God Abandoning God: What Could Seem Stranger?

God’s perspective and faith are difficult enough to understand. When we read that Jesus, who was God in human flesh, often known as “The Word made Flesh” or “The Son of God,” took upon Himself the collective sin of the whole world, we know that Jesus became the sacrifice for all sin for all time. God Almighty, the Father, in all of His Holiness, could not look upon the sin of the world that His Son was carrying. For a brief moment in time, God, the Father, abandoned His Son, as He became the sin sacrifice, the spotless Lamb of God. The knowledge of looming separation from His Father, was the greatest reason that Jesus agonized in prayer the night before His crucifixion in the garden of Gethsemane.

Even though Jesus was fully God, and fully human, I do not believe that the critical nature of His anguished prayer in the Garden, to the point that His capillaries dilated, and He sweat drops of blood, was caused only by knowledge of the scourging, beatings, and even death that lay before Him. His greatest trauma was the awareness of the momentary loss of communion with His Heavenly Father.

Today, we read from Mark‬ ‭Chapter 15 and verses 33-39.... “At noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ (which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’). When some of those standing near heard this, they said, ‘Listen, he’s calling Elijah.’ Someone ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. ‘Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,’ he said. With a loud cry, Jesus breathed His last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, saw how He died, he said, ‘Surely this man was the Son of God!’”‬‬

Christ’s final surrender to experience fully what it meant to be human, meant that He had to experience ultimate abandonment - the sense of being separated from God. This is the ultimate human tragedy.

While knowing that God loves us and wants unbroken relationship with us, we often choose sin, which then separates us from God, our Father. The saddest realization for each and every human being to face, is the fact that because of our choices to sin, rather than choosing God’s offer of friendship and unbroken relationship, we bring upon ourselves the pain of abandonment. However, because Jesus the sinless sacrifice, paid the price for our sins, we can receive and apply Christ’s sacrifice and regain our eternal connection to God, our Father.

Calvary is about connection, reconnection and reestablishing our communion with God. This is why we celebrate Good Friday and Easter! Death, burial, resurrection, and life forever more!