Where are you, God?

Don’t you see?

Can’t you hear?

There is so much suffering, injustice, oppression.  

It’s happening the world over. There is war, genocide, and destruction running rampant through the streets. Here, in my own country, there is upheaval and turmoil as racist, capitalistic, patriarchal people throw the country into utter chaos.

And no one is stopping it all.

Where are you?

Where are you when black bodies are lynched in our streets by police officers?

Where are you when ICE is deporting people based on the color of their skin?

Where are you when a handful of men hold more wealth than ninety-nine percent of the world, devastating the rest of us with their greed and hording?

Where are you when trans people are having health care denied them and are unsafe to even use a bathroom in public?

Where are you when queer people are legislated against, threatening jobs, homes, and their very lives?

Where are you when women are forced into life-threatening pregnancies with no hope of reproductive care?

This isn’t even an exhaustive list; this is just the surface. Bigotry, white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism are ruling the United States, and much of the Cristian church is not only going along with it but actively supporting it all.

Aren’t you upset?

Sad?

Mad?

Your people are telling the world that empathy is a sin, that white supremacy is an ok practice, that patriarchy is the way you want the world to work, and that capitalism is great because we are supposed to get rich at the expense of our values and morals and neighbors.

Where are you?

Since you won’t find us, where can we find you?

Where can we go to meet with you, to demand an account for your absence, your hiddenness while all this shit keeps getting worse and worse?

Where are you?

Speak up. Don’t be shy. We want to know your location so we can come and protest before your throne, demanding direct action, movement, liberation. We’re tired of this game of hide and seek, this game of “where’s God?” You have remained hidden, mysterious, and unknown for too long.

It’s time for a reckoning.

I get it. You’re transcendent. You’re above all existence, not bound by time and space. But does that mean you’re aloof? Does all that mean you’re a hands-off God that refuses to intervene in the pain of the creation you called into being?

I speak out of frustration, out of sorrow, out of faithful grief. I lament because this whole system is fucked and you seem to be so far away, uncaring, unmoving.

I don’t know where to find you. I don’t know where to look. I don’t know where to go. I’m lost and yet you remain so quiet, so hidden, so unknown. What the hell am I supposed to do here? What can I do? I feel so powerless, so empty, so broken. This system has broken me, and I don’t know how to take another step forward. If me with all my privilege can’t seem to find the energy and will to keep going, I can only imagine how black people and other POC feel, how queer people feel, how women feel. We are worn down and in need of your hand, your intervention, your salvation.

I come to the cross, to that seat of glory, and I bring all these burdens. All my anger. All my hurt. All my sadness, by suffering, my helplessness in the face of oppression. I bring it all because you tell me that on the cross you took all this sin on yourself. I don’t understand how, but I bring it anyway.

What do I see at this cross? What do I see here, where my lord was lynched?

I see God made man, suffering, becoming one of us here in the shit, the mud, the mire. I see a God who is oppressed, who is tortured and killed by the state, betrayed by a close friend, rejected by the very people he came to liberate.

I hear the cry of the forsaken, “My God, my God! Why have you given up and left me?”

This is the God I see here at the cross.

I lift my voice and join in that song of lament coming from the ragged throat of Jesus, of God made flesh.

My God.

My God.

Why have you forsaken us?

Where are you?

In the bodies of the poor, the hurting, the suffering. In the midst of the oppression. IN crushed bodies and tormented souls. In the cages that hold the prisoners. Here, on the outskirts in the marginalized.

This is where you are because it is here that you were crucified on Calvary, and here you are crucified again and again in the United States.

We are your image, you person, your revelation. You came to be like us so that one day we could be like you. That is the destiny of humanity: to share in the nature of God. So you share in our nature. In the image of God, we find you, in the humanity we find you. But we don’t see humanity in seats of power in the systems of suffering and oppression. Power dehumanizes and transfigures us away from our humanity.

But suffering shows what humanity truly is because in suffering there is nowhere to hide. There is no illusion of control of power over others. There is nothing but ourselves, crying out with Jesus’ voice to be saved.

Here, where the body is broken, is where you come and say, “this is my body, broken for you. This is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

When we lament with you, O Christ, we become that broken bread and spilled wine for the sake of others because in your lament we see who the hidden God is.

If we let the lament of God reshape us, maybe we can see where you are, and that you are here, in our midst, working, remaining, loving and liberating from the systems that oppress, crush, and kill.

So, what do we, the lamenting church, do? How do we join you in the work of witnessing to the reality of your kingdom in our midst, that the way the world is right now isn’t how it’s supposed to me, and the truth that you, the suffering God, are in the margins?

We listen. The marginalized voice in their lament is our north star towards finding where you are in the world. We listen and center the voices that society considers unimportant and unworthy of its time. The suffering, the oppressed, the pushed out and trampled upon.

We budget. We divest from our interests in the empire. We spend our money not on tokens of power and gathering wealth. Instead, we spend it on loving our neighbor, on hospitality, on care and concern. We spend it in ways that don’t give us a ROI. We spend it on the needs of the people in your image.

We become a sanctuary. Those under the boot of oppression need safety, and as much as we can, we need to offer that. We need to listen to those who are honoring your image in abolitionist and mutual aid movements and help them create safe spaces for those in need of security. Sanctuary is not charity; it’s reverence for your presence.

We worship as an act of protest. We decenter the empire and instead center you, the crucified God. We bring our lament into our liturgies. We proclaim the good news that you are found in the lynched, the evicted, the hungry. If our worship isn’t disturbing the status quo, maybe we aren’t worshiping you.

Hear our laments, O God. See our pain. Be here with us. Let us see you where oppression happens and where suffering scourges. Give us eyes to see you broken in the margins and ears to hear your laments joining with our own. Break the bonds of injustice and let us be the tools of liberation in your hand.

You are the crucified one, the suffering God. Help us see the suffering, the marginalized, the oppressed so that we can see you, hear you calling us to the margins, where we can experience mutual love and freedom from the imperialistic thinking, value system, and control.

Help us become ungovernable to anyone or anything but you.

Where are you, God?

You, you are here.