“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46)
Jesus shouts opening words of Psalm 22. Is this an expression of terror of death and agonizing pain? Or is it a loud complaint showing how Jesus is suffering? Could this exclamation be an expression of trust in God despite His apparent abandonment of Jesus? Or does Jesus really express abandonment by God?
Jesus speaks these words at 3 p.m., when it has already been dark for three hours. God withdraws the light. He does not intervene. Heaven is silent at the suffering of the Righteous One. His God has forsaken Him. Jesus is left to His enemies and adversaries without God intervening. He must suffer all this, for God’s love of the world demands this of Him. Jesus hangs on the cross to die, where life becomes hell.
Jesus declares that He is separated from God. The absence of God makes clear how lonely Jesus’ death is. God has handed Him over to death, even to the curse of being forsaken by God. It’s beyond our understanding! The Son is abandoned by the Father; God is abandoned by God. God the Father does this to reach out to us in His Son.Jesus hangs there in our darkness, where God is absent. Jesus is Immanuel, God with us, God in our midst. That name transforms the darkness surrounding the cross into Gospel, good news for us humans.