Reflections on the Seven Words of Jesus from the Cross: 4 Jesus forsaken

Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew 27.46 (www.biblegateway.com NRSVA)

The BBC’s televised worship for Palm Sunday included the hymn ‘Great is thy faithfulness’. It was taken from a recording made in Hereford Cathedral in 2017 and it struck the wrong note for me. ‘There is no shadow of turning with Thee,’ seemed a hollow assertion in the middle of a pandemic, as did the hymnwriter’s promise of ‘bright hope for tomorrow’.

Jesus certainly experienced the ‘shadow of turning’ when he was crucified. One of his last recorded words is, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’

He’s quoting the psalms, which he would have learned by heart, but he’s quoting the words not in Hebrew, but in his everyday spoken language, Aramaic. He has made the words his own. This is how he really feels.

Martyn Payne wrote on the Bible Reading Fellowships’s website that ‘many of us are turning to the Psalms at this time. There we find templates to help us - prayers that capture the huge range of emotions that are churning us up, as we think about this crisis. The psalms remind us that it’s okay to cry out in pain and confusion to God.’

An authentic prayer, he said, can be a simple ‘heartfelt cry for help’ to the God ‘who promises through Christ to answer our prayers.’*

*https://www.brf.org.uk/updates/how-should-we-pray-such-time, 5 April 2020

Comments

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