Last year, when I did a seven-last-words Lenten sermon series, I struggled with Jesus’ “cry of dereliction” from Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” What exactly did he mean by it? Had Jesus simply found some scripture that expressed what he was feeling? Was he who was without sin expressing solidarity with sinful humanity for whom he died? Was he quoting verse 1 but wanting his hearers to recall the entire psalm—which ends on a loud note of vindication and hope? Or had God indeed abandoned him—and what exactly would that look like, since God is triune? Would it be possible for God the Father to separate himself from God the Son in this way?
To me, these answers are not straightforward. But I’m with Adam Hamilton, who rejects at least one possible answer.
Some have explained Jesus’ words by suggesting that at that moment God placed upon him the sins of the world and then was forced to turn away because a holy God cannot look upon sin. I find this a wholly inadequate explanation—it takes too literal a view of Jesus bearing the sins of humanity on the cross. What exactly would God have placed on Jesus? What would it have looked like? More importantly, would the Father really have looked away from his Son at the moment of Jesus’ greatest saving act? This seems unthinkable. I believe it more likely that God never removed his gaze from Jesus during those hours on the cross. God the Father suffered with the Son.[†]
[†] Adam Hamilton, 24 Hours That Changed the World (Nashville: Abingdon, 2009), 108.