Word of Salvation – Vol. 41 No. 32 – August 1996

 

Forsaken

 

Sermon by Rev. R. M. Brenton on Mark 14:26 – 15:27

 

Brothers and Sisters,

Gethsemane to Golgotha

Gethsemane to Golgotha tells the story of the Forsaken Son and the Father who abandoned him.  This is the passion of our God, the agony of redemption.

The agony starts in earnest in a garden called Gethsemane, and is spent on a cross on a hill called Golgotha.  It begins with Jesus’ unanswered prayer and ends with his cry of abandonment.

My brothers and sisters, ponder this: What is the most hopeless place on the face of the earth?  There are many places of dark despair and intense torment.  Think of a prison cell on death row, or a trench in the killing fields of war.  Think some more.  You name the place.

But you have not conceived of the most hopeless place until you call to mind that place where the one person who never let go of God hangs dying – suspended between heaven and earth – utterly abandoned by his God.  Forsaken!  Forsaken by the very One he had dared to call, ABBA: Father.  Here is the most hopeless place ever conceived.

Some say that such a place means the end of faith.  If God lets go of God’s Son, who’s left to believe in?  Yet, our faith, strangely enough, begins at that point where the atheists say it must end.  It begins here in the most hopeless place in all the earth where the ever faithful, ever trusting Son was forsaken by the Father he loved with all his heart.

Our faith begins where the Father gave up his Son to an unspeakable death.  This is the passion of our God.  Gethsemane to Golgotha.

Today let us re-visit this most hopeless of all places.  Let us dwell on the two moments which encompass the passion of our God.

I.  The Un-answered Prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane

Overwhelmed with sorrow and staggering under the sheer weight of the horrible ordeal he was about to endure, Jesus fell down on the ground before his heavenly Father and prayed that if possible the appointed hour might pass from him.  This was his prayer: ABBA – my Father everything is possible for you.  Take this cup from me.

Jesus was in earnest.  His Father had trampled the grapes of holy wrath against human sin, and mixed it strong.  He then gave that cup to his Son.  An unbearable cup!  You cannot fathom the awful strength of that mixture, the awesome gravity of God’s judgment as it bears down upon this world’s sin.  Should that weight ever fall, the whole world of sin-cursed creatures are doomed for an eternity.

Think of it.  God, the Father of our Lord Jesus, squeezed the grapes of his holy judgment into one cup, and he gave that cup to the Son he loved.  Jesus staggered to Gethsemane with that awful cup in hand.  And he prayed not once, but three times: My Father, for you everything is possible.  Take this cup from me.  Take it away.  Take it!  Yet, not what I will, but what you will.

This is the passion of our God.  The Father of Jesus willed for his Son to drink that cup all the way down to the dregs.  The Father of Jesus did not hear and answer the prayer of the Son he loved.  Not that prayer!

The inspired writer of Hebrews pays close attention to what happened here.  Listen to Hebrews 5:7-8, “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and being heard was set free from fear!”  This last line is crucial.

The text from which we translate our English versions says literally, “being heard from his fear.”  What does this mean?  What is the best way to translate “being heard from his fear?”  Most translations, including the New International Version, have Jesus “being heard because of his reverent submission?  [The fear is understood as reverence instead of as being afraid.]  After all, Jesus did finally submit to his Father’s will, did he not?  True.  But the fact remains that Jesus’ prayer request, “let this hour (or ‘this cup’) pass from me,” was not honoured.  The Father did not answer that prayer.  The cup remained in Jesus’ hand.

What the Father did for Jesus was this: he relieved him of the fear of the death that would come through that cup.  “Being heard from his fear” is best translated “being heard was set free from (or relieved of) fear.”  While God did not answer Jesus’ specific request, he did ease the fear of dying so that his Son could face his hour and drink the cup whole.

We know this is so from the Gospel.  “Returning the third time (for prayer) he said to the three disciples who were with him.  Are you still sleeping and resting?  Enough!  The hour has come.  Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.  Rise!  Let us go” (Mk.14:41).

Jesus’ prayer has not been answered.  The hour Jesus prayed would pass has now come.  The Son is resolved to face that hour according to the Father’s will.  But he must face it alone, for he has been left alone with that awful cup, forsaken by his Father, left in the hands of sinners.  At Gethsemane, God let go of his Son.

From that moment onward Jesus suffered at the hands of sinners.  He was rejected of men.  They did unto him whatever they wished.  One of his disciples betrayed him.  Then Jesus was arrested.  Then another disciple denied him three times.  In this crucial hour all his friends scattered, running for their lives.  They couldn’t take the heat!

Jesus went to court and stood silent before his false accusers.  Remarkably, he answered the high priest’s question, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?” by saying, “I am.”  Jesus held his ground.  He held onto the One who had let go of him… all the way to the bitter end – Golgotha!

II.  The Outburst of Jesus on Golgotha

Tradition has it that Jesus uttered seven sayings on the cross; yes, seven, a number befitting divine perfection.  Truth is, the only way you can come up with seven sayings is to blend and harmonise the four Gospels.  The Holy Spirit didn’t give us four different Gospel accounts so that we could lay all four on the table, and with scissors and paste patch together the truth.  Each Evangelist tells the truth.  And the truth according to Mark (who is likely the mouthpiece of the disciple Peter) is that Jesus cried out just once from the cross.  Only one statement.  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  Why have you cursed me?

Pious and sensitive Christian believers like us are easily offended by this outburst.  There is no end to the commentary on this cry from the God-forsaken Son.  Let me share some of it with you.

The esteemed church father, Augustine, said that Jesus, as Son of God, could not have felt the fear of the awful death he was facing because his soul lived in unbroken enjoyment of heavenly bliss; therefore, he only suffered pain in his body.  [Plato must have been whispering in Augustine’s ear.]

A chorus of voices insist that Jesus was not forsaken at all by his Father.  God wouldn’t be so cruel to his Son, they say.  As a cushion against such cruelty, this chorus turns Jesus’ cry of abandonment into a victory cheer.  They say: Look at Jesus.  He is starting to recite Psalm 22, which begins with that cry of abandonment (My God, why?) Jesus, in reciting the opening words of the Psalm wants us to look beyond the cry of abandonment all the way to the declaration of dominion spoken at the end of the psalm.  By reciting the first verse, Jesus wanted us all to envision the reality of the last verse: the victory feast held in honour of the triumphant Saviour-King.  So, you see, Jesus’ cry of abandonment turns out to be a victory cheer!

Listen, my friends.  That moment on the cross was no time for a victory cheer.  The God-forsaken Son was about to go down to his death.  It was the sixth hour (high noon); yet God, the Son’s Father, made the sun in the sky go down at noon.

He covered – he eclipsed – the sun as he went into mourning for the dying Son he had just forsaken.  The prophet Amos foretold all of this: “In that day, declares the Lord, I will make the sun go down at noon… I will make that time like mourning for an only Son and the end of it like a bitter day” (Amos 8:9-10).

This is the passion of our God.  The loved Son forsaken by his Father; the Father in painful mourning for his dying Son.

Yet, I say again, even the church hasn’t got the heart to bear this truth.  Take the sombre hymn to Jesus’ suffering, Olive’s Brow, which recites the passion from Gethsemane onward.  Verse three goes like this:
            “Tis midnight, and for others’ guilt,
             the Man of Sorrows weeps in blood;
             yet, he that hath in anguish knelt
             is not forsaken by his God.”

Even our Uncle John wants to tone down the offense of this forsaken-ness.  In his famous Institutes, John Calvin writes this:
“And surely no more terrible abyss can be conceived than to feel yourself forsaken and estranged from God; and when you call upon him, not to be heard.  [So far, so good; then he adds this line…] “It is as if God himself had plotted your ruin.”  As if is a mighty big qualifier.  Even our Uncle John will not / cannot allow for absolute abandonment: the utter giving up and giving over of Jesus to the hell of divine judgment.  According to John Calvin, Jesus felt forsaken.  But was he forsaken really and truly forsaken?

I know a man who treats his wife like dirt.  What does treating like dirt mean?  At best it could mean that the man goes ahead and does his own thing; he makes decisions, never taking her needs into account; he carries on as though she doesn’t matter to him; so, in effect, he walks all over her: like dirt.  At worst it could mean that she is disgusting to him; he despises her so much that she feels like dirt.  She is not imagining this.  He treats her in such a way that she can only conclude: I’m dirt to him.  How can I draw this conclusion?  Because he treats me like dirt.

The Bible tells us that God the heavenly Father loves his only begotten Son and treats him in a way that befits his great love.

But the Bible also says that God made his Son who knew no sin to be sin (1Corinthians 5:21).  The Father made him so.  When he did that to his Son, he had to treat him as he was made to be; he had to treat him like sin.

When Jesus was on Golgotha’s cross hanging between heaven and earth, he realises full well that his Father is treating him like sin.  Jesus isn’t imagining this treatment.  He can feel it.  He feels the silence of God to his prayer and the utter abandonment.  But what Jesus feels is based on fact.  Jesus feels like sin because he was made to be sin.  He had become accursed.  The reality of sin’s nature clung to him.  With Jesus it was not a case of “as if God had plotted his ruin.”  God had indeed “plotted his ruin.  The Father of Jesus made him to be sin and treated him accordingly.

The big question – which comes out in the cry of Jesus from the cross – is “Why?” “Why have you forsaken me?”  “Why are you treating me like sin?”

That cry, that questioning prayer – thank God – was answered.  “God made him to be sin so that, in him, we might become the righteousness of God” (1Corinthians 5:21).  When God punished sin by forsaking his Son to the judgment of the damned, he revealed his own righteousness.  At last justice was done.  Sin at last was dealt with and done away with: all in Jesus!  Your sin and mine, all the sin of the world was wrapped up in Jesus.  He was made to be the “body of sin,” the Great Sinner damned to eternal hell.  And God dealt with Jesus as only he could deal with sin.  He subjected Jesus to the wrath of God so that we might become who he was: even the righteousness of God.

In Romans 8:32 Paul tells it like this: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all.” [That’s the language of abandonment, it’s the same language Paul uses in Romans 1 to describe what God’s wrath does to ungodly sinners.]  See, God did to his Son what he does to ungodly sinners: gives them up, puts them in the way of his holy wrath.

But why?  Why did he do this to his precious Jesus?  Why did he forsake the Son he loved?  That’s what Jesus wanted to know.  Why?  Why?  Why?  Why have you, my God, forsaken me?

God gave his Jesus up for us.  “For us all!”  “In order to graciously give us all things.”  This is the com-passion of our God.

And the glory of it is that the Son, though he prayed earnestly for the cup to be taken from him, nevertheless surrendered himself to his Father’s will.  He did it through the eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14).  The Holy Spirit is the great love-link in the separation of the Son from his Father.  Though the Son was cut off – separated, forsaken, sent to hell – he went as an offering.  He surrendered to the eternal death through the eternal Spirit…

…so that at that moment when Son and Father were s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d apart to the breaking point, never were they more at one.  In the Spirit the good will of the Father in heaven was finally done: the Father giving up, the Son giving in, and we redeemed sinners getting all.

This is the passion – the compassion – of our God.  This is the love of God revealed in the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Amen.