He Knows What You're Going Through: The Cross and the Suffering God

Church, I need to tell you something about our God. Our God is not a distant God. Our God is not a God who watches suffering from a safe distance. Our God is a God who got on the cross. A God who felt the nails. A God who tasted the vinegar. A God who knows — from the inside — what it feels like to be rejected, humiliated, beaten, and left to die. Isaiah says: "He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain." Familiar with pain. Not theoretically familiar. Personally familiar. The kind of familiarity that comes from living through it. The Black Church has always understood this about the cross in a way that perhaps no other tradition has. Because our people have been on the cross. We know what it feels like to be falsely accused. We know what it feels like to be beaten by the state. We know what it feels like to cry out and hear no answer. We know what it feels like to be despised and rejected and held in low esteem. And because we know, we recognize Jesus on that cross. He is not a stranger to us. He is one of us. He is the God who said: "I will not watch your suffering from heaven. I will enter it. I will feel every blow. I will carry every burden. I will drink every bitter cup. And I will do it so that when you suffer, you will know — you will know in your bones — that your God has been there first."

In the Black Church, Good Friday is often observed through the "Seven Last Words of Christ" — a service where seven ministers each take one of Jesus' final statements from the cross. This tradition recognizes that the dying Christ was still preaching — still teaching — still ministering — even as He died. "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." He forgave the people who were killing Him. Church, if Jesus could forgive from the cross, we can forgive from our living rooms. "Today you will be with me in paradise." He saved a thief while dying. The ministry did not stop because the pain started. "Woman, behold your son." He took care of His mother. Even on the cross, He was a caretaker. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He felt abandonment. The Black Church understands this cry. We have prayed it in slave quarters and prison cells and hospital rooms. "I thirst." He was fully human. He needed water and there was none. The incarnation means God knows what it feels like to need something and not have it. "It is finished." The work is complete. The debt is paid. The cross has accomplished what it was meant to accomplish. "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." Even in death, He trusted the Father. That is the model for us: when we cannot hold on anymore, we commit our spirits into God's hands.

"By his wounds we are healed." But notice: the healing comes through the wounds, not instead of them. The cross does not promise an escape from suffering. It promises a God who suffers with us. This is why the Black Church has survived. Not because we had power. Not because we had privilege. But because we had a God who knew what we were going through. When the slaveholder's whip fell, we knew: Jesus felt the whip too. When the jail cell door closed, we knew: Jesus was a prisoner too. When the system said "guilty" and we were innocent, we knew: Jesus got that verdict too. The cross is not an abstraction for us. It is our testimony. We have carried it. We have been nailed to it. And we have discovered what Paul discovered: the power of God is made perfect in weakness. So tonight, we do not celebrate. We remember. We remember what it cost. We remember who bore it. We remember that the God who hung on that cross hangs with every person who suffers unjustly tonight — in every prison, every poverty, every system that crushes the poor. And we remember that Friday is not the end. Trouble comes on Friday. But joy — joy! — comes on Sunday morning. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? We were there. We are still there. And so is He.