“Why Have You Forsaken Me?”

I invite you to bow with me as I lead us in prayer:

Almighty God, this evening we thank you for your love, which follows us every day of our lives. We thank you that you fill our minds with your truth, and you strengthen our wills with your divine grace. We thank you for every indication of your Spirit leading us and for the things that seem like chance or coincidence at the time but later appear to us as part of your gracious plan for our spiritual growth. Help us to follow where you lead and never quench the light that you have ignited within us. Rather, let us grow daily in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus, our Lord.

And yet, as we seek your presence, we do not want to pray only for ourselves. And so we bring before you all our brothers and sisters who need your help, especially, tonight, thinking of those who are faced with great temptations; those who are faced with tasks too difficult for them; those who stand in any valley of decision; those who are in debt or poverty; those who are suffering the consequences of actions which they repented of long ago; and those who, through no amazing fault of their own, have little chance in life; for all family circles broken by death; for all who have gone into the world to make known the good news of your kingdom of heaven; and, in every corner of the earth, those who lift aye the lamp of truth in lonely places. And to that we add the names of many tonight who are on our hearts. Dear heavenly Father of all, make us human channels through which, as far as we are able, your divine love and pity may reach the hearts and lives of some of those who are nearest to us. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

You can follow along as I read from the Gospel in Mark, chapter 15:

“And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ And some of the bystanders hearing it said, ‘Behold, he is calling Elijah.’ And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, ‘Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.’ And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!’”

Father, as we ponder these things briefly, enable us by the Holy Spirit, both in speaking and in hearing, to hear the voice of Jesus himself, in whose name we pray. Amen.

So, as we prepare to share in Communion together, we consider another of our Easter questions. We could perhaps say that this is the most significant of all the questions, because here, in the passage that we’ve just read, from the lips of Jesus, this is then said to God the Father—cried out, actually, with a loud voice: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Now, historians record the fact that crucifixions were always marked by all kinds of cries—screams of rage, pain, wild curses, shouts of indescribable despair coming from the lips of those who had been subjected to largely the most brutal form of execution. Cries therefore were not unusual, nor, actually, was crucifixion. We have to remind ourselves of that as we find ourselves so many, many years removed and in a culture so vastly different from that which marked the Roman authorities. But it was commonplace.

The crucifixion viewed without the message of the cross is an incomplete picture.

Richard Harris in his trilogy on Cicero describes at one point the road into Rome, which was lined with crosses—as many as 150 at intervals along the way.[1] These executions were an unexceptional part of the responsibilities of the Roman soldiers. And in Jesus’ case, their cruel mockery and the way in which they treated him speaks to the routine nature of their task. And even the bystanders who were shouting vociferously, “Crucify him, crucify him!”[2]—those who were involved in all of this—could not from the outside have any understanding of the significance of what was taking place. They were able to view what was a barbaric execution. But apart from the cry from the lips of Jesus, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—apart from that cry of dereliction—there was very little to indicate what was actually happening.

Well, of course, it was a crucifixion. But as my good friend David Wells pointed out some time ago, “There is a distinction between the crucifixion and the cross.”[3] Crucifixion as a method of execution, while unacceptable, is yet at the same time understandable, because it was the death penalty. And it was the death penalty for many people. When Paul writes, he doesn’t say that the message of the crucifixion is foolishness to those who are perishing. He says the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.[4] Because it is that message—the significance of what was happening on that cross—that is the driving force of all that flows from there.

The crucifixion viewed without the message of the cross is an incomplete picture. Some of you may recall this as you’ve seen scenes depicted on your television or perhaps as your mind goes back to the piece by Mel Gibson and Caviezel, The Passion. Now, if you were present for that, or if you came in five minutes late, it would be virtually impossible for you to have any understanding of what was happening in that scene apart from the fact that it was brutal, apart from the fact that it was Jesus. But nevertheless, how could you ever know? I say “if you came in five minutes late” because the movie began with the scrolling of the passage of Scripture that I read before from Isaiah 53. And so people were, I suppose—they were supposed to view that, and then, in light of the Word of God, they would understand the plight of the Son of God and the significance of what was happening on the cross.

So what was happening on the cross? Actually, the first of our questions gives the answer to it, at least in part. I don’t expect you will remember what the first question was, but it was John 18:11, and Jesus turns to his disciples, and he says, “Shall I not drink the cup … the Father has given me?” In other words, “You shouldn’t try and prevent this,” he says to his friends. “This has been prophesied from all time. Indeed, from all of eternity, this has been the plan.” And he’d been preparing his followers for that day.

Essentially, we need our Bibles to understand what was happening on the cross. Did you pay attention to the Isaiah 53:10? It was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer. God is responsible for the cross. Jesus has been explaining that; they have not been getting it. Later on, when the apostles come to write concerning these things, they were able to write with a clarity that came as a result of being able to look back. So, for example, Paul writes, “He … did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all,”[5] and, in his letter to the Corinthians, “God made him”—that is, Jesus—“who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”[6]

Now, the Scottish theologian Donny Macleod, who’s gone on to glory, he says at one point, “Let’s not sentimentalise [this]. This is not some ‘green hill far away.’ It is the scene of the greatest atrocity in history. Calvary is, quite literally, a shambles. God’s Lamb is being slaughtered: on a garbage heap, outside the city, in darkness, by a brutal soldiery. And God is responsible.”[7]

Now, I say to you: This is beyond belief, isn’t it? Many people will be going through a night like this, and they will walk out the door and say, “You know, it was a dreadful thing that happened to Jesus. He was such a nice man. But he’s given us a wonderful example of how to respond when people aren’t nice to you.” Wow! Luther’s got it: “Christ is innocent as concerning his own person, and therefore he ought not to have been [crucified]: but … he sustained the person of a sinner and of a thief, not of one, but of all sinners and thieves. … He took all our sins upon him, and for them died [on] the cross.”[8]

In a moment or two, as we take the bread and we take the cup, we’re acknowledging that reality—that his body is broken for us, that his blood is shed for us, that he is the substitute. And without the reality of that substitution, the death of Christ is unintelligible. It actually doesn’t make any sense at all. The darkness, we’re told, covered the land,[9] reminiscent of what had happened in the plagues of Egypt: The darkness was there before the death of the firstborn in the homes of Egypt.[10] And once again, he bears the curse as he dies in the darkness. It’s fascinating, actually, that in the darkness, our judgment fell on the one who was our Judge—that at the cross, Jesus changes places with us, that he takes the guilt of our sin upon himself and accepts the judgment that is due against us.

In the cross, God displays and satisfies his perfect and holy justice by executing the punishment that our sins deserve.

You know, we at our brightest have little, finite minds. We cannot actually understand, or we understand that God cannot be fully understood—that the mystery that is at the very heart of this can be actually summarized just in a phrase: In his forsakenness is found our forgiveness. It’s profoundly mysterious. Because Jesus, who has lived in eternity with the Father and with the Holy Spirit, in communion and in enjoyment of each other’s company, now is to be cut off from that relationship with the Father, and the reason being that he is dying in our place.

Two things that we need to understand. One is that in the cross, God displays and satisfies his perfect and holy justice by executing the punishment that our sins deserve. The message of the gospel is nowhere close to the idea “I know you’ve been a bit of a mess, but don’t worry; God just writes it off. He just overlooks it, and get on with your life.” He doesn’t overlook it. If he overlooked it, there would be no reason for a Good Friday service. He displays and satisfies his justice, and he at the same time pardons those who believe in Christ—those who believe in Christ, even though we’ve sinned, even though we deserve condemnation.

And he does this amazing thing: Not only does he send the darkness so that people might begin to think in a different way, but also, in an act of divine vandalism, he reaches into the temple, and he tears the curtain, as we read.[11] Essentially, he changes the curtain to a carpet. Because that curtain said, “There’s no way in the world you’re coming in here.” And the death of Jesus says, “You may come in here—not on the strength of what you’ve done.” Nothing in your hand you bring—not the labors of your hands,[12] not your religious deeds, not your background, not our skill, none of those things at all. No! But the door is wide open.

That’s why we understand that Paul, when it finally dawned on him, spoke in very personal terms, remember. We considered this a couple of Sundays ago, I think, but: “The Son of God … loved me and gave himself for me.”[13] Paul says that the Father delivered him up for us all, but he does deal with us as individuals. Such a wonderful thing to know: that not only that God has a vast understanding of the universe and all the cosmic dimensions of it but that he knows when a sparrow falls to the ground,[14] and he knows when we hurt, and he knows when we make a hash of things—and beyond that, he actually cares. He cares.

And that’s why when we read the Gospels, we discover that people who encountered Jesus were never the same again, whether it was Zacchaeus or the woman at the well or, in the dying embers of his life, the thief on the cross. He’s the most fascinating thing of all to me. I wonder if there’s an opportunity somewhere in the future where we can get with the thief and sing together,

At the cross, at the cross,
Where I first saw the light,
And the burden of my heart rolled away,
It was there by faith I received my sight,
And now I[’m] [rejoicing] all the day![15]

One of my friends in Scotland sent this to me, and I thought he must have sent it to me so that I could finish with it right now:

The thief crucified beside Jesus didn’t cry out, “Lord, save me.” No, he simply asked Jesus, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” If unbelief is the great sin, then belief is the greatest act of obedience. What a God! What a Savior! Have you ever said to him, “Lord, remember me”?

[1] Robert Harris, Imperium (London: Hutchinson, 2006), 68.

[2] John 19:6 (ESV).

[3] David Wells, God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-Love of God Reorients Our World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), 130.

[4] See 1 Corinthians 1:18.

[5] Romans 8:32 (ESV).

[6] 2 Corinthians 5:21 (paraphrased).

[7] Donald Macleod, From Glory to Golgotha: Controversial Issues in the Life of Christ (Fearn, Scotland: Christian Focus, 2002), 112.

[8] Martin Luther,Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, ed. Erasmus Middleton (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1930),242.

[9] See Matthew 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44.

[10] See Exodus 10:21–29.

[11] See Matthew 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45.

[12] Augustus Montague Toplady, “Rock of Ages” (1776).

[13] Galatians 2:20 (ESV).

[14] See Matthew 10:29; Luke 12:6.

[15] Ralph Erskine Hudson, appended chorus to Isaac Watts, “Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed?” (1885).