Reflecting on Mark 15:33-41
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34)In this moment, Jesus is echoing Psalm 22:1.
But He is not quoting Scripture to teach a lesson.
These words are familiar to Him because He learned them in Torah school.
David was inspired to express out loud what he was actually feeling.
And Jesus does the same; this is what he actually feels.
And who can blame Him, given what He was going through.
I’ve often heard this verse used as proof that God actually did forsake Jesus.
They see it as a theological point, to prove that Jesus was condemned for my sin.
To prove that God sent Jesus to eternal death, so that we don’t have to.
God did not actually forsake David, and God did not forsake Jesus either.
If God actually abandoned David, or Jesus, neither would survive.
In this moment, God is closer to Jesus than Jesus realized.
When my firstborn was young, I was playing chase with him.
I accidentally pushed a doorknob into his eye, causing a gash.
He needed stitches in his eyebrow, with only local anaesthetic.
Laying on the emergency room table, Valerie and I held him down.
He was screaming in terror as the mean man in white came at him with a needle.
Though he did not say it, this was what I heard in his cries:
‘My dad, my dad, why have you forsaken me!?!?’
‘How can you help this mean man attack me with the needle?’
From his point of view, those he loved and trusted were forsaking him.
But could he know it, he would realize that the opposite was true.
At that moment our hearts were closer to him than they’d ever been.
We were with him more than ever in that horrible moment.
This is not a theology argument, this is a real moment of despair.
This is how much God loves, not God abandoning those He loves.
Whenever I sing ‘In Christ Alone’, I change the words.
‘On that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath love of God was satisfied.’
God was not satisfied by Jesus’s dying, God was satisfied by Jesus’s loving.
God’s own love was being demonstrated in Jesus’s sacrificial love.
God hates unloving behaviours; God hates torture and crucifixion.
God hates mockery, ridicule, cruelty, violence, injustice.
His wrath is real against such evils, but He loves His children.
God chooses to be forsaken with humanity, to overcome this evil.
Love, not wrath, overcomes evil by refusing to join with.
To see God/Jesus enduring this horror with us should encourage us.
When we suffer in any way, God is not forsaking or punishing us.
God refuses to unleash judgment; instead God joins us in it.
God Himself absorbs our misery, the wages of sin unleashed by sin.
God is suffering with us when we suffer.
When we go through the fire, God goes with us.
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze… Do not be afraid, for I am with you.” (Isaiah 43:2,5)
When we suffer, we may say what David and Jesus said.
I’ve heard many people express this sense of abandonment.
This is not a lack of faith, it is the honest expression of faith.
They still say ‘my God, my God’, which means they’re still clinging to God.
God does not judge us for lack of faith; God knows what it is like.
God stands with us, holds us close, as we go through the fire.
As we say ‘my God, my God WHY?’ God says, ‘my child, my child, I am with you!’
Yes we do go through these situations, but we do not go alone.
For in Jesus we see that God goes with us, suffers with us.
In moments like these, God is closer to us than we realize.
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, I admit it, suffering and evil make me feel abandoned, forsaken. When I see what some people are going through, I cry out in honest despair. But the very fact that I cry out 'my God, my God' is my refusal to let go of God, even when it feels God is letting go of me. He is closer than we realize!!!