Year A, Palm Sunday Psalm 22 A thousand years before this event the Jewish King David wrote the words of what we know as the 22 nd Psalm. David knew suffering and sorrow, and his honesty in his prayers and his laments is well known. But he did not know crucifixion. How amazing is it that Psalm 22 so clearly portrays Christ’s agony on the cross!!
When Jesus called out these words from the cross, it is fairly certain that he would have had the entire psalm in mind. In those days people were so well versed in the scriptures that to quote a verse would immediately bring the complete context to mind.
Jesus feels abandoned by his God, his Father. From the prisons and torture chambers of human savagery, victims still scream. Yet Jesus on the cross was not a victim. His lifting up on the cross was part of that lifting up by which he would draw all men to him. His cry came not only from the pain of the spikes, nor from the crushing pressure on his chest, but from the agony of his soul. His heavenly Father forsook Jesus on the cross. God does sometimes forsake sinners, giving them up to their unrepentant rebellion, lust, and pride. In the folly of their delusion they do not know the joy they have lost or the hell they have gained. But the cry of Jesus was the agony that bore the curse for us.
Normal daylight surrounded Jesus at his crucifixion, but then at noon a strange darkness covered the land, lasting until his death at about 3:00. The sufferer cries out in the daytime and by night—in the light and in the dark—and still God does not answer.
David the psalmist remembers the history of men of faith, and the fact that a faithful God never abandoned them. Even though they were sinful men, God saved them when they cried out to him. But not here, not today, not this sinless man.
He is treated like a despised and hated criminal, as though he had lost his right to live in human society. In Matthew’s account of the crucifixion, the crowd even uses these same words: “He trusts in God; let God deliver him now.” Jesus knows there are no grounds for abandonment in himself:
How utterly alone he his. His friends & followers have left him. Only God remains and now he feels that God himself is abandoning him. From the very moment of his birth, Jesus was in fellowship with God. He was the delight of God’s heart, his beloved Son, kept by his Father since before he was born. And yet, he is forsaken. Even God cannot, will not, help him. My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? In his human weakness, he seems not to understand. We know that it was because he was being made an offering for the sins of the world. All the ugliness and meanness and defilement and filth of our sin was laid on him; the Holy Father God could not bear to be in the presence of such great sin. Ultimately God’s name was glorified, for his justice was satisfied. Through Jesus’ obedience and death, God’s love triumphed over the vilenes, pride, and guilt of human sin. The love of the Father paid the price, for in the darkness the Father gave his Eternal Son in his human nature. We say it, but we don’t understand it. Abraham spared Isaac on the altar, but the Father did not spare his only Son. God showed his love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life. Amen! |