A Synoptic Christology of Lament

In A Synoptic Christology of Lament: The Lord Who Answered and the Lord Who Cried, Channing Crisler explores an oft underappreciated description of Jesus in which the Synoptic writers portray him as both answering cries of distress and uttering them himself. Matthew, Mark, and Luke take up the quintessential language of suffering from Israel’s Scriptures, namely lament. Their engagement with lament overlaps and diverges from one another based upon their specific biographical aims. What emerges from this engagement is a diverse biographical portrait in which Jesus both responds to the cries of the afflicted as Israel’s God did and shares in their cries as righteous sufferers from Israel’s past did. The explanatory climax of this phenomenon arises in the respective passion narratives where Jesus’s ability to answer and utter lament finally converge in the same literary setting. The implications of this dynamic are far reaching as it provides yet another consideration for ongoing research on early Christology. The lament language embedded in the Synoptic Gospels and reflected in subsequent early Christian writings points to a belief among some Christ followers that Jesus answered their cries and participated in them.