Around mid-afternoon Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
Matthew 27:46 MSG

I’m writing this on Easter Saturday, the day when the first followers of Jesus hid, disillusioned, disappointed and despairing and more than a little afraid. All of Creation held its breath!

Based on a particular way of understanding Jesus work on the cross, that promotes the idea of an angry God needing to be appeased, there is a popular worship song that interprets Jesus words above as, “The Father turned his face away”. I’ve heard it said God couldn’t look on Jesus because of all of humanity’s sin that he took upon himself, but I think scripture abundantly teaches that although we’re all sinful, God still looks on us and loves us, despite our sin (or is it because we’re helpless sinners?). We’re all sinful, and without Jesus may be separated from God but we’re not abandoned…we continue to be deeply loved…that’s God’s very nature!

What I think is actually going on here is actually an act of defiance by Jesus to all the powers, human and spiritual, that had brought him to this place. It is a confidant statement of who he is (the Son of God) and why he came (to restore the break-up between Creation and it’s Creator) and bring in a new age filled with pregnant possibilities.

Jesus is quoting from Psalm 22:1. This is one of King David’s Messianic Psalms which is full of imagery that followers of Jesus have always associated with Jesus and his death on the cross.

It’s worth sitting down and reading the whole Psalm (31 verses). If you can read it in a version of the Bible you’re less familiar with, so the words have a new freshness.

It’s a Psalm that would have been familiar to every Jewish person in the crowd…They will have remembered it’s words, and ‘read’ on in their minds. The description of what’s going on in the Psalm parallels so much of Jesus experience on the cross, including what looks like a description of crucifixion:

• Scorned and insulted
• Not rescued by God
• Suffering
• Thirsty
• Clothes divided up
• Pierced hands and feet

Those who carried on reciting the Psalm in their heads will have arrived at verses 24 to 27, where the Psalmist makes the point that all that suffering had a purpose…it was achieving something! Finally they will arrive at verses 30 and 31, which in the NIV reads: “They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!”

“He has done it!” Mission accomplished…or as John put it in his account of Jesus life, death and resurrection, “It is finished!” (John 19:30 NIV) or “It’s done…complete!” (John 19:30 MSG)

And everyone in the crowd whose spiritual ears and eyes were tuned in, and whose hearts were open, will have heard not a cry of defeat and despair but a shout of victory. “My God, my God” not just a cry of abandonment but a defiant declaration of prophesy’s fulfilment. And then…

…Jesus may have appeared forsaken by God, but 3 days later God vindicated him by raising him from the dead.