The Fourth Word

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. 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?” Mark 15:33-34; Matthew 27:45-46 

This week we reach the mid-point of Lent: Laetere or “Rejoicing” Sunday, a time to lighten our penitential disciplines as we look forward to Resurrection Sunday (yay!). It is also the week we at Christ Church consider the mid-point of Jesus’ “Words” from the cross–the fourth Word, which could not be more jarring in this context. As James Stalker writes, “it is a cry out of the lowest depths of despair…, it is the most appalling sound that ever pierced the atmosphere of this earth. …It cannot be heard by a sensitive ear even at this day without causing a cold shudder of terror.”  The fourth Word, the only one of Jesus’s statements from the cross recorded in the Gospel of Mark is, of course, 

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

Why. WHY. The word many of us have uttered in times of deep suffering; we are only human, after all. But this is Jesus, the perfect Son of God, the Beloved of his Father, wailing in lowly Aramaic, “Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?” Did God forsake Jesus when he needed God most?  

Jesus, in his earthly life, had been forsaken many times, by the members of His own household early on and then the people of his hometown, Nazareth. Ultimately the whole nation followed suit: the multitudes that at one time followed Jesus wherever he went and hung upon his every word soon became shocked and offended, and they shunned him. At the last, even with his closest followers, his beloved friends, he was betrayed, forsaken, abandoned, and denied by them. There can be no doubt that Jesus felt these disappointments deeply, but he was always able, no matter what, to find assurance and constancy in prayer with God, his Father. Jesus knew that everything he said or did was in perfect alignment with God’s will. God’s thoughts were his thoughts; Jesus could clearly discern, through all the ups and downs of His earthly ministry, God’s will and his glorious purpose. So Jesus knew this would happen, and even told his friends, “The time is coming—indeed it’s here now—when you will be scattered, each one going his own way, leaving me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me” (John 16:32). Indeed the hour had come: they abandoned him and fled as He had predicted, and He was left alone. But did Jesus despair? Or was he completely in sync with his Father, in complete control of events? (Note what happens in the exchange with the temple guards, and then later with Pilate.) 

Isolated from friends and family, Jesus endured the long night in a holding cell; the exchange with the Sanhedrin; the interviews with Pilate and Herod and Pilate again; the screams of the crowd, “Crucify him!” The torturous scourging, mocking, spitting, piercing, naked, bloody humiliation of the crucifixion. Yet even on the cross, where every breath is an agonizing struggle, Jesus speaks comfort to others: to those who are killing him (“Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing”); to the thief beside him (“This very day you will be with me in the garden”); and to his mother and “beloved disciple” (“Behold your mother; behold your son”). But at noon, when the sun is at its zenith, Jesus goes silent. And for three long hours complete and utter darkness covers the land as the earth itself groans and the brightness of heaven hides its face.  

What transpired in those three dark, silent hours? This is perhaps the greatest mystery of all. Consider what we do know, and what we might, based on the whole of Scripture, imagine. We know Jesus was absolutely in the heart of God and in the center of His will. We know Jesus was suffering both physically and emotionally; perhaps mentally and spiritually as well. Physically, the horror of his mortal agony may have been greater for Jesus than other men because his body had never been hardened by the sin that makes us callous. The life of God that had poured through his frame all his days was suddenly withdrawn–and for the first time in eternity he experienced the separation from God so sadly familiar to us: sin. And in this weakened state, Jesus enters into “the travail of his soul.” James Stalker writes,  

“He was looking close at sin’s utmost hideousness; He was sickened with its contact; He was crushed with its brutality — crushed to death. Yet this human nature was His own; He was identified with it — bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh; …so He felt the unworthiness and hopelessness of the race as if they were His own.”  

Jesus, who always looked to his Father in prayer, now looks up and sees….nothing, no one; only darkness. No legions of angels came to rescue Him, God worked no miracle to save him. Our sin blocked his view of the Father; the heavens appeared to be closed against him and he seemed abandoned, accursed. Now comes the cry that would rip the temple veil in two, the guttural wail of utter abandonment and despair: 

“MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?”  

Did Jesus give up? Was he beaten, after all? Did God abandon Jesus? Although we may acknowledge this as a mystery we will not fully grasp this side of eternity there still are many, many theories about this moment which largely fall into two categories. The first and most common to my own experience is: Yes. Sin separates from God, so God turned his face away from Jesus on the cross. But here’s the thing: how can the Triune God abandon himself? If God the Father completely separates himself from Jesus, this would mean that sin has, even if only temporarily, ripped apart the very fabric of the Godhead and Sin has won. I am no theologian, but that just doesn’t make sense to me. Even for the humble lay Bible student it creates all kinds of theological difficulties: if God turns away from the Son he loves because he bears the sins of the world, then how can God possibly look at me in all of my sin? And how do we reconcile this with the many instances in Scripture where Jesus makes contact with the sinful– touching them, eating with them, welcoming them when even humans wouldn’t? Can God take only so much sin before he reaches his limit and abandons us?  

A deeper look at this Fourth Word of Jesus reveals another story, a better theology, in my view. The Jews standing around the cross would have heard in these words, the first words of Psalm 22, the whole Psalm, spoken at the exact time of the evening sacrifice at the temple. It is true that Psalm 22 is a lament, but lament psalms not only cry out to God in dark circumstances, they also cling to God in hope and trust. It is only when we hear the whole of Psalm 22 that we recognize the deeper theology of Jesus. Although it feels as if God is absent (“Why are you so far from helping me,” v 1), Jesus nonetheless proclaims the deliverance of God (“You have rescued me,” v 21). God did not hide his face from Jesus, nor did Jesus die in despair, as verse 24 affirms:  

For he did not despise or abhor 

the affliction of the afflicted; 

He did not hide his face from me, 

but heard when I cried to him. 

“When Jesus cries ‘My God, my God,’” continues my new friend James Stalker, “He lays hold of the Eternal with both hands.” It is a prayer: a thousand times He had turned to this resource in days of trial; and He does so in this supreme trouble. To do so cures despair. No one is forsaken who can pray, “My God.” Jesus shows us here that in the very act of uttering our despair, we may overcome it: though we may feel forsaken, if we instead run into the arms of God, we will feel, as I believe Jesus did, his everlasting arms closed around us in loving protection. For as soon as Jesus had spoken these words, the darkness which had brooded over the whole earth lifted. Jesus himself emerged from eclipse, from hell itself, knowing he had overcome it. As we shall see in the remaining three Words from the cross, Jesus was again serene, victorious, unabandoned, undefeated. Although not linguistically identical to Jesus’ final cry in John 19:30 (“It is finished”), the last line of this psalm makes the same point: God has accomplished his purposes: 

Future generations will be told about the Lord, 

And proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn 

saying that he has done it.  

So this Laetere Sunday we can grasp hold of the Eternal with both hands, crying “my God, my God,” and indeed, rejoice. Thanks be to God.