Frosaken [Wednesday in Lent 3; St. Matthew 27:45-49]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

This evening, we hear Jesus speak our fourth word from His cross, forsaken:

“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

In the Latin, we hear Jesus say the word dereliquisti, or as you might recognize today: derelict. A man who is derelict is said to be shamefully negligent in not having done what he should have done. In other words, he has forsaken his duties. Usually derelict is more used of buildings or objects that have fallen to ruin because they have been forsaken.

Either way, when we see Jesus on the cross in His own ruined body, we can clearly see this dereliction of duty. Someone has neglected Jesus. Someone has caused His ruination in not doing what should have been done.

The wonder of Jesus on the cross is that Jesus does not blame us. No, He has already spoken a word of forgiveness for sins done in ignorance. No, tonight and as we hear on Maundy Thursday, it sounds like Jesus is placing the blame squarely on God.

Imagine that. The Father forsakes His only begotten son. In a show of what modern scholars have called “divine child abuse”, Jesus is stricken, smitten, and afflicted all while the Father looks on, apparently indifferent to the entire matter, as He does not act to change it.

This idea follows from trying to understand what the heck Jesus is doing on the cross. We would call this the Theory of Substitutionary Atonement. Where Jesus is suffering in our place. Where He is punished and we are let off scot free. He is our substitute, our stand in for our trial, our conviction, and our sentence commutation.

However, in our backwards-upside-down world, the Father forsaking anything is not evil, but good. If the Father forsakes people in the wilderness, it is good. If someone dies out of hand, it is good. If Jesus suffers and dies for crimes He did not commit, it is good.

Blasphemy! A God that abuses or punishes for no reason is no God at all, but a demon. If God claims to be a God of love, He has no right to enact this sort of thing on anyone, much less His only begotten Son.

But punishment is not inconsistent with love. We punish our own children, not because we hate them, but because we love them. When God forsakes in the Old Testament, in a secondary sense, it is to bring His people back to a better place than they are at or were headed towards. In the primary sense, forsakenness is to point us to Jesus.

Yet, we find more often than God forsaking, we forsake God. Moses says that we have forsaken the rock that begot us, the God Who birthed us (Deut. 32:18). Jeremiah says, “Have you not brought this upon yourself  by forsaking the Lord your God, when he led you in the way?” (2:17). It is all too often that we forsake God for the riches, concerns, and cares of this world, neglecting preaching and His Word.

And while God does forsake, it is not forever. In Nehemiah chapter 9, God mentions forsaking 3 different times. Once it is Him forsaking, twice it is Him not forsaking (v. 17, 28, 31). Psalm 9 says, “And those who know your name put their trust in you, for you, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek you.” (v.10)

The righteous are not forsaken (Ps. 37:25) and Jesus has come to fulfill all righteousness. Thus it is these promises which our Lord recites over and over again on the cross, knowing that He is the Righteousness One and that though He is abandoned for a brief moment (Isa. 54:7), He will be gathered up to life again.

The cross is the freely-chosen, gracious choice and act of the Father, Son and Spirit. It is not just another man that the Father is forsaking because of our sins, but God who became a man Himself and took upon Himself His own just punishment.

This is why it’s so important to approach this challenge with an understanding of the Trinity, and an understanding of the nature of God. Jesus is God; He isn’t just an innocent third party.  He is the Judge Himself suffering, the One who determines the punishment and takes it, the One who passes judgment and receives it.  It is Jesus, the incarnate God.

The God who does not suffer with us doesn’t know us and becomes the remote God of deism. The God Who cannot at the same time be forsaken and yet completely one with Himself is another false idol. Jesus is the Lord of life even in the midst of death and He made a way for dead, sinful creatures to follow Him and live with Him.

Man has been derelict in his duties and has turned from God, causing the suffering and death of Jesus. But, Jesus does not give His life up by chance or fate, but lays it down Himself that He might take it back up again. He is forsaken by the Father in order that, as His redeemed children, we might never be forsaken.

As Johann Sebastian Bach put it:

When I one day must depart from here Then do not depart from me,
When I must suffer death Then step forward next to me!
When most full of fear I am in my heart,
Then snatch me from my fears By the strength of your agony and pain!