Mar 29 - My God, My God

My God, My God,

why have you

forsaken me?

Matthew 27:46

These words upon the cross are not original.

Even on the cross, Jesus is honoring both his heavenly Father and his Jewish heritage. In crying, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?,” Jesus is echoing the first verse of Psalm 22.

Some say that saying the first verse of a Psalm is a form of Jewish shorthand. “Pray the first verse, and you get credit for praying the whole prayer.” If that’s the case, Jesus is praying three things …

•      When Jesus cries out with a sense of forsakenness, these, to me, are the most agonizing words in history. At this moment, God is removing his – what’s the right word? – protection(?), presence(?), power(?), from his own Son. That’s what “forsaken” means – desolate and utterly alone. How can God-the-Son be utterly abandoned. I cry with him.
•      But that’s not all that’s in this cry. This Psalm starts with agony … but it ends, as many Psalms do, with hope and victory. Therefore, if Jesus is praying in shorthand; then this prayer, which starts with despair, is ultimately a prayer of victory too. Indeed, it is a prayer of “31 deliverance to a people yet unborn.” Which means that on the cross, Jesus was praying for you and me and our deliverance. Wow!
•      Finally, Jesus’ cry of forsakenness is painful and real. But if he was also praying the whole prayer, he was pointing to all of the Psalm 22 prophecies being fulfilled in their midst. Listen to how Psalm 22, written a thousand years before the birth of Jesus, describes precisely the events of the cross …
•      6 I am … scorned by others
•      6 I am … despised by the people
•      7 All who see me mock at me
•      8 [They mock me saying,] "let him rescue the one in whom he delights!" [Remember the cry, “If he is the Son of God, let God save him.”]
•      9 Yet it was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother's breast. 10 On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God. [Think of his birth and of his mother, Mary.]
•      12 Many bulls encircle me
•      13 they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion.
•      14 I am poured out like water
•      14 all my bones are out of joint;
•      14 my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast;
•      15 my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws
•      16 a company of evildoers encircles me.
•      16 My hands and feet have shriveled;
•      17 I can count all my bones.
•      17 They stare and gloat over me;
•      18 they divide my clothes among themselves
•      18 for my clothing they cast lots.
•      19 But you, O Lord, do not be far away! 
•      21 Save me from the mouth of the lion!
•      23 You who fear the Lord, praise him!
•      24 he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.
•      28 For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.
•      29 To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.
•      30 Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,
•      31 and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.

My God, my God, why do I deny your presence and your power.

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who’s overwhelmed

by Christ’s love and foresight

in the midst of his agony