God Forsaking God

Scripture — Psalm 22:1-2 (NRSV)

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.

Devotion

As Jesus was dying on the cross, he quoted from two Hebrew psalms, Psalm 22 and Psalm 31. These inspired passages gave Jesus words to pray in his moment of extreme suffering as he bore the sin of the world.

According to Mark 15:33-34, shortly before Jesus died he “cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” That prayer is an exact quotation of the first line of Psalm 22 (in Aramaic, Jesus’s main language). The first couple of verses of that psalm read:

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

     Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;

     and by night, but find no rest.

In the words of this psalm, Jesus found a way to express the deep cry of his heart: Why had God forsaken, or, as other translations say, “abandoned” him? Why did Jesus’s Father turn his back on his Son in his moment of greatest agony?

On this side of Heaven, we will never fully know what Jesus was experiencing at this moment. Was he quoting from Psalm 22 because, in the mystery of his incarnational suffering, Jesus didn’t know why God the Father had abandoned him? Had that knowledge been taken from him somehow? Or was his cry not so much a question as an expression of profound agony? Or was it both? When we consider such questions, it’s good to remember a part of Charles Wesley’s classic hymn, “And Can It Be That I Should Gain?”

‘Tis mystery all! Th’Immortal dies!

Who can explore His strange design?

In vain the firstborn seraph tries

To sound the depths of love divine!

‘Tis mercy all! let earth adore,

Let angel minds inquire no more.

Though we’re not angels, we also cannot fully “sound the depths of love divine” or understand the mystery of the cross. Yet we do know that, on the cross, Jesus entered into the Hell of separation from God. The Father abandoned him because Jesus took upon himself the penalty for our sins. In that excruciating moment, Jesus experienced something far more horrible than physical pain. The beloved Son of God knew what it was like to be rejected by the Father. As we read in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake [God] made [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

I can write these words. I can say, truly, that the Father abandoned the Son for our sake, for the salvation of the world. But can I really grasp the mystery and the majesty of this truth?
The brilliant fifth-century theologian, Augustine of Hippo, once wrote this Christ’s quotation of Psalm 22:

In his most compassionate humanity and through his servant form we may now learn what is to be despised in this life and what is to be hoped for in eternity. In that very passion in which his proud enemies seemed most triumphant, he took on the speech of our infirmity, in which ‘our sinful nature was crucified with him’ that the body of sin might be destroyed, and said: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ . . . Thus the Psalm begins, which was sung so long ago, in prophecy of his passion and the revelation of the grace which he brought to raise up his faithful and set them free” (Augustine, “Letter 140 to Honoratus,” 5).

Yet, no matter how many brilliant theologians we read and how much we meditate upon the words of Jesus, we will never fully grasp the truth, horror, and wonder of what Jesus experienced on the cross. As Martin Luther once said, “God forsaking God. Who can understand it?” Yet even our minuscule grasp of this reality calls us to confession, humility, awe, worship, and adoration.

Ironically and wonderfully, Jesus’s quotation of Psalm 22 discloses a sense of hope when we remember the whole psalm from which it comes. Psalm 22 does indeed begin with desperation: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?” (Psalm 22:1). The psalm writer struggles with what feels like God’s complete absence during his suffering. But, in time, the psalmist comes to a deeper experience of God’s gracious presence: “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” (Psalm 22:24). Thus, the psalmist comes to praise the Lord who “rules over the nations” (Psalm 22:28). Jesus chose Psalm 22, not only because of its gut-wrenching cry of anguish, but also because it bears witness to Jesus’s own conviction that, somehow, the Father will exonerate his Son. The abandonment that Jesus experienced on the cross was not permanent. Something else was coming. One who knows Psalm 22 hears in the prayer of Jesus a subtle allusion to what will happen on Sunday morning after Good Friday has passed.

In the season of Lent, including Holy Week, we remember our mortality, our sin, our suffering. We do this not to wallow in self-pity. Rather, our remembrance leads our hearts to Jesus. We recognize his suffering and sacrifice, realizing once again that it was for us. Thus, our reflection on the cross leads us to echo the classic words of Charles Wesley, “Tis mercy all!”

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the High Calling archive, hosted by the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: The Tension of Faithful Prayer.