“FOR THE SAKE OF THE FORSAKEN”
MATTHEW 27:45-54
45 From noon on, darkness came over
the whole land until three in the afternoon.
46 And about three o'clock Jesus cried
with a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
47 When some of the bystanders heard
it, they said, "This man is calling for Elijah."
48 At once one of them ran and got
a sponge, filled it with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink.
49 But the others said, "Wait, let
us see whether Elijah will come to save him."
50 Then Jesus cried again with a loud
voice and breathed his last.
51 At that moment the curtain of the
temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.
52 The tombs also were opened, and
many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.
53 After his resurrection they came
out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.
54 Now when the centurion and those
with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, "Truly
this man was God's Son!"
We’ve
all had those days. You get up in the morning and it’s one catastrophe after another. If anything can go wrong it does.
Sometimes you even begin to wonder if everyone’s against you. That’s
the way a teenager felt when she came home after a particularly bad day at school. “I’m
never going back,” she screamed. “Everyone hates me.” Her lament immediately caught her younger brother’s attention “Sis,” he said somewhat sympathetically, “That’s not true. A lot of people don’t
even know you.”
Jesus
knew what it’s like to feel like you’re all alone. It was a feeling
that came over him as he felt the throbbing pain from the nails in his hands and feet.
That excruciating pain made him wonder if even God had abandoned him. You can feel that sense of abandonment in the
words that he spoke from the Cross. “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani.” “My
God, my God why have you forsaken me?”
In those words of anguish you see the human Jesus. You
see the Jesus who finally reached his breaking point; a man with a broken body and a broken heart who felt like even God had
abandoned him. Some of the students in our weekly Bible Study suggested that
in uttering those words what Jesus wanted was for God to speed things up a little. He
wanted God to let him die so his pain and suffering could come to a merciful end.
I bet every one of you can remember a time when you felt
the way Jesus felt that day. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Sometimes you feel that way when an illness strikes you or someone you love. Sometimes
you feel that way when someone close to you betrays your trust in them. Sometimes you feel that way when a dream comes crashing
down on you. Your faith begins to weaken and you begin to ask the question that people have been asking since the days of
Job and Moses and Elijah. Why? The psalmist asked the question this way, “How
long O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
God
is always there of course. Sometimes you can’t see God because your anger
and your tears get in the way. That’s why, when life is really cruel, I often find myself turning to some words that
were written by the Apostle Paul. In his first letter to the Corinthians Paul
wrote these words of wisdom. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then
face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have
been fully understood.” (I Corinthians 13:12)
Sometimes
life just doesn’t make sense. When that happens you have to decide what you’re going to do. On the one hand you
can keep asking the why question and drive yourself crazy. Or you can let the
why question go and trust that everything will make sense when you see God face to face in heaven. When you let the why question go that’s when you begin to see God walking with you in your pain.
When you let the why question go that’s why you begin to see God working with you to put the pieces of your life back
together.
“My
God, my God why have you forsaken me?” There are times when it feels like God is a million miles away. Sometimes that’s
because you can’t see God through your anger and your tears. Sometimes though, the problem isn’t God at all. The problem isn’t that God has God’s abandoned us. The problem is that we’ve abandoned God. You see we
live in a world that is drifting father and father away from God; father and father away from God’s grace and goodness;
father and father away from God’s wisdom and truth. You see it in the greed
and the gluttony. You see it in the stubbornness and the selfishness. You see it in the unhealthy pride and the pettiness.
Let me ask you this question. Jesus talked a lot about forgiving your enemies,
but how much forgiveness do you really see these days? Not much. That’s
because people don’t forgive these days. They get even.
That’s
why I was really impressed recently by something Don Shula did many years ago when he was the football coach for the Miami
Dolphins. Author Ken Blanchard talks about it in his book, “Everyone’s
a Coach. It seems that Shula lost his temper one day during a game. Unfortunately,
he did it near a microphone on the field. Millions of viewers were shocked when they heard his profanity laced tirade. Letters
soon arrived from people all over the country expressing their disappointment. Now Shula could have made all kinds of excuses
for his behavior. Instead of doing that though he sat down and wrote a personal apology to everyone who included their return
address in their letter. He ended each apology with a promise. “I value your respect,” he wrote, “and will do my best to earn it again.”
You don’t see a lot of people apologizing these
days and that may be due in part because you don’t see a lot of people who are willing to forgive and forget. The inability
to forgive and forget is one of the reasons why so many marriages now end in divorce. People want the sweet and sentimental
love that you see in all those Hallmark cards, but they don’t want the love that has to sweat and struggle when things
aren’t going very well. Former Education Secretary William Bennett got a really good look at the love that doesn’t
want to deal with the life’s headaches several years ago when a young couple he knew decided to get married. It was
one of those wedding where the bride and groom wrote their own vows. Before the ceremony Bennett learned that the husband
and wife to be weren’t going to promise to love each other until “death do us part.” Instead they were going
to promise to remain together “as long as (our) love shall last.” After
hearing that Bennett said he went out and bought them paper plates for a wedding gift.
We live
in a world that is drifting farther and farther away from God. Turn the television on and you see and hear things that used
to make people blush. One of the things that really bothers me is how often you hear the LORD’s name used in vain. It’s
strange how people use God’s name all the time, but don’t have time for God on Sunday morning. That sad reality
is why it’s been said that, “Our great-grandparents called it the holy Sabbath and our grandparents called it
the Sabbath. Our parents called it Sunday and today we call it the weekend.” Can anyone say baseball practice on Sunday morning? Or hockey practice? Or soccer practice?
We live
in a world that is drifting father and father away from God. By the way, I’m
convinced that’s one of the reasons why so many people are addicted to one thing or another. You see, when you come right down to it addition is really a spiritual disease. It hits you when you drift away from God and then you try to fill the emptiness in your life with drugs
or alcohol or food or credit card shopping sprees.
“My
God, my God why have you forsaken me?” There are times when it feels like
God’s a million miles away. When that happens though the problem though isn’t that God’s abandoned us. The
problem is that we’ve abandoned God. What makes that reality even sadder is that a lot of people don’t even realize
it’s happening. So many people are bored, burned out, lonely and empty and they’re not sure why.
Christian
author and youth minister Josh McDowell, tells a story about a man who was an executive “headhunter.” His job was to recruit corporate executives for large companies. One day the headhunter told McDowell that
when he interviewed potential CEO’s he liked to disarm them. “I offer him a drink,” the headhunter said. “(I) take off my coat, undo my tie, throw up my feet and talk about baseball,
football, family, whatever, until he’s all relaxed. Then when I think I’ve
got him relaxed, I lean over, look him square in the eye and say, ‘What’s your purpose in life.’” The headhunter then went on to say, “It’s amazing how top executives fall
apart at that question.” One day, however, the headhunter encountered a
potential CEO who was a little different. After disarming him the headhunter
leaned over and asked, “What’s your purpose in life Bob?” Without
blinking an eye the potential CEO replied, “To go to heaven and take as many people with me as I can.”
That’s
what life is all about. It’s about building your life around God’s
grace and goodness. You build your life around God’s wisdom and truth.
You do that so you can be a light to yourself and those around you. When you do that there will still be moments when you
feel same way Jesus felt on that day on the Cross. You’ll still have those
moments when you’ll wonder why? Why is this happening to me? The difference though is that when that happens you won’t feel like God is a million miles away. Amen.
Rev. Dr.
Richard A. Hughes
March 19, 2006
