My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Good Friday 2022
The world in general loves Christmas. Of course, to do so it had to introduce some new elements into Christmas, reinterpret certain things, and ignore others. Now the focus is often or merely on earthly peace, presents, Santa Claus, amazing outdoor decorations. It has become a lot of fun, especially for children.
The same is true about Easter. The world generally loves Easter because new ideas and traditions have been brought into it: the Easter bunny (I have no idea where he came from), Easter eggs (which does represent one aspect of the true Easter: an empty egg represents the empty tomb of Jesus), Easter egg hunts, decorations (I have seen couple outside homes recently, both having the Easter bunny). Like Christmas, Easter has become fun, especially for children. It’s almost as if both Christmas and Easter were invented and developed mainly for children.
For these reasons, the world generally loves both Christmas and Easter.
But the same cannot be said of Good Friday. It is hard for the world to put such a spin on Good Friday. So we might want to rename Good Friday and instead call it Neglected Friday, Forgotten Friday, Unimportant Friday, or Forsaken Friday. Good Friday is not on society’s radar screen.
This is understandable – not justified, but understandable. For Good Friday gets to the heart and center of the human problem, which no one likes to face. It gets to the real reason for the real Christmas: why God – and not Santa Claus or the Easter bunny – had to enter time and space, human history, and enter it the way he did, and why he would end up where he did. It is next to impossible for the world to take Good Friday and reinterpret it so becomes fun or it becomes something just for children.
There are four fundamental questions that the major religions and worldviews attempt to answer. Four questions. Question #1: Who are we? The Christian religion says we are unique and were originally made by a Creator in his image, holy and perfect. Another worldview says we are simply the product of mindless evolutionary processes – that’s it – giving no one real value. Another worldview says we are whoever we decide to be, we can identify however we want, and whatever identity we choose gives us value.
Question #2: What went wrong? Why is there evil in the world? The biblical answer is the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, something that infected not only ever single person, but also brought death, sickness, lies, wars, natural disasters, and all kinds of frustrations to the world. Another worldview answers that question by saying there is no such thing as evil; that’s only a superstitious belief among those who can’t see there is a scientific or natural explanation to everything. Another worldview says the real problem is one group having power over another group, which the Christian worldview partly agrees with, except this other worldview finds evil not within each and every person no matter who they are, but just within individuals of particular groups.
Question #3: What is the solution? I will come back to the Christians answer to this question. But one worldview says the solution is evolution – time. Just let man evolve over time and someday man will either evolve into a better species or man will become smarter and smarter until he figures out how to make life close to perfect. The other worldview says society must remove certain groups from positions of power or authority and elevate other oppressed groups based on ethnicity, religion, sex, gender (a form of racism).
Question #4: Where do we end up? What is the final game plan? Many worldviews and religions believe in an earthly utopia, some sort of heaven on earth; we will eventually get there, they say. Others believe that we will all finally become a part of god. There are others as well. The Christian answer is the resurrection on the last day, where one will enter either eternal life in heaven or eternal death in hell.
But let me come back to the third question and the Christian answer for that question. What is the solution? What is the solution to the fall, to sin, to all the evil within the world, within us, to death, to a world that is corrupted and gone crazy?
The biblical answer is Christmas, Good Friday, and Easter. Or to put it another way, the incarnation of the Son of God (taking on human flesh), the death of the Son of God (in his human flesh), and the resurrection of the Son of God (in his human flesh). Christmas and Easter are the bookends. And in between is Good Friday. In between is the death of the Son of God, which is why we are gathered here tonight.
But what does this Good Friday mean? For one thing it means we can rightly call Good Friday the Unimportant Friday, the Neglected Friday, the Forgotten Friday, or the Forsaken Friday. But only because the one doing the neglecting, the forgetting, the forsaking; the one considering someone to be unimportant was God the Father Almighty.
While Jesus, the Son of God incarnate, was suffering on the cross, he said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” “Why have you forgotten me, why have you neglected me, why have you abandoned me? Of all the people on earth, why am I – your only Son, your faithful and sinless Son – why am I now at this moment not important to you?”
Why? The answer: so Jesus, the Son of God, upon whom his Father had placed the sins of the world, could truthfully say just a little while later, “It is finished.”
The apostle Paul puts it this way:
“God made him (Jesus), who did not know sin, to become sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
(2 Cor. 5:21)
The word we use to describe what took place here is the word “vicarious” which simply means “substitutionary.” “You, my Son, instead of them, pay the price for sin, all sin. That means, my only beloved Son, on this Friday I must neglect you, forget you, abandon you, forsake you, and look upon you as the least important and most despised person to have ever walked the earth. You, instead of them.”
The world will never appreciate Good Friday. But you must. Good Friday is heart and center of the solution for your very real problem of sin and death. Good Friday is where your heart and your mind and your soul and your confidence belong. “[T]he message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” (1Cor. 1:18)
And if there is any doubt, wait three days.
Amen.
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