Abandonment

ABANDONMENT

The years 1996 and 1997 mark the darkest time of my life. They were also the loneliest time of my life.

At the beginning of the year, my late wife, Mary, had developed a nasty cough which kept us awake at night. In the April, I decided to take her to Cyprus for a few days’ break in the sun, hoping that her health would pick up.

But it did not. Within a few days of returning we found ourselves at the doctor's surgery. After a rather inconclusive consultation, Mary asked whether an X-ray might prove helpful. The doctor casually agreed, and so the next six weeks were spent at various hospitals for X-rays and blood tests, amidst cancelled appointments and lost results, until at last I blew my top in frustration.

Eventually, after considerable pressure, the diagnosis was made. Cancer. Cancer of both lungs, the pelvis, the spine and the rib cage. It was inoperable and Mary was given a few months to live.

Fortunately, I was able to get her admitted to the Royal Marsden Hospital in London within a few days where all the previous X-rays and tests, which had taken so long, were repeated within a couple of days with the same diagnosis. Although the results were the same we felt more confident.

A course of chemotherapy was commenced, augmented with radiotherapy. We both knew the treatment could not cure the cancer, but it could improve the quality of life and make the suffering more bearable. And initially it did. After a final tour around the UK visiting friends, in between treatment, I wheeled her around the Holy Land in the December, which had been a dream of hers for some time.

However, after Christmas she grew steadily weaker and spent more and more time in hospital in London. Finally, at her request I brought her home after Easter and in May 1997, after much suffering, she passed peacefully away.

And then nothing.

I suddenly found myself alone for the first time in my life. Alone in the lounge looking at her empty armchair. Alone in the bedroom with the other half of the bed empty. Alone in the kitchen, as I learned how to cook, to wash and to iron for myself.

No more visits from the Bishop or Archdeacon. No more visits from friends. No more visits from parishioners. Each day the sense of aloneness grew stronger as I found myself looking into the darkness of the unknown future.

And in some of those darkest moments, I have to admit, l felt that even God had abandoned me, and I found those words of the psalmist falling spontaneously from my lips, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’

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The Christian apologist, C S Lewis writes of similar experience when his wife Joy died from cancer, which is so movingly told in the film and play called Shadowlands.

He writes in A Grief Observed:

'Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing him, so happy that you are tempted to feel his claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to him with gratitude and praise, you will be – so it feels - welcomed with open arms. But go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away, the longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence becomes. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is he so present a commander in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?’

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Jesus himself had a similar experience of feeling abandoned by God as he hung dying upon the cross.

This is how St Mark describes the experience:

'It was nine o'clock in the morning when they crucified him. The inscription of the charge against him read "The King of the Jews". And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, "Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying: "He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"’ [St Mark 15.25-34]

Various attempts have been made to explain the 'darkness', such as an eclipse of the sun, or even a sand storm. Although it is difficult to know what exactly happened, I think we would all agree that it is at times of darkness that we are most conscious of being alone. That is why we often fear losing our eyesight since it cuts us off from the world around us.

And Jesus was no exception, as he hung dying upon the cross.

Where are the crowds, who only a few days earlier had welcomed him into Jerusalem, crying out aloud 'Hosanna' as they cut down branches of palm and placed them on the road before him?

Where are the five thousand whom he had once fed upon the hillside? Where are all those whom he had healed? Where are the disciples, who had been his constant companions for the past three years? Where is that inner circle of Peter, James and John? And where is the one who had earlier pledged his undying loyalty to Jesus?

Above all, where is God?

So Jesus hangs upon the cross, rejected. A rejection expressed physically by society, by being crucified, on a rubbish heap, 'outside the city wall’, where the scavenging dogs could feed upon the dead corpses that littered the area.

In his semi-conscious state, Jesus calls to mind the opening words of Psalm 22 to express his innermost feeling of abandonment, even by God. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

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The psalter has been described as the 'Hymn Book of the Second Temple’ where it was used in public worship. It was also used regularly in synagogue worship. Hence, both Jesus and his disciples would have been very familiar with the words of the psalms, as you and I are very familiar with the words of hymns which we sing in worship Sunday by Sunday.

It was natural, therefore, that the early Jewish Christians would also have used the psalms in their worship, which eventually led to Christians generally employing them in their worship.

The monastic life, founded by St Antony of Egypt in the third century and developed by St Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century, used the psalms in their regular pattern of daily worship. The whole psalter of 150 psalms was recited each week during the seven monastic offices.

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The darkness of abandonment, following the death of my late wife, began to dissipate with passage of time and the breaking of a new dawn. Sometime later I met Joyce and the rest, as they say, is history. And the death of Jesus was followed by his resurrection from the dead.

This sense of abandonment by God comes to all of us, sooner or later in the spiritual life. We pray, but no one appears to be listening. We read our Bibles but we are quickly bored. We share in Christian fellowship but it leaves us feeling empty. We are present at the Eucharist but we have no sense of the presence of God in the sacrament.

Thus come those moments of darkness when we cannot see and, in our solitude, we feel abandoned by God. We shake our fist in disappointment and anger, and cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

But, my friends, he does not forsake us. He is there in the darkness, though we may not see him. We may forsake him, but it is in such moments that our faith is tested. We are being invited to live by faith rather than by sight. And from such experiences we can emerge stronger than before, just as Jesus emerged from his wilderness experience a stronger person than before.

[Recite, antiphonally psalm 22.]

'Abide with us, O lord, for it is toward evening and the day is far spent.

Abide with us and with thy whole church.

Abide with us in the end of the day, in the end of life, in the end of the world.

Abide with us in thy grace and bounty, with thy Holy Word and sacrament, with thy comfort and blessing.

Abide with us when cometh the night of affliction and fear, the night of doubt and temptation, the night of bitter death.

Abide with us and with all thy faithful ones, O Lord, in time and eternity. Amen'

God does not forsake us. We, alas, often forsake him and, in our anxiety and worry at the time, we turn our backs upon him and ignore him. But he remains faithful.