The Cross.  We use a cross to adorn hats, shirts, flags, and covers for our books.  The Cross. We use a cross in jewelry, license plates, and even for our food.  The Cross. We use a cross as a nearly universal symbol of help even among combatants of the world.  The Cross.  Why the cross?

          For centuries, the cross was not seen in such friendly and pleasant terms.  For centuries, the cross was a universal symbol of brutal power used to punish and publicly torture an enemy.  The cross was used in ancient Persia, India, and China.  The cross was used by the Greeks, Romans, and even the Jews. Execution upon the cross was a horror. The pain was searing.  The humiliation was complete.  The sense of abandonment seemed unending.

          We know that Jesus faced death through the cross.  While upon the cross, Jesus spoke only a few times and only a few words each time. Jesus said,

• Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. (Luke 23:34)
• Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise. (Luke 23:43)
• Woman, behold thy son! and Behold thy mother! (John 19:26-27)
• My God, My God, why have You forsaken me? (Mark 15:34)
• I thirst. (John 19:28)
• It is finished.  (John 19:30)
• Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.  (Luke 23:46)

From the scene of Jesus upon the cross, I want to focus on the only words Jesus spoke in the Aramaic language, the language of the common people. Jesus said in Aramaic: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34).

Forsakenness is such a terrible state of mind and being.  In forsakenness, there is the sense of complete and utter abandonment, a sense of isolation and aloneness.  In relationships, you are forsaken by the actions of another because they have chosen to renounce you. 

The words, “My God, my God, why – why have you forsaken me?” spoken by Jesus are very troubling.  Jesus’ question makes you wonder did God abandon Jesus?  Wasn’t Jesus being faithful to God’s will by going to the cross? And yet Jesus’ question, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” seems to express a feeling that God has abandoned Jesus at his hour of greatest need.  It brings us to ask ourselves, “If God abandoned Jesus in his hour of greatest need, then will God also abandon me in my times of greatest need?”  These are fair questions.  We have been often told that Jesus felt a profound sense of separation from God at this point.  We have been told that Jesus was crying out in the sense of isolation with the sins of the world upon him.  We are told as sin and God could not bear to look upon Jesus and so Jesus said, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

I struggle with such reflections because they seem to set God to be at war with himself.  Such reflections imply that God in heaven and God the Son were not one.  It was as though the power of the cross to harm, humiliate, and isolate its victim was greater than God himself.

I think there is a different way of looking at the scene upon the cross.  It is way to see the scene as one in which God is not at war with himself.  It is a way of seeing Jesus’ words of lament and sorrow as words spoken to reassure and comfort his followers.  Jesus’ words, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” are words that foretell what was to come and that God is with us always – including our darkest hours.

Let’s begin by looking going to the scene on the cross the last seven things Jesus said. 

• Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. (Luke 23:34)
• Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise. (Luke 23:43)
• Woman, behold thy son! and Behold thy mother! (John 19:26-27)
• My God, My God, why have You forsaken me? (Mark 15:34)
• I thirst. (John 19:28)
• It is finished.  (John 19:30)
• Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.  (Luke 23:46)

At the beginning of the ordeal on the cross, Jesus spoke intimately to his Father, as a child would to a parent.  He says, “Father, forgive them.”  At the end of the ordeal, Jesus spoke again to his Father intimately with his last words, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” Sandwiched between those two intimate statements is the text of today’s message.  The words seem less personal, less intimate, beginning with, “My God, my God.”  God is the Father to be sure and God is Jesus’ father.  However, in context, Jesus never refers to God as “My God.”  Jesus always refers to God as “Father” or “My Father.” So did Jesus really speak to God about his condition from the cross to God when he said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  If Jesus was speaking to God, then would it not make more sense for Jesus to be as intensely intimate as possible?  If he wanted to beckon to his Father, would he not speak the word “Father,” and not the word, “God”?  And if Jesus felt abandoned by his Father halfway through the ordeal on the cross, why would his final words be expressed intimately, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”?  Perhaps then, Jesus in speaking these words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” was not addressing himself to God at all.  Perhaps instead, Jesus was instead speaking to his disciples and to us.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” are the first verse of Psalm 22, written about 1,000 years before Jesus was born.  The psalm begins, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” and then almost immediately begins describing the crucifixion of a man: “7 All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads.  8 “He trusts in the Lord,” they say, “let the Lord rescue him.  Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.”  9 Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast.  10 From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God.  11 Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help.  12 Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me.  13 Roaring lions that tear their prey open their mouths wide against me.  14 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.  15 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. 6 Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet. 17 All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me.  18 They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment” (Psalm 22:7-18).  The scene created by these words spoken 1,000 years before Jesus is unmistakably a crucifixion.

Jesus, who is on the cross, being crucified, can speak only a few words.  Each word he does say comes at the price of excruciating pain.  But here in just one sentence, Jesus using the opening line to Psalm 22 is opening the minds of the common people at the foot of his cross. Those who knew this passage could see the Psalm’s description of a crucifixion played out in real life with Jesus upon the cross.  But Jesus may have wanted his followers to see the other parts of the psalm. Perhaps Jesus was preaching Psalm 22 as his final sermon from the cross.   If that might be the case, let’s look at how the psalm continues after the description of a man being crucified.

Verse 22, this man upon the cross says, “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you.”  He is describing to those who are listening that the name of the Lord is holy, and that Lord is to be praise in the most difficult circumstances.  Despite the pain, the man, here played in real time by Jesus, would remain one with God.  Jesus never waivered in his believe in God and God’s mercy and forgiveness.

Verse 23 says, “You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!”  The psalmist, and now Jesus, was telling his followers that God is to be glorified in all circumstances, even through the pain of the cross.

Why amid this torture could Jesus be so confident of the love the Father has for him that he could continue to honor God?  Listen to verse 24 says, “For he (for the psalmist God, for Jesus his Father) has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.”  Jesus was telling those at the foot of the cross, those who were say to him, “If you are the Christ let God save you.” – that in fact God has heard him and would save him.  Jesus’ Father, God, had not despised Jesus, as his tormentors would want him to believe. God has not hidden his face from Jesus. God was in him, and he was in God. 

The psalmist continued in verse 25, “From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you will I fulfill my vows.”  Jesus was affirming to all that from God, his Father, comes the source of his praise.  It was from God that comes the message of his heart.  Jesus said as much all throughout his ministry and Jesus was not changing his message now that he was upon the cross.  Jesus came from heaven for the purpose of that ministry and for the purpose of the cross itself.  It was in the garden of Gethsemane he spoke these words found in Mark 14:36, “Abba, Father, everything is possible with you.  Take this cup from me.  Yet not what I will, but what you will.”  Jesus kept his oath, his vow, even under extreme conditions of the cross.  Jesus gave his life by following God’s will.  Jesus’ life was not taken from him.

Verse 26 he declares, “The poor will eat and be satisfied; they who seek the LORD will praise him— may your hearts live forever!”  Who are the poor?  Are they literally those without money?  Or are they those who are poor in “self?”  They are humble and have yielded their pride.  They are those who find in themselves nothing, and in God they find everything.  Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”  This is the good news that Jesus preached repeatedly.  Come to God empty and you will be filled.  Come to Him filled – filled with yourself – and you will be turned away empty – empty of him.  Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” Jesus was using Psalm 22 to declare to those who are hungry for righteousness will be satisfied in and through him.

What then is the response by those who find God through Jesus Christ?  Verse 27 tells us, “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.” Here, Jesus used the words of Psalm 22 to declare that despite what may be his condition at the moment, his name would go out to the ends of the earth.  Jesus told his disciples, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations.”  Paul told us, “That at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.”

Why shall such honor be given to him?  Verse 28 says, “for dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations.”  Though Jesus gave his life, it was not taken from him because he had all authority. He told Pontius Pilate, “You have no power over me if it were not given to you from above.”  He told his disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

Jesus was now approaching the conclusion through verse 30 and 31 of the psalm. Verse 30 says, “Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord.” To his followers at the cross, Jesus was telling them his story was going to continue.  Jesus’ story would not die out.  If you want to know if that is true, just look around the room.  We are here as testimony to the prophesy spoken of by Jesus. He story did not die on the cross.

Finally, Jesus through the last verse of Psalm 22, “31 They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!”  Jesus was making clear that his mission would be completed through the cross even to those unborn at the time of his death.  The sermon, Psalm 22, with its crucifixion scene and proclamation that God had saved him was complete.  And with that Jesus spoke again from the cross saying, “It is finished.”

Why the cross?  Why the question, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  To these questions we must answer, God prove everything through the cross, the terrible instrument of beastly men, was transformed by God into the universal symbol of love and help.  God had not forsaken Christ as so many want us to believe.  Instead, God was with Christ.  And if we believe in Christ, God will not forsake us.  God proved this with his power to raise Christ from the dead. God will do no less for us through the grace poured out to us through his son, Jesus.  That is why we needed the cross. Amen and Amen.