Forsaken

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.

Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.

In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them.

To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people.

All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;

“He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

-- Psalm 22:1-8

At nine o’clock in the morning, Jesus was nailed to a rough beam, the wood likely already a stained and saturated witness of man’s cruel justice.  Naked, hanging as if spitted like the Passover lamb that foretold Him, Jesus was left to bear all the dark repulsiveness of sin.  The Father had called Him, “My beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased.”  Now even the Father had to turn away.

We may go through many dark valleys and bear many burdens.  Men and women have suffered and endured terrors that defy the scope of human language.  Yet none can be compared to what Jesus experienced in six hours upon the cross.  For one, it was six hours by the clocks of earth; in heaven, it rends the fabric of eternity, an always, timeless suffering.  For another --  as it is eternal, it is universal.  All of humanity that ever lived or ever will live and every misdeed done, every vile thought pursued, all the disgusting blackness of all human hearts gathered to be borne away by One. 

One alone.        

And in the midst of His suffering, the ones for whom He was dying, the ones He loved and over whom He wept, they ridiculed Him, laughed at His trust, at His claims that He knew the Lord, that He was the Son.  Had He not told them of the Prodigal?  He had not asked what earthly father would give his hungry child a stone or a serpent instead of bread or fish?  His own words, echoing from their sneers, added to His torment.  Now He was to be cast down like that piece of brass, that Nehushtan on a pole destroyed by Hezekiah.  Was He wrong about it all?  Would it all be for nothing?

Immobile, bleeding, fighting for every breath, humiliated, in unbearable pain.  Abandoned. 

He knows how it feels.  

On Friday.