“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Moment of Reflection and Meditation--
I am not sure what the weather was the day God incarnate was executed on the torturous cross. But when the darkness engulfed the land at the time of day when the sun would be overhead it was not mistaken for a heavy over cast or any other “normal” climatological occurrence.
Throughout the historical narratives unusual darkness is commonly emblematic of Divine Judgement. This was no normal darkness but the kind that penetrates the soul giving one a nauseating sense of impending doom.
In Matthew’s account of the execution of God, Jesus had already been stripped naked, a scarlet robe derisively draped around the King of kings, and those Jesus came to save fashion a crown of thorns jamming it onto his brow kneeling mockingly before the very One who millennia before cursed the once holy soil from which those thorns had been culled.
Cursed thorns were a reminder to the first couple of Eden that their wretched rebellion against God Almighty brought judgement on all creation.
So obscene was their arrogance asserting they knew better than the very One who fashioned them, death spread to all of creation---for the wages of sin is death.
Oh but this is—"Pantokrator” “Ruler over All Things!” El Shaddai! God Almighty.
And HIS plan from before the foundations of the Earth--the crushing of the Serpent’s head--was about to be completed punctuated by a ghastly shriek.
Eli, ELI! Lama Sabachtani!” “My God, My God Why have you forsaken me.”
His horrendous cry from the executioner’s cross was mistaken by those who were witnessing the most mercy-filled travesty of all time. They thought the words from this man in anguish were beseeching the prophet--
“Eli-jah” Elijah! My God Jahweh, The great Prophet of centuries past--
But this was no desperate plea for rescue. The Son of Man—who, for the joy set before Him-- had already endured, the insults, the mockery, the brutal beatings and the pre-torture, tortures and then spikes nailed to beams secured your sins and mine to the executioners’ cross----Jesus assuming to Himself the separation of Hell--the consequence of sin of all who come into the world.
Consummate abandonment, eternal separation —where friends, and loved ones, are unknown; God Himself disregards you.
Shunned, pushed away, denounced, relegated to a solitary confinement, the Son of Man tastes the horrific cleavage of intimacy formerly assumed and embraced, now gone without a trace.
And Jesus receives it all with open arms.
“Union without fusion, distinction without separation” in the mystery of mysteries, The Father turns His back on the Son and He cries out —"My God, Why? have you forsaken me?”
It is there on the pages of God’s Word: It was For your sake, and mine--
"God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that WE might become the righteousness of God in Him." (2 Corinthians 5:21)
WHY? It was Him or US. And God said, Let it be ME.”
"It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners… (1 Timothy 1:15)
The sacrificial Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world was finishing the purposes for which He came.
Elizabeth Browning writes--
His mercies are from everlasting to everlasting. Thanks be to God!
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