Is He Your God?
About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” —Matthew 27:46 (NIV)
At first read, this fourth word of Jesus from the cross can be confusing. I mean, it appears that here is a righteous man who, throughout His life on earth, modeled trust in God; for three years He publicly preached the necessity of faith and the importance of believing in God, of believing in Him; and yet, as He hangs the on the bloody cross, Jesus of Nazareth reaches the point where He is seemingly unable to continue practicing what He’s preached. And He cries out in a loud voice.
With the utterance of His question in Aramaic—Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?—it probably sounded to the onlookers as if this man’s faith had finally failed. But in reality these words of Jesus from the cross perhaps best exemplify God the Son’s utter trust, dependence, and faith in God the Father better than anywhere else in scripture.
Now to truly understand what I’m getting at here it’s important to first know and understand two things. Number one: The nature of Christ; and number two: the context of His question. So what is the nature of Christ?
For those of you who follow baseball, you should know who Joe Torre is. Joe Torre had been a catcher and broadcast announcer for the St. Louis Cardinals. Shortly after he was named manager of the Yankees, another baseball announcer, Phil Rizzuto, suggested that managing could be done better from high above the baseball field—from the level of the broadcasting booth. Torre replied, “Upstairs, you can’t look in their eyes.”
In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, God chose to come down on the field and look in our eyes; and more than that, look through our eyes; Emmanuel: God with us. Moreover, Jesus said, I and the Father are one. The Father is in me and I am in Him. Jesus is God in the flesh—incarnate. That’s His nature. And so the context of the abandonment question must be understood on the basis of the being and in the mission of Jesus the Son—the incarnate God. Knowing this nature helps us to then more fully understand the question that was cried out: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
But our Savior’s cry was not one of doubt, but of utter trust. You see, Jesus Christ, hanging there in darkness on His cross, suffering in agonizing pain, enduring the jeers of those openly mocking Him and in the throes of death did not ask why. He did not ask why! At least, He did not ask why in the way in which many of us do. He did not fling out a question to an impersonal and unfeeling universe. He put his question to His Father in whom He abides. And that makes it a different question altogether.
It is utterly important that we get the question right. Jesus did not say, “Why did God forsake me?” That’s the wrong question, and probably the way most of us would ask it; as if God were a third party, somewhere outside of our living. You see, we talk about Him, read about Him, listen to Good Friday sermons about Him, even say we believe in Him. But far too many people believe in God the way they believe in the North Pole or the Great Wall of China. He is something they know about, have heard of, read up on, etcetera, etcetera. They know He’s there, but He’s something they’ve never seen or experienced or have known for themselves. There’s no firsthand knowledge, no personal acquaintance, no heart-to-heart relationship.
You see, never once did Jesus permit even the direst of circumstances to make God a stranger or an enemy. Even in the overwhelming feeling of utter loneliness, Jesus said: My God. My God. So in your loneliness, in your sorrow or suffering, in your pain, grief, in your confusion, will He remain your God? In your darkest hour, will you continue to trust in Him and cry out to Him?: My God, my God. Do you know Him as your God and Savior? It is vital that we all honestly and seriously answer that pivotal question.
But I’m sure that you still want to know this: Was Jesus abandoned by God? Here’s the answer: No. Never. It was sin that was abandoned; sin in the person of Jesus. You see, scripture says in II Corinthians 5:21 that “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (emphasis mine).
Jesus not only took on the sin of the world—past, present and future—but He became it. He became sin. Jesus, hanging on the cross becomes the embodiment of all sin … and He feels it. And He lets out a cry to God the Father quoting the Old Testament scripture found in Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Psalm 22 was written by King David, a “man after God’s own heart,” during a time when he (David) felt abandoned. And while David begins this Psalm with a tone of despair, he closes with these words: “For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.” And you know what? On that first Sunday after Calvary, which we know as Easter, God assured us that Jesus Christ was certainly never abandoned.
You see, when viewed in the light of Easter, the silence of God at the cross becomes revelation. God shows Himself and the fullness of His love by disappearing in the humiliating death of Jesus. In reality, then, God is never greater than in this humiliation. He is never more glorious than in this self surrender. God is never more divine than in this humanity. In the crucifixion of Jesus, God is love with His whole being. Jesus, with all his love, experiences the rupture that exists between the sinner and God as an excruciating absence, as a flawless loneliness. It is the Father who with all his love sustains the exhausted Son, leads him into the ultimate depths of feeling abandoned, and makes him penetrate into the loneliness of sinners to the point of dying our death.
What Jesus had presented in the Sermon on the Mount as love of one’s enemies was translated in the death of Jesus on the cross into a love that includes those who are without God and without love. By forsaking himself and going to the cross, Jesus becomes the God of those without God.
And He continues the work of becoming the God of the godless today, through us and by the power and presence of His Holy Spirit. So my prayer today is that you come to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death: Love perfected. And surely my God will be with you always, to the very end of the age.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, "A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born." In meditating on this, I speed towards my awakening discovering myself as complex as I am simple.
So the idea of starting this blog was just to have an outlet to share what's on my mind. The problem is that there's so very much on my mind and so very little time to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, in this case). Discipline, obviously, is needed to remain faithful to this task. So let's just say that I intend to be more disciplined (in this arena, at least).
My seven-year-old daughter Isabel has school pictures today. Normally, she wears a uniform to school, but because her school worked so hard during testing week, they were given a free-dress day today. Now she can pose for her school pics in her new digs with her new haircut. Isn't it cute? Of course, she'd be cute to me even with a bald head. I'm her doting dad, after all.
Perspective is a funny thing. There you are going through life looking at a situation, event, person, or place through a current perspective, and then -- BAM! -- next thing you know something profound (or sometimes not so profound) occurs to give you a completely different perspective on that very same issue. It's a paradigm shift. Yeah ... thank God for paradigm shifts.
