Do not Weep for Me…
In his gospel, Luke tells us that as Jesus was on the way to Golgotha, a number of women followed Jesus mourning and wailing for him. Remarkably, he turns to them, saying “do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children” (Lk. 23.28). I find it amazing that as Jesus experiences the greatest amount of pain in his life and indeed in the entire existence of the world, he turns and tells people to not focus on his pain, but rather on their own. For many of us, thinking about our own pain seems to be one of the last things we want to do. For others of us, we can’t even think about our pain because it is so far buried that it is beyond our cognizance. For others, we spend so much time giving to others, helping, serving and ministering to those whom to us seem in dire need, that we have emptied our reservoir of time or emotional energy to consider our own pain. Yet, in the moment of his anguish, at the time when he faced death and separation from his Father, he calls attention to the plight of human suffering – the universal experience of every human being. We spend so much time, energy and anxiety denying, avoiding, suppressing, overlooking and dismissing our pain, yet Jesus seems to find it important in the hour of his death.
The liturgical tradition of the church maintains this undesired nuance of the Good Friday story. It is traditional that following a reading from Isaiah 53 (the suffering servant) or Genesis 22 (Abraham offering Isaac), Psalm 22 is said or sung by the congregation. This psalm, with its opening line “My God, my God why have you forsaken me” is obviously connected to Jesus’ suffering due to his own voicing of these words while hanging on the cross. However, ironically, though alluding to the suffering of the Messiah, the psalm is said by every congregant in the first person. Each person voices to God, “why have you forsaken me.” While of course recalling Jesus’ sufferings, one personally recounts to God and is therein confronted with the anguish, god-forsakenness, confusion and despair of their own existence. This inclusion of the first-person recitation of Psalm 22 prevents us from moving through Good Friday mourning solely for the sufferings of Jesus. “Do not weep for me; weep for yourselves…” In order for Good Friday to mean anything, we must mourn our own pain, we must grieve our own god-forsakenness. We must discover how the words of Psalm 22 are not simply Jesus’ words, but are in fact our own. Indeed, in the chronology of humanity, these words of god-forsakeness were our own lips long before they were on the lips of Jesus. They were words of the universal human plight that Jesus, in his passion, identified with, entered into and experienced fully.
“Do not weep for me; weep for yourselves…” This perspective is crucial for understanding the significance of Jesus’ death. On the cross, he not only paid the penalty for sin, but “surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows...upon him was the chastisement that brought our wholeness and with his stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:4-5). Without griefs and sorrows that are woefully significant, without brokenness that requires wholeness, without wounds that need healing, Jesus death flies high into an abstract world of economic exchanges for the price of sin, far from the aching place within us so desperately needing his presence. On the cross, Jesus drew near to us in our pain and fellowshipped with us in our suffering and continues to extend his wounded hands to embrace us in our brokenness. He knows us, in our pain. He understands us, in our brokenness. He is near us, in our sorrow. He feels together with us, in the place we feel abandoned by all, including even God. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:15-16).
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