“Jesus cried out with a loud voice . . . ‘My God, my God, why have you
forsaken me?’” --Mark 15: 34
This is a word that can shake the core of our faith. How could Jesus say these words: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Could God really have forsaken Jesus? Does this mean that Jesus’ faith in the
Father was without base? What kind of God forsakes his Son? What kind of Father sends his Son to die?
The question strikes at the heart of our own relationship to
God, doesn’t it? We may wonder, if Jesus
said this, what does it mean for us? Does God forsake us? Does God leave us alone?
There are two things we must understand when we hear this
word from Jesus. First, we must
understand Jesus’ words when he said, “I and the Father are one” (John
10:30). The will of God and the will of
Jesus are inextricably linked. We have
not two Gods or three, but one God, in three persons; we do not have a
situation here where a Father has sent a son to do that which he does not
understand or take on willingly. Jesus
freely took on the form of humanity, knowing that he was born to die.
Why? The will of the
Father and the will of the Son were one for our sake. To the end of saving of us from our sin. Throughout the years and ages, God gave
humanity the chance to turn from sin, to keep covenant. But humans continued to sin, and they began
relying on the sacrificial system, replacing ritual with relationship with God,
forgetting that what God wants is not sacrifice, but repentance. But although we were unfaithful to God, God
was always faithful to us.
In Jesus, God himself paid the price we could not pay and
thus united us to himself through the new covenant in his blood. The will of God the Father and God the Son
was one, and it was a will to save us, the children God created and loves. God wills our salvation, and so on the cross,
Jesus felt that separation from God that we would have felt for all eternity
but for the sacrifice of the Son.
The second thing that we must understand if we will hear
this word rightly is that in this word from the cross, Jesus was saying more
than we might realize. One of our faults
in the 21st century is that we do not know scripture as well as we
should. Today we are too busy for such
mundane and uninteresting things as reading, and certainly not reading the
Bible. We are too captivated with our
technology, mesmerized by our cell phones and gadgets, our I-pads and I-pods,
to take time to read. And why memorize
anything when you can Google it?
And so we don’t hear the full meaning of Jesus’ words in
this passage. If we knew scripture as
well as those standing at the foot of the cross that day, we would know that
Jesus wasn’t just speaking randomly. We
would have known that Jesus was quoting scripture! When he said, “My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me,” he was quoting from Psalm 22.
Jesus was quoting words that he knew every one of his
followers would immediately recognize.
It was as if he said, “Twinkle twinkle little star,” and everyone knows
the next line is, “How I wonder what you are.”
Or “Jesus loves me, this I know,” we all know the next words are “For
the Bible tells me so.”
When Jesus said, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me,” they knew that the end was, “Future generations will be told about the
Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has
done it.”
Saying that he has done it!
That is how the psalm that begins in forsakenness ends, by thanking God
for delivering him, and saying, He has done it!
Do you see the difference that makes?
This Psalm, like many of the Psalms, begins in despair, but
ends in victory. It tells the story of
one who went through an excruciating time, but in the end he realized, that God
was there all along, and that God delivered him and was worthy of praise.
The description of the man in the Psalm fits Jesus’
crucifixion. The Psalmist said that he
was scorned and despised by the people; they mocked him and told him to call on
God to save him. The Psalmist speaks of
his bones being out of joint, his mouth being dry. He says, “They stare and gloat over me; they
divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.”
But then there is a turning point in the Psalm. After describing his desperate situation,
there comes a point where the Psalmist says, “The Lord did NOT hide his face
from me, but heard when I cried to him.”
And so I will praise him!
And the Psalm that Jesus quoted on the cross proved true;
the deliverance of God, the deliverance Jesus won in his death, was a
deliverance not just for those who stood at the cross that day but to a people
yet unborn! That means all of us!
So great is the love and faithfulness of God. Although humans throughout the ages were
unfaithful to God, God was always faithful to us. God kept reaching out to us, through priests
and prophets and kings, and when we continued to turn away, God kept turning
toward us, kept turning toward us even in our sin, and finally turned into one
of us, to bear, once and for all, the cost of our sin, to be the ultimate
sacrifice, so that no longer would we be separated from him. On the cross, God himself felt the
forsakenness that we would have felt for all eternity, if not for his
sacrifice. And so now we do not have to
fear. Our God does not forsake us, but
has delivered us from sin and evil and even death itself. And like the Psalmist, we can say that he has
done it.
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