At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o’clock. Then at three o’clock Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Mark 15:33-34)
The cross sends a message of abandonment. Those who can help or want to help or feel they must help, are not able to; any plan they had to help has been abandoned. The crucified one is left to himself.
Those who want to see the “criminal” die, have abandoned him to the tree. He can’t escape, can’t wriggle off, can’t get out of this. The criminal must definitely abandon any plan of escape, especially when guarded by so many soldiers! It’s not like he was left on his own to his followers (who might have chopped it down and somehow figured out how to get out those nails). No, it’s a done deal. Just abandon any ideas of something different happening. He has been abandoned, or handed over, to the death process. That process will now run to completion.
And as for his own mental state and emotional upheaval—what other conclusion would he reach other than he’s been abandoned? By his Father? By God Almighty? Coming from his lips has got to be one of the most penetrating questions of all time: My God, why have you abandoned me?
The preachers and theologians make various points: God couldn’t look on sin, so he turned his back on him at that moment, when he somehow absorbed all the sin ever committed by the world’s population into his-self. (Really? Like God wasn’t looking at sin all the time already? Adam Hamilton discusses this in his book 24 Hours that Changed the World.) Or, on the other side of the discussion, Jesus felt abandoned. Which seems to be the bottom line: He was in a valley of the shadow of death, feeling totally alone, end of his rope, “wondering where God was when it hurt”.
I have found that it’s common for people to think that Father God has abandoned them. I write this, just having learned that a good friend of many years suddenly passed away this weekend. I would be surprised if at least one person connected to the family didn’t silently voice the words, “God, why?! Don’t you care? Have you abandoned us? We need him with us. I don’t understand…”
In Jesus’ darkest hour—just after total darkness had enveloped the land in the middle of the day for 3 hours— he conveys, it appears, that he reached the logical conclusion that he had been abandoned. That he was all alone. And so he expressed that feeling. The cross took him to that point. This shout-out was a sign of his humanity; that he felt totally abandoned, even though he wasn’t.
“Father, thank you for not abandoning Jesus in his darkest hour—or abandoning us in ours.”
Freddy Boswell 