Good Friday 2023 - Apophatically finding God

Sermon shared on Good Friday 2023 at St Andrew's Methodist Church.

The service was working through the 7 phrases Jesus shared from the cross.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.
 
I wonder which of the words that Jesus uttered on the cross have resonated with you so far, there are more to come of course and they might speak more. For me this is one of the most powerful ones.
Here we see the humanity of Jesus.
They are words from Psalm 22, words Jesus would have known, and yet in this moment this is what he felt. Abandoned and alone, forsaken. Its similar to the image of Jesus in the garden before he was arrested, praying that God would take away the cup. In these moments Jesus’ humanity is obvious. For we need a human saviour as well as a divine one.
Here, Jesus, for possibly the first time ever, feels disconnected from the Father, in the suffering and pain of death and sin.
I’m not one for big theological words usually, but there are two that I think help and if you forget the words but remember the meaning then that’s ok, I often have to look them up to get them the right way around. These are cataphatic, and apophatic.
One – cataphatic is declaring things as they are. We do this a lot, in a prayer of adoration we say who God is. Or from the psalms God is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love, always good to all, compassionate to all of creation. And that is all well and good, when God feels close.
But there are times when we need to seek God in apophatic ways. The things that God is not. In this moment Jesus knew what it was like to feel like God was not there, and yet he still cried out to God. There is hope in Jesus’ proclamation even when the words sound hopeless. Into what feels like a void of being forsaken Jesus shouts to the God who he still hopes can hear.
There are times in our lives when we need to cry out to God and hold onto the things that we know God is not, when we can’t declare who God is.
It’s like when ordering food, I know I rule out the things I don’t like before I work out from a shortlist what is left.
Apophatically, We rule out things that God is not and in those gaps we know that God is.
Here in this moment a truly human Jesus, knew what it was like to feel distant from God, to suffer and be separated by sin. The divinity of God and the brokenness of the world meet in Jesus and at this very moment it is tearing him apart, bringing him to death. So that the divine and the human may once again be reunited.
I don’t know what you carry with you, what are the things that cause you to doubt, or to cry out to God, why have you forsaken me, and there isn’t an easy answer, but we do know that God knows what it is like to feel totally alone, to be abandoned and yet to cry out to our maker for God is not absent, even when it can feel like that. There is hope, for us as there is hope for Jesus.
God did not leave us, God did not abandon us and God did not forsake us.

Further reading on this I highly recommend The Dark Womb by Karen O'Donnell.