Mark A. Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
April 13, 2001 (Good Friday)

INTRODUCTION

Elohi, Elohi, lamah sh’vaktani…

According to St. Mark’s account of the Gospel, these are the last words of Jesus Christ before dying on the cross. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

There are few words in the entirety of Scripture with more pathos, with more feeling, with more despair. What are we to make of these words? What is the message we are to take from this?

THE DISTANCE OF GOD

We have all experienced those times in life where we feel that God is very far away, when we cry out, “Why have you forgotten me?” When we pray for God to show himself and to come to our aid.

How powerful, then, is this telling of the Passion, where the Anointed One himself, the Son of God, should feel that same despair? That Jesus should cry out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That in those last moments, Jesus should fear that God had abandoned him.

The earliest Christians certainly felt that way. Perhaps even those same Christians for whom Mark wrote his Gospel. Fearful, abandoned, afraid, despairing. Some think Mark’s community was in Rome–the same community which had suffered persecution under Emperor Nero. That same community might be asking “God, where are you? Why have you forgotten us?” What a comfort to know that in his last minutes, Christ, too, should feel that way.

REDEMPTION

Because as Christians, they would know that the story didn’t end there. The oldest manuscripts of Mark end with the women running from the empty tomb in fear. They are fearful, the same as the early Christians, but there is the hope of the Empty Tomb. The one who was willing to go to the cross, the one who in those last minutes felt such deep despair, has been vindicated by God, and raised to new life. There is hope even in the darkest hours–God is with us and there is hope.

There is something else about these words that bears noting. They are the first words of the 22nd Psalm. In Hebrew, Eli, Eli, Lamah azavtani? Jesus, ever the observant Jew, was doing what many pious Jews do when confronted by death, he was reciting the Psalms. Hear the words of that Psalm:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.

Words of anguish and despair. A lament. But there is more. The Psalm ends in a very different way.

Psa. 22:22-31 I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you: You who fear the LORD, praise him! … For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.¶ From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him. The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the LORD. May your hearts live forever!

¶ All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.

¶ To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him. Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.

In the same way that the Psalm ends differently than it begins, way we know that the story of Jesus’ crucifixion ends in a very different way from its beginning. And we know that because God is with us, our times of despair and isolation, our times of deepest fear, give way to times when we can join with the Psalmist in saying that we shall “proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that the Lord has done it.”