For centuries, Christians have pondered the words of Jesus, and none more so than the seven sayings he spoke from the cross. John includes three of the seven.
To his mother: “Dear woman, here is your son.” And to John, “Here is your mother.”
The second saying is one everyone can identify with: “I am thirsty.”
The third: “It is finished.”
Luke reports three more sayings.
“Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
To the thief: “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
Finally, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”
Mark and Matthew recite the seventh saying, but this one is not a statement. It’s a question.
At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:33 – 34)
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
As the shadow of death creeps up the cross, Jesus appears to entertain a shadow of doubt about God’s faithfulness. All by itself, it’s a haunting question. But the weight of it feels so much heavier when we remember that his first recorded words were, themselves, questions: To Mary and Joseph, his human parents, he asked, “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my father’s house?”
That day, his earthly parents were out of their minds frantic looking for him. This day, on the cross, it seems, his heavenly Father is looking away. When she found him, Mary asked Jesus, “Son why have you treated us like this?” Here on this skull shaped mountain, Jesus seems to be asking God the same question. In the temple at twelve years old, he felt at home in his Father’s house. On the cross, he is suspended between heaven and earth and neither, it appears, wants anything to do with him.
These observations are problematic for people of faith. Uncomfortable and awkward. How could God’s son be abandoned by God? If God would not deliver his own flesh and blood, how can he be trusted to deliver those grafted into His family? How could Jesus, who has been denied, rejected, betrayed and beaten by humans also be shunned by God? There are answers to these questions, but we should not rush to resolve them. There is a blessing to be wrestled from this cosmic tension.
Though he felt it more intensely than anyone ever has, Jesus is not the only one to feel God-forsaken. We may never have spoken those words or asked that question, but some of us know that feeling.
If you’ve ever sat alone in the ashes of your own failure . . .
If you’ve ever been betrayed by the duplicity of a friend . . .
If a doctor has ever given you your test results then said, “I’m sorry,” . . .
If a parent has ever spat out, “Don’t come back,” or a child screamed they wouldn’t . . .
You know how bitter Jesus’ question tastes.
Your heartache may be of a different kind, but if you’ve ever felt abandoned, forgotten or forsaken; left out, cut off or passed over; dropped, dumped or deserted — Jesus knows. And just knowing that Jesus knows, sometimes, is all it takes to keep faith alive. When we feel the nothingness of being abandoned, knowing that Jesus knows means that he and we share something. We have never hung on his cross, but he has shared our struggle. We are not crazy for feeling forgotten. And we are not alone.
That’s good news. But it gets better. During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard. (Hebrews 5:7)
He. Was. Heard. Maybe you are thinking, “So, he was heard. He died anyway.”
True. But he didn’t stay dead. That tomb is empty. In his own time, in a spectacular way, God delivered.
Given what some of us are going through these days, it’s understandable that we would, just as Jesus did, feel forsaken. He wasn’t. You aren’t. God sees. God hears. God delivers.
I remember……
Marsy Thomas
Thanks for reminding me of His anchor for my soul!
We are heard but not privy to God’s timing. We want answers now and sometimes the answer is yes, no, or what is painful sometimes, “not yet” or dare I say “maybe”.
But at least Jesus understands.
Psalm 22 begins with the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” It continues with a description of being ridiculed, abused and tortured. It ends with confident hope in deliverance and vindication. I don’t really know if the collection of Psalms were not numbered as we have them. What if quoting the first sentence or two of the psalm was the way to reference the psalm to his listeners? Jesus may have been emphasizing the message Psalm 22 to who were still near the cross. It does not diminish the horror and dispair of Jesus in the fleshly and emotional pain he was enduring, but it may have an exhortation to those few friends and family who would see the Son of Man being treated so brutally. Maybe he wasn’t really saying that his Father had abandoned him but all is going according to plan. Satan will not win. He will show his power of death and return in three days. Even if they run away, he will not abandon them. It’s all in the plan. Just wait and see. John 14-17 makes more sense with this view.
Exactly right, Alan. Jesus was most certainly alluding to Psalm 22. And it does end in deliverance. But there is a remarkable back and forth in that Psalm where the original writer alternates between despair and hope. The deliverance motif is clearly the winner, but the Psalmist, as usual, is brutally honest about the sense of abandonment that precedes that deliverance.
It is definitely reassurance to Jesus who is in great pain but a message to those who stayed near. Those who have confidence in their destiny even as death approaches have a message to their family and friends who are near them. My dad did.