The Wound of Abandonment

Matthew 27:45–48

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

St. Matthew 27:45-48 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to Him to drink.

Dear fellow Lenten travelers…  Each Wednesday during this Lententide we have pondered the astounding wounds we have inflicted upon our Savior in His Passion, suffering, and death.  We have pondered together the wounds of betrayal, apathy, denial, and mockery.  We have seen ourselves, our own lives, reflected in Judas, in the sleepy three, in Peter, and in the soldiers.  Yet of all the wounds that our Lord received, none so struck, so terrorized, so weighed on Him as the one we ponder tonight.

We did not inflict this wound.  This one came from His Father: the wound of abandonment.  From out of the unspeakable depth of His agony on the cross, our Lord cries the words of Psalm 22: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”  

In a sermon on these words, Lutheran preacher O. P. Kretzmann ponders this cry of agony this way: “Suddenly on a Friday afternoon a man was forsaken of God, cut off from the living and the dead, utterly and ultimately alone.  The sudden emptiness in those shadowed eyes…  It was then, much more than afterward, that He died.  You see, this is sin.  It is not merely a matter of murder and adultery and gossip, [it is not a matter of] something to do or not to do.  It is always loneliness.  It is cutting yourself off from God.  It is a deliberate turning away from truth, from goodness, from heaven.  You see, this is redemption.  All this Christ took into Himself, alone there in the dark.  He became sin for us.” (The Pilgrim [St. Louis: Concordia, 1944], 47)

Yes, Jesus became sin for us.  The proof of that statement is in the Scriptures themselves.  St. Paul declares in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For He who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”   Christ on the cross was made to be the very thing God hates and must destroy, in order that we, by God-given faith, would become His righteousness.  It is the Great Exchange: Christ gets all of our sin and punishment, and we are forgiven and set free from sin’s guilt and ultimate result.

Dear people of God, all the sin of all the people of all the world for all time is laid upon Jesus, the Lamb of God.   He takes it into Himself and makes it His very own.  He experiences in Himself the utter and complete abandonment that our sin demands.  This is the bitterest dregs of the cup that Jesus will drain down for us in its entirety.  He will taste hell.  He will taste it in its fullness.  He will taste it for us all.  He will know a loneliness so deep and so profound that its pain is beyond the ability of our sinful human minds to grasp.

Think for a moment of the times in your life when you felt abandoned or forsaken or cut off.  Perhaps is was the abandonment of a former friend or relative or co-worker who “unfriended” you for your stance against abortion, or your full support for God’s institution of marriage.  Perhaps you have felt the abandonment of the employment world that seems not to need you or even know you exist.  Perhaps you have been ostracized for your confession of faith in the real, bodily presence of Jesus in the bread and wine in His Supper, or for your clear Biblical stance on baptismal regeneration.  Or maybe you have lost friends and the contact of relatives for your political views, or how you raise and educate your children.  Indeed, those rejections hurt, and you might think that they hurt like hell at the moment.

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People sometimes joke about hell, saying, “Well, at least I will have a lot of company there.”  That is, quite frankly, a stupid thing to say and it is totally wrong.  It makes light of the Biblical truth about the horridness of hell.

Think of the story of Lazarus and the rich man.  In that story, the rich man is all alone.  Lazarus has angels for company and Abraham, to whom he is so close that he lays his head in his bosom.  The rich man hungers and thirsts for a human touch, and says, “Send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame,” (Luke 16:24).  But no visit relieves the terror of the rich man’s solitude.  He is alone.  All alone.  And he will be alone forever, completely cut off and separated from God and His presence, all because he refused to believe God’s Word.

It is in this truth that we begin to understand the reality of hell: hell is being completely cut off and separated from the presence of God.  Consider that for any length of time and you will see its true terror.  Ponder that and you will bow in love before the Savior whose love for you was so great that He chose to enter that loneliness Himself for you; He chose to endure it in your place that you might be set free from it forever.  Never alone.  Never again.

Dear friends, because Jesus endured the vicious wound of abandonment that our every sin demands of God; because He drained the cup down to this, its last and bitterest dregs, you get to look to your Savior and pray with the confidence of being heard as we did earlier: “My Savior, be Thou near me when death is at my door; Then let Thy presence cheer me, forsake me nevermore!  When soul and body languish, O leave me not alone, But take away mine anguish by virtue of Thine own! (TLH 172:9)

Do you see it now?  You will never have to know first-hand what Jesus went through in those darkest hours.  You will never have to face life or suffering or death alone ever.  Jesus has made sure of it.  He will be with you.  He will walk with you every step of the way.   Hell itself is undone, death is destroyed, sin is forgiven.

Jesus Christ, your Savior, your Shepherd, attends you and walks with you through the valley of the shadow of death so that you fear no evil.  You are never alone, for He is with you.  His rod and His staff, they comfort you.  He brings you out from that darkest of valleys into the sunshine and the bright light of the day that never ends in the kingdom of your Father.

That is your joy, dear Christian, as you ponder this cruelest of death, the death of your Savior Jesus.  That is your joy, because now in Him there is no more death.  In Jesus there is no more dying.  In Jesus there is no more sorrow.  In Jesus there is no more pain.  In Jesus there is no more crying.  In Jesus there is no more sadness.  In Jesus there is no more sickness.  In Jesus there is no more worry or anxiety.

Since your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has walked those paths for you; since Jesus has taken everything that life and death and hell would throw at you to bring you down; since Jesus has taken away what you can never pay for – your sins and their punishment – all by His horrid suffering, abandonment, death, and triumphant resurrection, then you have absolutely nothing to fear.  Nothing.  Christ be praised!

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.