My God, My God: Abandoned in Translation – a Tale of Two Songs

"My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"  This cry is perhaps the most heart-wrenching part of the crucifixion of Jesus. “Where is his God now”, an observer taunted; “why doesn’t his God come and save him?”

I had unwittingly set myself up for a display of grief at a French border town a few years ago. Andrea Bocelli, a popular Italian tenor, had recorded a song, "Con Te Partiro", translated misleadingly as “Time to Say Goodbye”; the lyrics in English played in my head, focusing on the separation as people part. I was with Kathy, saying goodbye to our son as he dropped us at a not-yet-open station where we would rent a car and be on our way into France, and then back home. We see him only once or twice a year, his work as a car designer holding him in Europe for a dozen years now; parting is always hard on us. We had spent a week with him in the intimacy of his little apartment in Barcelona, reminding me of camping trips that we had enjoyed with our small kids, bunched into a little tent together. As he came around the car to embrace me, I began to sob HARD. Until this morning, I had not understood the violence of that weeping. This morning I know. I felt abandoned. Bocelli’s singing the English translation had misled me to focus on separation in this parting, while the true Italian lyrics console the listener with the deepest truth, that when we part, our son remains with me, that all I do I do with him, because he is part of me.

Like “Time to Say Goodbye”, this statement of Jesus on the cross is interpreted as abandonment, hiding a deeper meaning that is lost in translation. “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me” is the first line of Psalm 22, a song sung with lyre that eventually resolves to its truth in a later line: “For God has not spurned or disdained the misery of this poor wretch, did not turn away from me, but heard me when I cried out.”  There on the cross, Jesus wept the first line of that Psalm, that song that he knew in his heart in its entirety. Consider that as a way of Entering this Good Story, this unfortunately hidden Good News, as hidden as the real meaning of that song that was going through my head that morning in Collieure. The deepest truth about my relationship with our son is that I hold him within, that I see life with him, here inside. And the deepest truth for Jesus - and for us - is the song that is insinuated in our hearts.

God never turns away. We are never lost…despite poor translation and words removed from the context that give them true meaning.

Please read the part of the Passion (click here for a link) where Jesus says these words. Then read Psalm 22 (click here for a link).  Finally, please listen at least once to “Con Te Partiro” with the real translation, the truth of love never broken, hearts never parted. (Click for a link) thanks to TheNewCitizen.

Consider again those words of Jesus in their context, not as words of abandonment, but trust.

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.