We are in week five of our Lenten sermon series called, “The Seven Last Words,” in which we are walking through Jesus’s seven last sayings on the cross. This week, we are going to look at this saying: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The question becomes, is God turning His back on His Son, Jesus, in His greatest time of need and does God forsake?

     The explanation is quite complicated (come to church this Sunday to hear all about it!) but the answer is a resounding “no.” As the Scripture promises, God will never leave us or forsake us, and that includes His One and Only Son, Jesus. What Jesus is doing in this moment on the cross is quoting Psalm 22. In the Jewish tradition, there were four levels of interpreting the Torah (the first five books in the Old Testament): peshat, remez, derash, and sod. The second level of interpretation, called remez, refers to deeper meanings or hidden messages that are hinted at within the text but not explicitly stated. Simply put, Jesus is giving a hint to the crowd gathered at His crucifixion because He knows every Jewish person in the crowd that day, which would have been the majority of people, would know the first line of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” as well as the rest of the entire psalm. Jewish people in the first century A.D. knew their Bibles extremely well. They had gone to Hebrew school starting at a young age and they learned the Torah and they would sing from the psalms. By quoting the first line of Psalm 22, Jesus knew that every Jewish person in the crowd would immediately begin to quote or sing the rest of Psalm 22.

     Christ quoting the first line of the prophetic psalm of David was Him essentially proclaiming the fulfillment of prophecy. It was Him identifying Himself with the suffering servant described in Psalm 22, which foretold the details of His crucifixion over one-thousand years before this event even happened. By quoting the psalm, Jesus was pointing to its ultimate message: though He suffered, God would vindicate Him. Indeed, He did.

     We can learn so much from this one saying on the cross. When God feels far off and distant, or when we struggle to feel connected to Jesus, these words can help remind us of just how human Jesus was. May we be reminded that no matter how great the suffering we endure or how hopeless we may feel, that darkness does not get the final word. God will never leave us nor forsake us, and He always keeps His promises. Jesus’s cry was not a loss of faith but a profound declaration of the cost of redemption. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”