Jesus Was Not Forsaken
Much theology has been based on Jesus’ exasperated words on the cross, creating a kind of God who is a bit precious—too holy to look upon sin.
It’s no wonder we often feel forsaken by God when we suffer and sin.
Mark tells the story like this: He describes a strange, midday darkness that comes over the whole land, casting a shadow over the Son of God, dying on a cross. With his final breath, Jesus cries, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). Is this a cruel trick that the joy of seeking the kingdom led him toward what feels like hell? The longing for connection with the Father has brought Jesus to the suffering of separation from him.
Yet, I have to wonder: Did the Father actually forsake Jesus? Or was Jesus following the ancient pattern of lament that we see in the Psalms? What if he had childlike freedom to express his feeling of being abandoned? Maybe this was not Jesus seizing one final opportunity to make a theological statement but a deeply human release of emotion. There’s a difference between the very real feeling of being forsaken and actual forsakenness. In addition to the excruciating physical pain Jesus experiences, there’s the very real emotional and spiritual torment—I’m only here because I said yes to every prompt of the Spirit. I’m only here because I chose to be a child, welcoming the kingdom. Why would a good God reward me in this way for my obedience? It’s how we all feel when obedience feels like death. There’s a long and rich Jewish tradition of crying out when we feel that way.
I have to wonder if Mark’s intent is not only to record this single exclamation of Jesus but also to draw attention to the entire Psalm Jesus references. Although Psalm 22 was written centuries before Jesus’s birth, the words seem tailored for his use on the cross:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish? . . .
All who see me mock me;
they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
“He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
“let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
since he delights in him.” . . .
Roaring lions that tear their prey
open their mouths wide against me.
I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
it has melted within me.
My mouth is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth;
you lay me in the dust of death.
Dogs surround me,
a pack of villains encircles me;
they pierce my hands and my feet.
All my bones are on display;
people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my clothes among them
and cast lots for my garment. (vv. 1, 7–8, 13–18)
It’s only natural, when we experience suffering, to try to understand it, to overcome it and escape it. We do all in our power to alleviate our misery, and if we finally decide God has forsaken us, we forsake him. But a child who suffers responds like one without power. A child cries out for help to a power greater than his own. A child knows there is a place to wail, to proclaim in great detail the state of his soul, his mind, his body. And once the sobbing is over, there is release and the calm of new possibilities, as we see in many psalms of lament, including Psalm 22, which weaves back and forth from words of anguish to words of praise:
Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the one Israel praises.
In you our ancestors put their trust;
they trusted and you delivered them.
To you they cried out and were saved;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame. . . .
Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.
From birth I was cast on you;
from my mother’s womb you have been my God. . . .
You who fear the Lord, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!
Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!
For he has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.
From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;
before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows.
The poor will eat and be satisfied;
those who seek the Lord will praise him—
may your hearts live forever!
All the ends of the earth
will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before him,
for dominion belongs to the Lord
and he rules over the nations.
All the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—
those who cannot keep themselves alive.
Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn:
He has done it! (vv. 3–5, 9–10, 23–31)
Perhaps Jesus’s potsherd mouth was too parched for a complete recitation. But what a possibility to imagine that those who heard him also knew the Psalm he referenced. After all, the onlookers seem to respond to more than the first phrases of the psalm—they offer him a drink (perhaps in response to the Psalm’s words, “my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth”) and wait to see if Elijah will save him (perhaps in response to the entire tone of Psalm 22). And it’s possible that Jesus’ last words recorded in John’s telling, “It is finished!” echo the Psalm’s last words, “He has done it!”
And if we needed any further proof that the Father had not forsaken him, we only had to wait a few days. The Spirit that had prompted him every day of his life, that had led him toward many deaths, also held the pain in every kind of death he died. Even if out of childlike obedience to the Spirit, we, like Jesus, are led to die social and emotional and relational and political and economic and existential and physical deaths, not one of those deaths is beyond the resurrection power of the Spirit. God did not forsake Jesus in his pain, and God does not forsake us in ours.
In truth, in pain we can come to know him better than ever before.
(excerpt from Unfettered: Imagining a Childlike Faith Beyond the Baggage of Western Culture)