What can be said?

When innocents around the world suffer and die. We used to hear of their experiences, now we hear their names and watch their faces. We have become quite intimate with the faces of death in our modern times.

What can be said?

When God tests Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his only son Isaac. Abraham, who had waited so long for a son, what every Semitic father wants, and then is asked to do what?

Sacrifice your son, bind his hands and feet, look into his terrified eyes, this your beloved, and tell him it is all for the best. Raise his bound, petrified body up on the altar, what you would normally use for sheep or doves. Sharpen the knife that you will plunge deeply into his body, reassuring him as you look into his face that God surely has a plan. Settle his body on top of the wood that you will use to consume his precious body so that only charred ashes remain, still reassuring him that this is what God has commanded.

What can be said?

Abraham, his heart throbbing like a steam engine pumping water, raises the knife high above the only son his has ever known, with his son trusting the only father he has ever known. The knife glistens as he raises it high, and the angel calls out, “Abraham, Abraham, do not lay your hand on the boy!” and so the boy is saved, to be replaced by ram. Joy spreads across Abraham's still perplexed face.

What can be said?

When the Psalmist, closer than anyone to God but perhaps the son of God, questions by asking, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?”

Are we to make excuses for God? Gone on spring break perhaps, not up to the job, indifferent to the suffering of those he has said he loves, or simply irrelevant. The perennial human question, asked by Isaac and every watcher of CNN.

We turn to the Psalms for reassurance in a world such as this and we hear what? “Oh my God I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but find no rest.” What would the face of the Psalmist been like as he wrote these words?

What can be said to those who doubt there is a God or that he is taking care of his beloveds, as he has promised.

What can be said when the son of David pours out his heart on the altar of suffering, saying, “I am poured out like water… my heart is like wax. You lay me in the dust of death.”

What can be said?

When the children of the promises made so long ago have struggled for so many centuries to have the home promised by God and the promises seem to be shattered by the sight of the children of David picking up body parts sliced off in acts of despicable desperation. Where is this God of promise and why must we lie in the dust of death century after century?

We say with the writer of Hebews that we have come to do God’s will. Our intentions are good, our hearts open to the Spirit, and we hear that in “sacrifice there is reminder of sin year after year.” How many years must the ongoing sacrifice of the children of God continue?

What can be said?

When the writer of Hebrews observes that “every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins,” how do we respond? Have all our sacrifices over seven generations at this altar been in vain, a little sideshow that the world can safely ignore?

What can be said when we read that the Messiah, the one who supposed to set it all straight, gets brought up on third-rate charges by a petty tyrant? This is not supposed to be the way it goes.

How do we respond to a crown of thorns upon the most innocent head of all? Could we look at his face without weeping uncontrollably? Why does innocence generate suffering? I thought suffering was for those who misbehave, those who hate, and those who steal away the souls of children, making them into those who murder and dance on the graves of the innocent.

What do we say to the Holy Innocent who will not defend himself in the face of outrageously false charges? Can’t someone urge the teacher, Master of words for difficult situations, to fashion a defense?

What can be said?

How can the Son of God be murdered in the place they called the “Place of the Skull”? Is this what God had in mind when he created the heavens and the earth? Where’s the blueprint that called for such an outrage? Is God this incompetent?

How do we explain to a weeping Mary that God has allowed this for her first-born? Could we look her in her face and calmly reassure her? What words of explanation, what history, what sociology, what criminology would allow us to skate past the face of Jesus groaning, convulsing in pain? What words could comfort Mary, daughter of Abraham, that everything will be all right? Will the angel appear at the last moment so that the dagger doesn’t do its despicable work? If God intervenes for Isaac, the son of Abraham, why not for Jesus, Son of God?

What do we say when the Son of Man asks for drink while writhing in pain and he is offered a sponge with sour wine? Could there be not even one simple moment of humanity in this most inhuman of acts?

What can be said?

“I am thirsy,” “It is finished”? That’s it? No words maintaining the justice God? No appeal to Isaiah or Jeremiah? We look to his face for wisdom, for strength, for reassurance and we see what? The savagery of unjust execution.

Oh Son of God, what can the silence of your dying face possibly teach us?