Matthew 27:46

Beloved of God,

This evening we look at three almost identical passages: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?” (Psalm 22:1) and “About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46; cf. Mk 15:34).

The most important truth about these passages, of course, is that we will never have to suffer the abandonment that Jesus experienced, for the very reason that Jesus’s suffering on the cross was not for his own sin (he had none), but for ours. The rejection that our sin deserved has already been fully experienced by Christ. “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). We will never be forsaken by the God who loved us enough to die for us. Never. Christ, who is himself God, has been forsaken in our place.

This is not, however, the only important truth in the passage. Jesus asks, “Why?” So do we. Faced with natural disasters or suffering of any kind, the question inevitably lurking at the back of our minds is also “Why? Why would God allow such a thing?” The temptation is to push the question away. We don’t know the answer, and we realize that any simplistic answer could sound unbearably callous. Here, too, I think, there is comfort in the cross.

What we can know is that God doesn’t keep his distance from us at such times, self-isolating, whole dimensions away in heaven and untouched by our suffering. Jesus, no less fully human than us, quoted the first verse of Psalm 22 at the height of his suffering. The psalm was a genuine human cry of anguish; the psalmist was writing from his own immediate experience of truly feeling abandoned by God. Although, as one for whom Christ would die, he was not truly forsaken, it certainly felt that way. His pain and his confusion were real. So were those of the fully human Jesus when he spoke the psalmist’s words from the cross. He was experiencing not only real abandonment by God, but the kind of bleak human confusion (“Why?”) that the psalmist had experienced. Jesus was identifying not only with the anguish of the psalmist, but also with that of everyone else who has ever felt a similar confusion.

To those of us who wonder why God would allow such a thing (whatever our particular pain or suffering or natural disaster might be), Christ’s use of the words of Psalm 22 is a succinct way of telling us, from the heart of his anguish, “I am with you. I, too, feel forsaken by God. I, too, do not know why the God who loves me would abandon me like this. I, too, am confused. I, too, don’t understand.”

So, when we cry out to God, “This is dreadful. Why would you allow such a thing?” we’re not addressing a God who is hiding a vast distance away in the secluded comfort of heaven. We’re addressing a God who knows exactly how we feel, who has himself experienced the same confusion, who has himself suffered greatly, who has himself cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

But you might say, “That’s all very well, but Jesus’s suffering is over. He rose from the dead. He’s back in heaven now, no longer suffering like I am.” Well, yes and no. Even seated at the right hand of God, Christ still experiences our suffering. When the risen Christ confronted Saul (soon to be Paul) on the road to Damascus, he didn’t say, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting my church?” He said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” So close is Christ, our head, to each and every one of us, the members of his body, and so intimate is the dwelling of the Holy Spirt of Christ in each of us, that even now Christ truly feels the pain of our suffering, whether it be caused by persecution, sickness, loss, confusion, or a sense of abandonment.

When we speak to God out of our anguish, pain, or confusion, we are not speaking to a God who is at a vast social distance, safely immune to our suffering. We are speaking to a God who is immediately present with us, even now in our COVID-19 isolation and social distancing. He may not give us a fully satisfactory answer to our question of why, but he will assure us that he understands our confusion. He feels it himself. And we are not forsaken. We will never be forsaken: he is still with us, close at hand, even in our suffering.

Grace, mercy, and peace,

Max and Ann 

P.S. Max wrote the first draft. Ann told him it needed major changes. We negotiated. Although far from perfect, this version is approved by both of us. 🙂