These are some of the most mysterious and dramatic moments in this whole chapter.
First Jesus cried out his horror at being abandoned by God, forsaken, left alone to suffer agony by his Abba, his Father in heaven: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus uses the first line from Psalm 22, which was written centuries before the life of Jesus, yet in every detail, we see his Crucifixion Day unfold in these Scriptural words. The humiliation, the insults, the nightmarish sights and sounds, the physical pain, the piercing of his hands and feet, the garments that others cast lots for: it’s all there.
Because he was taking our sin, the crushing weight of our dark and indelible sin, on Himself to rid us of it once and for all, we think He also might also have felt the distance from God that we feel in sin. We are still hearing God’s voice as Adam and Eve did in the Garden, saying “Where are you?” and we say with them, “I heard you, and I was afraid, so I hid.” Jesus took that on himself. He experienced that distance for the first time on the Cross. And it was agonizing.
If you think about it, God had Psalm 22 ready for Jesus to use and express his own horror and pain. The God who seems distant has written words for his beloved Son to use in his darkest hour. And if you go to Psalm 22 in your Bible, it ends with reverent praise. Maybe Jesus remembered that too, and the valley of the shadow from the next Psalm, Psalm 23, that ends in the house of the Lord forever. God gave him those words for his time of dire need.
And then this God who seemed absent to Jesus on the Cross, ripped the curtain that cordoned off the Holy of Holies, from top to bottom, as if with His own hands. It’s as if God said: “I will not be kept curtained off; I will not be sequestered; I am out in the world; I am free to be with my people, now and forever, because of what my Beloved son did.”
When we have our own dark moments and feel God has abandoned us, we can remember, even Jesus Himself felt that. It’s alright to express it. And we can remember, when the pain is less strong, that same God raised his beloved Son and is still full of the power to bring new life. And He wants never to be kept out of our world again. He wants to be with us.