⁴⁵Now from the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. ⁴⁵And at about the ninth hour Jesus shouted out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachtani?’ – which is to say , ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Matthew 27:45-46 – The Keys of the Kingdom Holy Bible

The Road to Calvary by Hieronymous Bosch

We’ve all of us, at one time or another, experienced the kind of intense physical pain which brings normal life to a standstill, and we’ve seen it in others. The victim doubles over and holds their breath, maybe grasping at whatever they’ve hurt. Some, but not all of us, have experienced, or have seen others experience, the kind of pain in disease that will not go away; the kind that no amount of grasping at the excruciating area, no amount of shifting position to get comfortable, no amount of pain relief through medicine, seems to relieve.

Let’s be clear about this; crucifixion was the most diabolical and physically painful death known to the Roman world.

But those who focus on this; the many websites that try to explain through drawings and descriptions exactly how Jesus would have suffered on the cross and what was happening to him physically and medically at the time are, I believe, way off the mark.

Matthew’s gospel account of the crucifixion is starker than John’s. Not only have all the disciples abandoned him in Matthew’s gospel, but the women who are there aren’t at the foot of the cross, but are ‘watching from a distance’; maybe we’re even meant to believe that they aren’t in Jesus’ sight. The only people who are present, are the two bandits, and of course the Chief Priests, Scribes and Elders; they wouldn’t have missed it for anything, the opportunity to jeer, deride and mock. In 1515, Hieronymus Bosch completed a painting called ‘The Road to Calvary’. In it, there are some 15 or so grotesque, hideous faces, bestially snarling and sneering at each other and at Christ, who’s in the middle of the painting, carrying his cross, his eyes shut and a tortured look on his face. 

It’s this background, and Jesus’ words, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ that point us in the direction of why the cross speaks to us so deeply, not the details of physical torture represented by the cross. This is reinforced if we read others parts of Psalm 22, from which Christ’s words are taken. The Psalmist writes ‘But I am a worm, and no man, a reproach of men and despised by the people’.

Some of you may, like me, have experienced depression at some point in your lives. The blackness of the crucifixion on Good Friday, acts as a terrible reminder of the depth of depression to which it’s possible for us to sink as humans. We find ourselves not just in the midst of those who deride and mock us, but our imagination puts us in a place where we’re utterly alone, and our emotions start to feed off themselves. We start to feel as though the whole world’s against us. We imagine what people are saying about us behind closed doors; we see a look on someone’s face and in our darkness, we imagine that person sneering and taunting us. Even those who’ve gone out of their way not to take sides, are seen as against us; every look, every word and every gesture confirms us in our opinion that we’re utterly alone and beyond saving.

More than ten years ago, I had the distress of losing a friend to suicide. When he finally succeeded in taking his own life, after four failed attempts, and after specialist treatment and counselling, not just in this country, but in a perceived centre of excellence abroad, his wife said to me and to the others who’d tried to help: ‘there’s nothing that anyone could’ve done. He was determined to take his own life; he’d reached a point where he thought that there was absolutely nothing and no-one in his life that he viewed as worth living for, and nothing that anyone could say that would make him change his mind.’

Jesus, hanging on the cross on this the most dreadful of all days in our Christian calendar, finds himself in this place. Some commentators are keen to say that his loud cry is a cry of anguish and abandonment, but not of despair; as if despair is an emotion that’s somehow not appropriate for Jesus. I disagree. This is the point in the Christian story, even before any hint of the resurrection, when we can have most hope, because it’s only at this moment that we realise that Jesus, he who was without sin, understood and experienced the full, devastating effect of human sin. When we fail to love our neighbours as ourselves, (never forgetting that this much-used and much-loved phrase also carries with it a requirement for us to love or at least be at peace with ourselves) we find ourselves cut off; not just from our fellow humans, but even from God. It’s a fearful and terrible place, and even those of us with the strongest faith can experience it. These are the moments when we feel we’re derided, worthless, mocked and utterly alone, so alone that even God has abandoned us. And these are precisely the moments when we need to be most aware that we have a God who isn’t absent, but is desperately trying to reach us through our darkness and our desolation. Why? Because he’s been there; he knows the depth of that particular moment; he knows what it feels like and his love, with arms outstretched, reaches out to embrace us and draw us back to himself.

Heavenly Father, we confess with shame those things we’ve done and failed to do, which have separated us from a sense of your presence with us, and have cast such a shadow across the cross of your dear and only Son, Jesus. Our hearts are filled with shame that we look on the scene of the crucifixion with such indifference and without acknowledging our own role in it. We ask for your forgiveness that we’re so mired in ourselves that we can’t see that we all share the awesome responsibility for inflicting a sense of despair and isolation on Him who was uniquely without sin. We pray that in the hour of our own trial, when all is dark and there is no vision, we may be strengthened and encouraged that you never leave our side, particularly in those moments when we cannot detect your presence. We offer our worship to you in the undeserved knowledge that you’re not some distant, remote God, but one who shares with us in our sufferings, who knows what it’s like to feel sneered at, besieged, isolated and utterly alone. Above all, we thank you for the amazing fact that you loved us enough to die for us. Amen