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On the Lips of the Dying: Good Friday

You see it in the movies. The criminal on his last walk down death row to take his seat at the executioner’s table. On that lonely march, under his breath you hear him haphazardly mumble the 23rd Psalm;

     The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures….

It’s an old Western, and the repentant train robber is being fitted to a hangman’s noose, calmly repeating the line from Psalm 30:5;

     Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning….

But it's not just the movies. We all have had friends or relatives on their death bed do the same thing. Cancer has reduced her to nothing, but she still has strength to pray the Lord’s Prayer;

     Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name….

Alzheimer’s may have stolen his mind, but he has not forgotten Job 19:25;

     For I know that my redeemer lives, and at last he will stand on the earth.

Those who have long walked with God find a welcome comfort in repeating memorized scripture when the moment of death comes to call. 

So it is with Jesus. By Mark 15, he has reached the end of the line. The sun, for him, is setting. The cross is doing what it is designed to do: slowly drain his life one agonizing minute after another. We who know the end from the beginning should not run too quickly to the empty tomb. We owe it to ourselves—to Jesus—to spend a few moments standing in the cold shadow of the cross. When we do, we hear him speak;

     My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

Don’t be confused. Many have heard that question only to conclude that now, of all moments, is when Jesus fails. He doubts. 

Well, that is a bit harsh. Maybe it isn’t that Jesus doubts. He’s speaking the truth, isn’t he? Isn’t God is too pure to look upon sin? As Jesus bore all the sin of the world, the Father turned his face away. He had to!

No! None of that will do. That is bad theology. That is misreading the entire scene. That is missing the fact Jesus is doing what many throughout history have done when the end draws near. Quoting a psalm, Job 19, or the Lord’s Prayer to find comfort in the face of death is not something the modern world invented. Indeed, leaning on the memory of God’s Word in troubled times is as old as death itself. 

"My God, why have you forsaken me?" is neither a statement of doubt nor a confirmation of something that is factually true, as if God had literally forsaken Jesus while he was on the cross. It is the opening line of Psalm 22. While his body is drawing closer to death, Jesus is quoting Scripture. The “Word-made-flesh” recites David's word-made-written. At a time of his own despair, David felt the sting of abandonment only to discover it wasn’t true. The same Psalm that opens by exploring David's feeling of abandonment closes with the reality that God has not, in fact, turned his face away, but was present with David the entire time. 

Lest we be tricked into believing that God is far away when we need him the most, Psalm 22:24 should remove all doubt:

     He has NOT despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted

     and he has NOT hidden his face from him,

     but has heard when he cried to him.

We could argue that in his moment of greatest pain and anguish, Jesus felt abandoned by God. And why not? He had been abandoned and betrayed by all of his disciples. Nevertheless, we could also argue that the living “Word-made-flesh” who remembered David's anguished cry of, “Why have you forsaken me?” did not forget the hopeful conclusion, “He has NOT hidden his face!” When Jesus quotes the opening line of the Psalm, it is incredibly likely that he had the entire Psalm in mind; he wouldn't start it not knowing how it ends.

This moment on the cross is not a moment when God abandons Jesus, turning his face away. Quite the opposite. It is on the cross where the Father may in fact be nearest to the Son.

And so, perhaps the same is equally true for us. Jesus calls us to take up our own cross, follow him up the hill to Golgotha, and lay down our own lives. In those moments it would be natural for us to feel like we had been abandoned by God. Psalm 22 reminds us that we are not. To the contrary, the moments of our deepest grief and despair may be the moments when God is closer to us than he has ever been before. 

There is not a better Psalm that can be found on the lips of the dying than Psalm 22.

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