There are few unique events in history... The same patterns occur and recur... Here, however, is a moment in the story of man which is unique... Suddenly on a Friday afternoon a man was forsaken by God, cut off from the living and the dead, utterly and ultimately alone... The shadowed emptiness in those shadowed eyes... The sudden flood of every sin of every soul from Eden to Chicago raging in a broken heart... It was then, much more than afterward, that He died...
You see, this is sin... It is not merely a matter of murder and adultery and gossip... Something to do or not to do!... It is always loneliness... It is cutting yourself off from God... It is a deliberate turning away from truth, from goodness, from heaven...
You see, this is redemption... All this He took into Himself, alone there in the dark... He became sin for us... A mystery?... Yes, but only a part of the great mystery which began in a stable and was now ending on a cross... Above His "Eli, Eli" was the sound of tearing veils, of falling walls, of the glad crying of those who now had a home again after the long loneliness of sin... They would continue to wander, groping, stumbling, falling, in all the black ways which men walk when they turn away from God - to the counting house, the Maginot line, and the West Wall... But there was a way back now, beyond Jerusalem, and beyond thought and hope to the place where the open arms of the cross had become the gates of heaven...
O. P. Kretzmann, *Seven Words for Good Friday* in *The Pilgrim* p. 47
There is no way He was forsaken by God, not literally, because He *was* God, every moment, without change, without confusion, without separation, without division, says the Council of Chalcedon. His two Natures cannot be separated, so as to permit the Father to turn against Jesus the Man only. He would have to have turned away from the whole Person, Human and Divine; but the Holy Trinity cannot split up like that.
ReplyDeleteWe also have the assurance of that very Psalm Jesus was quoting when He cried out. Verse 24 says, "For He hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath He hid His face from Him; but when He cried unto Him, He heard." It doesn't say in the Resurrection, but even in the affliction, even as He cried out, the Father heard him and did not hide His face from Him.
God never forsakes anyone. It just feels that way when we forsake Him. We tend to blame God for our sense of godforsakenness. But it isn't so, and Jesus knew it, even as, in His gracious and measureless condescension, He shared in our sense of lostness.
When the Scripture says He became sin for us *Who knew no sin,* it means what He did had that effect, without being literally so. Jesus didn't literally turn into sin or become sinful. It says He knew no sin, not He had never up to that moment known any. He never knew any, and the Father was never disgusted with His beloved Son, especially not at the very apex of the Son's love and faithfulness and obedience and bravery.
Let us alays admit it is we who have departed from Him and have adopted lifestyles and have done deeds which, for His very love of us, He will not bless.
A most blessed Pascha to you and yours!
Anastasia
Dear Anastasia,
ReplyDeleteConsider the words of St. Gregory Nazianzus that I read yesterday while meditating on this Psalm:
It was not He who was forsaken either by the Father, or by His own Godhead, as some have thought, as if It were afraid of the Passion, and therefore withdrew Itself from Him in His sufferings (for who compelled Him either to be born on earth at all, or to be lifted on the cross?). But He was in His own person representing us. For we were the forsaken and despised before, but now by the sufferings of Him who could not suffer, we were taken up and saved. Similarly, He makes His own our folly and our transgressions; and says what follows in the Psalm, for it is very evident that the 21st Psalm refers to Christ. (Fourth Theological Oration)
Wishing you and yours a blessed Pascha too!!!
Yes, the Nazianzus quote is better. Christ was representing us. It was a representation, not a literal reality. (Nor does God ever literally forsake even us.)
ReplyDeleteYet as I mentioned, the effect is the same; and that's what all this sort of language is getting at.
Push it to far and you end up in a very bad place.
Anastasia
When we try to fit the text into what we think the doctrine of the Trinity should be, then we ignore and destroy the text.
ReplyDeleteFar better to just take Jesus at His Word and let our doctrine deal with it.
I remember a time when I would not like what the text was saying and use my theology to make the text say something else. I was wrong to do that.
It's no less wrong to do it with this text than it is to do it with any other.
If Jesus couldn't bear us saying that God forsook Him, He wouldn't have said it.
Obviously Jesus did not stop being God; there was no ontological (or super-ontological) breach. But He was forsaken all the same--given up to His enemies. Christ is the only Man who ever had a complete right to expect that God would save Him from those who hated Him without cause... and God did not.
ReplyDeleteDear Chaz,
ReplyDeleteIf we take that approach with one verse of the Psalm, we should do the same with all. In that case, we shall have to beleive both that the Father did forsake the Son (v. 1) AND that He did not (v. 24).
If we compromise, contradict, or ignore the great dogma of the Holy Trinity, then we shall fashion for ourselves a different god from the Holy Trinity Whom Christians worship. And it will be because we have let something else guide our interpretation of Holy Scripture, something else we regarded as more important.
Anastasia
Yes, He was delivered up to his enemies, but this is not the same as to say He was forsaken by His Father. On the contrary, we hear him pray, "Thy will be done," and we know that His passion and death were absolutely voluntary. He could have summoned legions of angels to His assistance; He could have come down from the Cross at any time. But of course He didn't.
ReplyDeleteThus, even during His passion and His death, there was, as always, perfect harmony between Father and Son. There was never any rupture of their communion, nor could there have been, between God and God.
Anastasia
Friends,
ReplyDeleteToday is the day to adore the mystery, not dispute about it. The Lamb of God, bearing the sin of the world, sacrifices Himself, offers Himself to death, and the Father looks upon this sacrifice with a serene countenance. It is the mystery of Love that we adores today. Let us fall silent from disputes and cry out to Him: "By the wood of Your cross joy has come into all the world!"