At Living Stones we’re going through the Seven Words from the Cross of Jesus. This week’s “word” is “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” It is also known as the cry of dereliction.
It is the first verse of Psalm 22 and the psalm tracks closely with the crucifixion scene.
There has been a healthy theological debate throughout the centuries as to whether in this moment the Father abandons the Son. You can spend a day reading the arguments. I judge it to be the plain and obvious meaning of the text. It goes hand in hand with the darkness in the Matthew text.
Jesus feels abandoned by God the Father and the Trinity tastes divorce.
Many Christians interpret this moment as Jesus’ descent into hell understanding hell to be a place abandoned by God. Hell is where God releases all claim, turns his back, and limits himself away from it. Hell is the place divorced from God. Jesus in this three hours of darkness endures hell.
The only thing that makes hell endurable, however is one’s willing divorce from God. This hell was unidirectionally imposed.
Many suffers in this world who have some notions of a divine person understand and relate to this moment in Jesus’ story. The common cry and question is “why?!” and there is no answer given, just darkness.
It’s here that the forgiveness question comes to mind. What Jesus faces in this moment is the trial of forgiveness. Will Jesus love the Father, be obedient to the Father, endure the hell of the absence of the Father, and not reciprocate the divorce? It’s in this moment at a deep level that Jesus must forgive the Father for placing the sins of the world on himself, an innocent man.
Jesus is not alone in the Bible in facing the challenge of forgiving the hurts of God. It could in fact be seen as a central theme of the entire Bible.
Last night our men’s group studied Daniel 3, the famous story of fiery furnace. In this story Nebuchadnezzar attempts to solidify his grip on power by addressing the constant political challenge of religious pluralism. “All the world” is invited to a vast feast of syncretism hosted by the monarch, the only holdouts are these three young Jewish men. Nebuchadnezzar’s fury is inflamed by the peace of the three youths who coolly explain that he can do what he wishes with them, and Yhwh can rescue them or abandon them, but they will love Yhwh still and be faithful to him.
The miracle of the fiery furnace is the same miracle of Moses’ burning bush and it’s the same miracle of Israel. Can a people that to all the evidence of the world is abandoned and condemned by the God who is sometimes a consuming fire, and sometimes cold and silent and stay with him still? Israel’s cruciform story finds its climax at Jesus’ cross.
Much of the world divorces God at hurt level 4. Job’s wife weighs in at hurt level 3 “curse God and die!” Jesus goes to level 2, faces his father one on one and refuses to sign the divorce papers.
Forgiveness is about loving your enemies, even when your enemy is the Almighty.
Leadingchurch.com 
Don’t know if I totally agree, but am thinking about it. I look at my own life. I know God made me in his image from birth. Yet I ask myself why, in the course of growing up, “why God have you made me this way”, and “why God have you let this happen to me”. “If God has control of everything then why has this or that happened to me”. I have blamed God. But God is in control; I can accept this or reject this. I have rejected this growing up but now chose to accept this. It can be a bitter pill, hard to swallow, and at times I spit it out. God is in control.
Man is always trying to find meaning and trying to make sense of this world, of the pain and suffering that he endures. Ecclesiastes talks about this. What is the meaning of life. God why have you made me this way, God why the pain and the suffering. People chose to deal with this question in various ways.
Jesus asks the same question. He dealt with the pain and the suffering that all of us face, the best way possible, he trusted God and forgave people their sins, those who sinned against him, and against others. This is the best possible way to live while on earth, to be at peace with God and others. Jesus trusted God from birth, even before he was born, as the Psalmist writes.
On the cross he still was forgiving people because they were ignorant of what they were doing. Did he forgive God? His faith took him to the cross, and He trusted God to death. There is a place in life, the present, where life actually happens, to exist. I think he lived here. He was lifted on a cross, held between heaven and earth, forgiving people and yet trusting God to the very end. I think when his heart gave out and he said it is finished, giving up the ghost, was the completion of trust and faith. He looked to heaven, to his father, and forgave us. He trusted in God and forgave us. He lived in the present and believed that he would be with God once he died, in paradise. Did he have to, or chose to, forgive God? No, he trusted in God that God would deliver him. Again, he lived in the present to the very end. But still on the cross, Christ knew the best life for humans on earth is to trust and have faith in God and forgive thy neighbor. My yoke is easy, my burden is light.
Again, I am still thinking about this. I hope you will be kind in a response, I am no theologian, just a lay person. But your piece has got all of us, at least me, thinking again this lenten season, a good thing.