“Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”

+JMJ+

May the word of the Lord be on our minds, on our lips, and in our hearts, amen.

Come holy spirit....

I wish all of you a very blessed Good Friday of the Lord's Passion today, and a happy Easter weekend.

The following is part of the Gospel of Matthew's account of the passion and death of our Lord, Jesus Christ:

Matthew 27: 45

⁴⁵ From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. ⁴⁶ About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).


This is why 12-3pm on Good Friday are considered the Holy Hours, as they are the hours that Jesus hung on the cross before he died.

Can you conceive being nailed to wood and then hanging there for three hours? In the movies is lasts mere minutes. In reality, it was far more torturous.

I have heard many theories and speculations on Jesus suddenly asking God why He has forsaken Him. It is a part of His passion that seems somehow out of place to many people.  After all, why would the Son of God, who willingly submitted to this horrible death, lash out at His Father so suddenly?

Before we look into that, let's take a look back to a scene a bit earlier in Matthew's account of Christ's passion:

Matthew 26


³⁹ Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

⁴² He went away a second time and prayed, “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”

The above passages are from Jesus' time in the Garden of Gethsemane. It shows that Jesus is having His reservations about the suffering that was to come, yet also showing His obedience to His Father, and His love for humanity. 


So, when we fast forward to Jesus on the cross, in a moment of anguish, not too many moments before Jesus finally expired, Jesus also cries out in frustration and pain.


What do these passages show, then? They show Jesus' humanity! He was both human and divine at the same time. There have been various heresies in Church history where people have tried to claim that there was no humanity in Christ, that he was purely divine. 


This is not possible, however. A 100% divine being, such as God or the angels, cannot bleed, cannot feel pain, cannot sweat, cannot cry, cannot feel fatigue, and cannot die. Jesus, however, did all of these things.  Yet, at the same time, He performed miracles and did numerous other supernatural things during His ministry. He was both human and divine, at the same time.


So, when Jesus cried out: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?" it was his humanity that was screaming out. All of the pain, all of the abuse, all of the torture, all of the mocking that He endured finally got to be so much, that He lashed out for a brief moment. Remember the night before, Jesus asked that if the cup of suffering could be removed from Him by His Father, that it please be removed. God's Will was that this must come to pass, and under the crushing weight of the cross, the human side of Jesus felt forsaken for a brief moment. You can imagine the anguished thoughts that must have passed through Jesus' mind. Shortly before He expired, He even said, "I thirst," another very human feeling. 


A caller to a religious television show this past week, asked the host if God has pulled away from them because they are handicapped, and did God possibly stop caring about them? The answer, of course, is no. His handicap was his own cross to bear, and he felt like perhaps God has forsaken him, but as with Christ, God does not forsake us just because we have a cross to bear. But that feeling of being forsaken while carrying our cross is one with can all identify with. 

All of this is important for another reason. Quite often I hear people say, "Well I am not Jesus. Jesus was the son of God when He carried His cross, I am not Him." Christ's very human reaction to His suffering tells us that, in fact. Jesus knows exactly how we feel! His humanity allowed Him to feel every ounce of that pain, both physical and psychological. His humanity allows Jesus to know exactly how we feel when we are asked to carry our own crosses. His divinity did not spare Him from feeling the human side of that suffering, because our Lord was not only paying our prices for our sins, but can now say that He has gone through it before we did. 


And God did not punish Jesus in response to Christ's cry to Him. In fact, it is only a couple of verses later in the Gospel that Jesus finally gives up the spirit and dies, ending the suffering. And His suffering ended before the two criminals, as they were still alive when Christ died. God heard Jesus' cry of "My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?" and ended the torture shortly thereafter. 


We can also cry out to God, and to Jesus, when we feel alone, abandoned, afraid, or in the midst of any suffering. Tell God how you really feel. Cry out to Jesus to save you, for He has suffered, and felt that suffering fully, and knows what you are feeling. And God would not have sacrificed His son, and Jesus would not have agreed to endure that suffering, if they did not love you and feel you were worth it. It's well known that sometimes God pulls away to test, and thereby strengthen, our faith, but that does not equate abandonment. He is simply....around the corner, so to speak. Watching you to see how you are doing, and whether or not you are still faithful to Him even when you may not sense His presence. But you are not forsaken. Neither was Jesus, even though He briefly felt that way, just like we sometimes do. 

On this Good Friday, remember to smile, because God and Jesus love you. Remember to love Them back.

Godspeed, everyone.