the angel holds in one hand a pen and in the other a tablet, and the angle of his face is toward the pulpit. It is obvious that he is taking notes on what is being said from that holy desk.

I want you to know that I hope there is no angel taking note of what I'm going to share with you in the next few minutes. That is because I want to search out with you the meaning of Jesus' fourth word from the cross - "My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?'' This is a cry of profound mystery.

When I was in seminary, 30 years ago, I made a list of 8 texts on which I promised myself I would not preach until I had been in the ministry for at least 25 years. Now, after 30 years, I approach this text for the first time. The word of Scripture that rings in my mind as I approach it is that word, "Sir, the well is deep and you have nothing with which to draw."

What makes this word so difficult to comprehend is its position in the Calvary experience of our Lord. Jesus was crucified about the third hour. That's 9 AM. And in the course of one hour, he spoke three times, but then he fell into a deep silence and that silence continued for five hours. And it was only at the end of the fifth hour, that is at the ninth hour, or 3:00 in the afternoon, that Jesus spoke this word. "My God, my God, why?"

Now there is no question that what went through his mind in that five hours influenced what he said immediately at its conclusion. So if we are to understand these words, we have to try to penetrate silence. And that's a very hard thing to do.

One thing we can notice immediately, of course, is that Jesus was suffering very great physical pain and this, no doubt, impacted upon him. Pain, you see, has a way of capturing and isolating and separating people.

Ten years ago, when I had heart surgery, I discovered that it's very important to keep the lungs clear following surgery. Medicine has three techniques they use to do this. First, they have you breathe salinated air, it smells very much like the air at the seashore. Then they have a nurse come and beat a gentle rhythm on your back to loosen any material that has accumulated on your lungs.

Both of those experiences are easy, not at all unpleasant. But, then they ask you to cough. Now, when your breast bone has been split from top to bottom and wired back together again, and when you have been tied up just like a turkey looks on Thanksgiving afternoon, the last thing you want to do is to move your chest. They say to you, "Now it's time for our coughing." You know it's not our coughing, it's your coughing. You know that no one else in the room knows the pain that you are experiencing. Pain, you see, cuts you off from other people. Now the pain that comes after heart surgery, of course, is nothing like the pain that Jesus felt on the cross. But it does point to the separating power that is in pain. This must have impacted upon Jesus in those five hours of silence.

He had, however, not only physical pain, but mental pain as well. For you see, he loved his Father very much and what was happening there was a terrible affront against God. And being jealous for his Father, he could not have but resented this.

You know, it is interesting to observe that the sign that was nailed over his head "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews" was in three languages. It was in Latin and in Hebrew and in Greek. Now Latin was the language of the Romans, and the Romans had built the finest system of jurisprudence that the world had ever known. That was the pinnacle of the law as it was best understood in those days and here was this supreme expression of law being used to slay an innocent man.

Hebrew was the language of faith, for the Jews, the chosen people of God, had come closer to God in faith than any other people. And here were the leaders of the Jews crying out, "His blood be on us and on our children," a profanation of the religion which was theirs.

And then there was the sign in Greek. Greek was the language of culture and sophistication. The greatest poetry, the finest sculpture, the noblest architecture - all of it came from Greece. Those who were there on Calvary, the leaders amongst the Romans or the Jews, would have understood Greek civilization as the highest civilization. And yet, we find that civilization participating in the murder of an altogether innocent man and an insult against God.

I think this must have revolted Jesus in a way that we can hardly imagine. And that must have impacted on him in those five hours of silence. He saw here the extent of human perversity.

But there is more to it even than that, for Jesus also experienced during this five hours, I believe, the intent of evil. That is, I think he saw the awfulness of sin-in a way that even he had never seen it before. We talk very casually about sin. We put up a movie advertisement which says, "She lived a life of sin," that's supposed to draw people into the theater. We joke about it. But sin is the great crippler, sin is the great killer, sin is the great destroyer of human kind. The fact of the matter is that all of us know in our own hearts that we are not what we could be and we are not what we should be. And we also know that this is true of those whom we love most. And all of this, you see, is sin.

And there are no little sins. The reason there are no little sins is because there are no little Gods to sin against. Every sin is an assault upon the sovereignty of God and Jesus must have seen this. After all, what happened there on that hill that day was the worst thing that ever happened in history. It was-so terrible that even the sun hid its face from sight.

I often think of that golden cup which they show you in the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul. In the bowl of the cup there is sculpted a golden serpent and it's head is thrown back - it has ruby eyes - and its menacing fangs are revealed. Now, when the cup is full of wine you can't see this, but as you begin to drink from the cup, suddenly there rises up above the surface of the wine this gleaming head, gleaming eyes and menacing fangs. I think Jesus in those five hours saw the menacing intent of evil in a deeper way than he had ever known it before.

But we are still not done for there was more to it even than this. I think, and I hope no angel is taking notes about this, I think he experienced the consequences of sin that day. Now, Jesus himself was without sin. Jesus never had to taste the bitter fruit of sin because he never sinned. But now, on the cross, when he is dying for the sake of all humankind, I think he tasted that fruit, not because of his own sin, but because of the sin of others. He ate, bit deeply, into that which was unbelievably awful.

Victor Hugo in his great novel, The Toilers of the Sea, has an evil sea captain whose name is Clubin. Clubin deliberately runs his ship onto a sandbar and then, appearing very virtuous, he gathers the passengers together with the small crew, and loads them all on to a life boat. He tells them to row in a certain direction where in two days another ship will pass so that they will be rescued. He nobly says that he will stay and go down with the ship.

But, as soon as they are out of sight, he goes down into the safe of the ship and takes all of the gold, the jewels, and the money left behind by these people. Loading it on to himself, he then plans to leap off the ship and swim in the other direction to an isthmus which is not very far away, where he knows he will be certainly rescued. Jumping from the side of the ship, he cuts through the surface of the sea, touches bottom and begins to push up toward the surface when something clutches him. It's a great devil fish -an octopus - and it begins to wrap it's steel-like tentacles about him. He tears one loose only to be gripped at another point and he tears that one loose only to be gripped somewhere else. And in the clutches of that thing, he dies. What I'm suggesting is that, while Jesus didn't sin, there on the cross, in that hour, he felt the grip of the coils of evil so that it held him tight and fast. For five hours he thought about all of this.

I don't know any of this for sure that's the reason I want no angels to be taking notes - but I am at least certain of this: Those five hours of silence were the crucifixion within the crucifixion, and during those moments Jesus descended to a depth beyond anything he had ever known before until suddenly there erupted from his lips the words, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

What do those words mean? Well, interestingly enough, they are not an expression of defeat. They are, rather, an expression of faith and of confidence in ultimate victory and success. You see, those words are the opening words of the 22nd Psalm. And that Psalm is one of the most remarkable predictions in all of the Old Testament. Some say, in fact, that it is the most precise of all of the Old Testament predictions.

There in that Psalm what happened to Jesus is described in the most vivid terms. Things like, "He saved others, let him come down from the cross." Exactly that word was said of Jesus and here it is said in the Psalm. It says in the Psalm, "They proceeded to cast lots for my vesture," and that's exactly what they did to him, there on that ugly hill. The Psalm says, "They pierced my hands and my feet, " and Jesus was nailed to the cross. The Psalm says, "My tongue cleaves to my jaw," and later Jesus was to say from the cross, "I thirst." Jesus recognized that what was said in this Psalm applied in precise detail to what was happening to him.

That Psalm was important to him and to every other Jewish young man of that period because that was the Psalm that every Jewish boy learned in Synagogue School to rely upon in tines of despair. When the Jew found himself in heartbreaking circumstances, in deep or profound loss or intense loneliness, in tines of real desperation, this was the Psalm that the devout Jew remembered and prayed. Because, you see, it starts out with a grim picture but ends with a mighty affirmation of faith. It concludes, "I will declare thy name, O Lord, for thou hast not despised me, thou hast not hidden thy face from me. All the ends of the earth shall worship thee." The Psalm begins at a low point, but it ends with an affirmation of faith. So when Jesus quotes this Psalm he is saying to all who can hear that though he is in the midst of this extremity, he knows that, ultimately, victory is his.

It was only necessary for him to say the first words of the Psalm. If I say to you, "Four score and seven years ago... 11 1 don't have to recite the rest of the Gettysburg Address - you get the picture. So, in that day, all he had to do was to say, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" and any who knew that Psalm would immediately understand. And the reason that Jesus does not go on to quote the Psalm is that death by crucifixion is death by suffocation. Jesus was losing the breath with which to speak.

That's the reason, in the whole time he was on the cross, Jesus only uttered seven words, and you can repeat them all in less than 30 seconds - every word cost him dearly. So he recites just the first words of the Psalm, but thus brings to the minds of all those who will listen and understand that he knows that, even in the midst of what he is going through, his confidence in God was absolutely assured. God was with him in the darkness.

If you go to the National Art Museum in London, at least this was so a few years ago, and I assume that it is still there, there is a representation of the crucifixion which is quite unique. The picture is painted in such dark colors that you really have to stand before it and study it intently to begin to see Jesus on the cross. Dark clouds are gathered about the scene and his form is hard to discern. If you stand there and look at the picture longer and do not allow your gaze to falter, you see behind the cross the countenance of God himself and there is great suffering on his face and his arms are extended supporting the weight of his son. You see, that's the great mystery of the cross - that God, by the Holy Spirit, could be present in Jesus in that moment and that even at the time when he felt most separated he knew - and there is a difference between feeling and knowing - that he was with his father and that his father was with him.

There was a woman once who went to a doctor and the doctor said to her, "Which one of your five children do you love the most?"

She said, "I love them all the same."

He said, "Psychologists have demonstrated that you cannot love five different personalities all identically so which one of the five do you love the most?"

"Well," she said, "if one of them is sick, I love that one the most. If one of them is lost, I love that one the most. If one of them is confused, I love that one the most. If one of them has been bad - I don't mean naughty, but really bad - I love that one the most. But under all other circumstances, I love them all the same."

And the doctor said to her, "You love as God loves."

You see the fact of the matter is that God loves us all beyond our imagining, but when someone is in a time of deep pain, of hurt, of heartbreak, of loneliness and despair, that's the one who experiences God's love in a particularly meaningful and powerful way.

I do not know how things are going in your life and I cannot explain to you all the mysteries of that five hours on the cross or these words of Jesus which are the force in our thinking now. But I can say this out of my heart, and know that it is true from my own experience and the testimony of many others, that at the time when you feel the apparent absence of God he is closest to you.

So, if the storm is high right now, and the seas of your life are wind-whipped and lashed, if your decks are awash and you feel like you are going under, know that at this time God's love is especially available to you. In the last analysis, what this word of Jesus says to us is this: While it is right to pray, "Our Father which art in Heaven," it is just as right to pray, "Our Father, which art in Hell."