Approaching Easter - Forsaken - Philip Yancey

"My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
(Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:33)


This time only, of all his prayers in the Gospels, Jesus used the formal, distant word "God" rather than "Abba," or "Father."  He was quoting from a psalm (22:1), of course, but he was also expressing a grave sense of estrangement. Some inconceivable split had opened up in the Godhead. The Son felt abandoned by the Father.

"The 'hiddenness' of God perhaps presses more painfully on those who are in another way nearest to Him, and therefore God Himself, made man, will of all men be by God the most forsaken," wrote C. S. Lewis.

No doubt he is right. It matters little if I am rebuffed by the checkout girl at the supermarket or even by a neighbor two blocks down the street.

But if my wife, with whom I've spent my entire adult life, suddenly cuts off all communication with me -- that matters.

No theologian can adequately explain the nature of what took place within the Trinity on that day at Calvary. All we have is a cry of pain from a child who felt forsaken.

Did it help that Jesus had anticipated that his mission on earth would include such a death?

What if no angel had appeared and Abraham had plunged a knife into the heart of his son, his only son, whom he loved? What then?

 Did it help Isaac to know his father Abraham was just following orders when he tied him to the altar?

That is what happened at Calvary, and to the Son it felt like abandonment.

We are not told what God the Father cried out at that moment. We can only imagine.

The Son "became a curse for us," said Paul in Galatians, and "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us," he wrote the Corinthians.

We know how God feels about sin; the sense of abandonment likely cut both ways.



Commentators have observed that the record in Matthew and Mark is one of the strongest proofs that we have an authentic account of what took place on Calvary. For what reason would the founders of a new religion put such disparaging words in the mouth of their dying hero--unless that's precisely what he said.


  -- From The Jesus I Never Knew, by Philip Yancey