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My God, My God, Why?

Matthew 27: 46; Mark 15: 3; Psalm 22: 1

There are times in our lives when we can make no sense of it all. This dynamic has been aggravated in wider contexts in recent times through the Twin Towers Disaster in New York, the senseless carnage in the Middle East and in many other places. On a personal level we know the "dark night of the soul", and for some the darkness seems never to go away. Sometimes this is because of profound trauma and tragedy or violation of personhood.

Nowhere do we see such a heightening of this dynamic than in the cry of dereliction that Jesus offered from the Cross.

"About the ninth hour Jesus called out in a loud voice, "Eloi. Eloi, lama sabachthani?" which means "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" These words appear also in Mark 15: 34. This happened at the end of the three hours of darkness from noon to 3.00 pm. At 3.00 pm Jesus cried out in this way.

The Context

This cry occurs within the Passion saga, and in Mark and Matthew follows after the mocking of those around him on the Cross. Within the Bible as a whole there is a reference here to Psalm 22. That psalm reflects some of David's own pain, but necessarily goes beyond the limit of his worst experience. Great David's Greater Son became suffering David's most despised and derelict offscouring.

The mood and meaning is unpacked for us by that psalm. Whilst it is impossible for us even to begin to imagine what Jesus felt at that horrific time, yet if his mind was able to be active within the agony, then it surely would be consistent with the agony as described in that psalm. The psalmist feels:

• Far from the help of God (22: 1)
• No divine answer and no rest (22: 2)
• Less than human, and like a groveling worm (22: 6)
• Mocked by people, and jealous for God who is mocked (22: 7)
• Heart like melted wax (22: 14)
• Humiliated and deformed (22: 17)
• Naked (22: 18)

The Depth

The depth of Christ's suffering is well reflected in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer1662 Litany: "By thine agony and bloody grief, by the cross and passion, by thy glorious resurrection and ascension, and by the coming of the Holy Ghost, Good Lord, deliver us!" Only by the merits of Christ's suffering in that deep unfathomable crisis are we free indeed!

Theism and Christology

Whom do we suppose Jesus to be at that moment when he cries out to his God from whom he knows separation? The historic creeds of the Church, in reflecting on Biblical truth, maintain that there was always only one Person in Jesus, but that yet he had a divine nature and a human nature. In this chaotic moment on the Cross there is no need and no appropriateness in supposing that any of that had changed, even for a moment.

Jesus is fully human and at the same time fully God. "In him all the fulness of Godhead was pleased to dwell bodily" (Colossians 2: 9). At that moment all the "godness" of his godhead was frozen. It was put on hold. He did not cease to be God, anymore than you can cease to be your father's son and daughter. Yet at that moment of time there was such a barrier characterized by the most horrific chasm. He tumbled into the abyss of personality disintegration. In that moment he could not enjoy the centre of his being as the divine Son. He had previously, before the Incarnation, chosen to empty himself of the privileges of his divine prerogative and had become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2: 5-11) .

In the agony of Gethsemane he had foreseen this moment. Now he was experiencing the very moment that he had foreseen. This was the death of deaths. This was hell! He was still God the Son, but the joy of his godness was frozen.

The Rejection

Through him all things had been made, and without him was not anything made that was made (John 1: 3-4). All things had been made by him, through him, and for him, (Colossians 1: 16) yet at that climactic yet abysmal moments, "things fall apart, the centre does not hold". This is a crisis for the cosmos, and for both the past and the future of the human race.

The Identification

Nouwen described Jesus as The Wounded Healer.

Mark 15: 34 and Matthew 27: 46 bring the climactic cry of crisis, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

Jesus was "made sin" for us. At that moment he entered into the plight of sinners. He experienced the full separation from God. All the disadvantages of his humanity were captured in that horrific moment.

He experienced the worst plight of sinners.
He carried the penalty of his human rejecters.
He suffered physically all the massive abuse that was meted out to him.
He experienced the Father's rejection.
He entered into the pain of any person who has experienced paternal rejection.
He carried the pain of anyone who does not know if he/she will ever live up to dad's expectations.
He bore the grief of every child raised in a divided family.
He carried the pain of the victims of physical, psychological, spiritual and sexual abuse by church leaders.
He also carried the sin of the predators and the perpetrators.

Where Adam failed, Jesus succeeded. Three died on crosses on the one day. As Archbishop Sir Marcus Loane is reputed to have summed it up:

"One died reviling!
One died repenting!
One died redeeming!"

The Substitution

In Mark 10: 45 we read that Jesus declared he came to give his life "a ransom instead of many". This was substitution. He experienced what people separated from God by sin would deserve to encounter, and would certainly have without his intervention. We shall not need to experience eternally and forever what Jesus entered into briefly, because he did it for us by doing it instead of us. This fulfils the servant prophecies such as those in Isaiah 53, where we are told that he was bruised for lour iniquities, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, but God has laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all. The situation that led to the cry, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" was sin that cause separation from God. Our sin has separated us, and Christ's separation from God has restored us by breaking down the barrier. See Romans 3: 23-24.

All the Benefits of Christ's Passion

In the Anglican Liturgy is a prayer at Holy Communion:

Lord and heavenly father, we your servants entirely desire your fatherly goodness mercifully to accept this our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and to grant that, by the merits and death of your Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, we and your whole Church may receive forgiveness of our sins and all other benefits of his passion. (An Australian Anglican prayer Book, 1978, page 128 (copyright AIO for the Standing Committee of General Synod)

Those benefits may be summarized:

He died for the sins we have done.
He thus died a forgiving death.
He died for the sins that others have done to us.
He thus made it possible for us to forgive others.
He thus also makes it possible for us to receive a measure of the dimension of healing of the results of the sins we have done and the sins done to us.

Our Response

If we have never entered into personal relationship with God, we can ask his forgiveness and give our lives to him, because Jesus has broken down the rejecting barrier. He carried the rejection for us.

We can then choose to live a lifetime of gratitude to God, expressing our adoration of Jesus and gratitude to God. Our participation in Holy Communion is intended to focus us this way on a regular basis.

Gratitude to God brings more of his blessings, so the feast of thankfulness that Christ instituted facilitates the processes by which God feeds our spirits.

Because there are also "other benefits" of Christ's sufferings, we can boldly approach the Father in prayer to receive healing of rejection (from parents, children or others), boundary violation and all kinds of abuse. Christ carried them all for us in that moment when he cried, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

Oh precious Jesus ascended, up on high
To eyes of faith you always have come nigh.
From bed of straw to painful crown of thorns,
For sin and grief your tears all spilt in flood,
You bore for us rejection spelt in blood.

Lindsay Johnstone

Copyright J. H. L. Johnstone, March 2002

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