"My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?"

44 Days ago on Ash Wednesday we heard about pride.  And we heard that repentance is the death of pride.  That pride must be forsaken and die.  But, at the same time, the payment for that pride – that sin – must still be made.  To kill it requires death – of course.  Tonight we will hear the story once more of how that took place.  Tonight, all our sinful pride is placed on THE once-for-all, life-and-blood sacrifice for our pride.  Jesus Christ.  Tonight, we rehearse once again how all our sinful pride is placed on the Lamb of God who will die shamefully with that pride.  All your sin and my sin and all the sin of all people of all time is placed on Jesus.  And like all sacrifices, he is left there on the altar – on the cross – to die.  The sacrifice is always left and abandoned by both parties involved – us sinners, and our God who offers payment for us sinners.  Jesus cries out in horror because he has been abandoned, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  These words are not recorded by John – whose account we hear tonight.  They are written in Matthew and Mark’s Gospels.  But these words of Jesus have been considered by the Church to be the 4^th of Jesus’ 7 words from the cross.   

We watch the abandonment happen slowly and viscerally tonight – lights, candles, darkness and abandonment becoming more ominous as we progress.  As we participate and experience it visually and in our hearing, one might ask the question asked by God’s people for millennia.  “Why him and not me?”  “I’m the one who God should abandon.”  “If, in the mystery of the Trinity God could abandon his own Son, maybe he has abandoned me as well?”  The one abandoned and dying on the cross is quoting a psalm – Psalm 22 - of his royal line – King David.  How often have we felt like David felt when he wrote that psalm?  So many times it feels and looks like our God has forsaken us, like there really is no God with me to help and guide me.  He forsook his own Son.  Has he forsaken me too?

            Yet through history, God has given signs to His people that he has not abandoned him.  God provided the sacrifice – a ram – the moment before Abraham was about to sacrifice his own son, Isaac, as instructed by God.  The provided ram pointed to God’s providing his own son in sacrifice.  In Egypt, the night before they were freed, the Israelite families sacrificed and ate a lamb, and painted the lamb’s blood on their doorposts – so that the angel of death would pass over their house.  The blood of the lamb pointed forward to the blood of the Lamb of God given and shed for you and me to forgive us, so that the sting of death might pass over us as well.  In the Tabernacle and later the Temple, sacrifices for sin were made as lambs and bulls and oxen were killed for payment of sin, and left to burn on the altar.  Those sacrifices for sin pointed forward to Jesus - sacrificed for all sin and left to die on the cross.  And on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would lay his hands on a goat and confess the sins of all the people – placing those sins on the goat.  And then that goat was abandoned in the wilderness.  The “scapegoat” pointed forward to Jesus – our scapegoat – abandoned outside of Jerusalem on our Day of Atonement with all our sin placed upon him.

            All these signs and more pointed forward to Jesus.  Jesus physically embodies our sin – becoming sin for us.  The innocent Jesus becomes the greatest sinner in all history.  And because all our pride and sin is on him, he must be forsaken.  He must be abandoned by the most holy God who will not tolerate it.  “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”  Jesus, you are forsaken because you are sin, and you cannot be accepted, or loved.  You must be abandoned and killed.  And Jesus even does this willingly.  He lays down his life.  Why?  Love for you.  And God is merciful to you and does not forsake you and me, sinners that we are, precisely because he has shown his Son no mercy.  God the Father forsakes and rejects his Son saying, “You are not mine” so that he can say to you through this good, yes, good news on this Good Friday – “You are mine.”

            At the end of tonight’s service, when this Sanctuary is dark and looks abandoned, a single light – the Christ candle returns.  Because the Father does not abandon Jesus forever.  He raises him from the dead.  And precisely because Jesus was forsaken - in the end, the Father does precisely the same for you – raise you from the dead.  So what about you?  What is YOUR sign that God has not forsaken you?  Look at that man - crying out on that cross – the one who yells in horror, “My God, why have you forsaken me?”  Look to the one risen from the dead 3 days later.  He is your sign.  So when you question if God is really with you like David did, look at the cross – look at what God the Father did to his Son.  Because of Jesus, you are not and will never be forsaken.  

“In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.”