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Date: 4th Wednesday in Lent Text: Matthew 27:45-50
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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.
And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.
The gospel text for our evening's meditation is taken from the gospel of Matthew chapter 27. 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, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the other said, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.
And then Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. In the name of Jesus. There's Christ on the cross and he cries out in Hebrew, very clear Hebrew. The first sentence, first part of Psalm 22 verse one, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Now, have you ever heard anybody say something and then you've misheard it? Maybe embarrassingly so. I think back to when I was a kid, my dad used to tell a story. This is my biological father. He was a police officer, worked for the Baldwin Park Police Department when I was a kid.
And he tells a story that he was required one day to actually go and witness an autopsy, which sounds horrifying. But he tells the story this way, and I remember hearing it when I was a kid, that when he was there, the coroner opened up the chest of the fellow that they were doing the autopsy on and my dad took a look at the lungs of the fellow and they were as black as asphalt.
That's how he described them. And so my father said, what's wrong with this man's lungs? And he said, oh yeah, he's a smoker. And well, at the time, my dad was a smoker. And so my dad tells the story then that he quit smoking cold turkey that day.
Well, when I heard him telling this to somebody, I had no idea what the phrase cold turkey meant, and I was rather confused by it. I'm thinking, what did cold turkeys have to do with smoking? I don't understand what the connection is.
My dad didn't smoke cold turkeys, he smoked marlboros. And my grandma, she was a camel's lady. So I didn't understand what was going on, and eventually I ended up kind of embarrassingly having to ask my mother what the cold turkeys were all about.
And she laughed when she heard it. And then I think about when my wife and I were first married, and we lived in Seattle up on Capitol Hill, and there was radio commercials that would come on from time to time.
You know, remember the days when they would write jingles? I don't really listen to the radio anymore. Do they write jingles anymore? Well, there was a local fish food, seafood restaurant that every now and then they would get a supply of king crabs and king crab legs.
And so in the jingle, they were singing about how they had crab legs. And the way the refrain went was, we have crab legs, we have crab legs. And it was supposed to be a joyous thing. Well, my wife misheard it.
And she said to me one day, why do they keep talking about how much traffic they have? And I said, traffic? What are you talking about? Well, they're singing, we have traffic, we have traffic. Why would I want to go there?
And so if you think back in your memories, you probably have stories akin to this. But in our gospel text tonight, in our meditation, here we have probably one of the most boneheaded, misheard statements of all time.
There Christ is languishing, suffering, bleeding, dying for your sins and mine. And he quotes in perfect Hebrew the opening portion of Psalm 22 and the bystanders, although they are Jewish, have no clue that he's quoting the scriptures.
And they hear him crying out and they think he's calling for Elijah. And based upon their reaction, they're thinking, whoa, wait, let's see if Elijah comes to save him. They're thinking that Christ is calling and decreeing and declaring for Elijah to show up and pull off one of the greatest escape acts of all time.
This Houdini would have been jealous to have something like this happen. And so they're expecting Elijah's gonna show up, he's gonna rip him down from the cross, and Christ is gonna go, ta-da! It's surreal when you think about it.
It kind of gives off the impression that Christ's suffering here is completely subject to almost circus-like and I mean this, circus-like attraction type of gawking. But while all of this is going on, and they've misheard the words of Christ, something so important is happening, and we in our sin are practically missing it.
And so I love the fact that here in Psalm 22, have you noticed that Psalm 22 is written from a first-person perspective? While they're expecting Elijah to show up and pull off a Houdini trick, it's almost as if what we're hearing here is the inner dialogue of what's going on inside of the mind of Christ.
And so here again, Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That's what Christ cried out. And that's what the Elie, Elie, lama sabachthani, that's what it says in the Hebrew. One of my seminary profs, musing on this text one year, he said, I wonder if Jesus spoke it or if he sang it.
Because the Psalms back then had tunes to them. Maybe that's the reason they didn't understand what he was saying, because he spoke it rather than sang it, because if they'd sung it, maybe they would have known what the tune was.
But it goes on, why are you so far from saving me? From the words of my groaning? Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. And you'll note the, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Theologians call this the cry of dereliction. Cry of dereliction. I think a good way to think about it is that if we were to consider Christ's sufferings in two different domains, if you would, two different ways of looking at it, there is the physicality of bleeding and suffering and dying on the cross.
And don't think for a second that that was an easy thing to do. The word excruciating that we use in our English language comes from the word to crucify. In fact, the Romans practically perfected a torturous ending for people that guaranteed that every single moment that a victim was on the cross as they were dying, that they were intensely, intensely feeling pain and agony.
Think about the prep that Christ went through in order to be crucified. Not only was he beaten, but he was flogged, which means he had his skin opened up on his back and he was bleeding profusely. Punched in the face, beaten.
Isaiah describes that he's marred beyond all semblance. And so what they do is they nailed Christ to the cross, drove the nails through his wrists. That's really what would have happened. The hands don't have enough strength to have it there.
So all the artistic depictions of Christ being nailed to the cross through his palms, that wouldn't have worked. The ligaments would have torn because what's necessary then is that the victims on the cross, in order to breathe when you're impaled like that, you have to pull yourself up high enough that your diaphragm can loosen up so that you can actually take a breath.
And so between the radius and the ulna, you've got the spike there, and there's a nerve that goes, have you ever hit your funny bone? And this one, ah! So every breath that Christ would take, he would have to rotate against the nail, pull himself up, and experience that agonizing, buzzing feeling that we get when we hit our funny bone, shooting all the way up his arms.
And of course, you've got the rugged part of the cross behind him, so every single breath is excruciating. That's the suffering that we're talking about here. But we'll note that there are plenty of human beings who've experienced that kind of death.
And those who would mock and scorn the sacrifice of Christ all too joyfully point that out, as if somehow it's not enough, that his suffering physically, while other people have done it. And this is where the cry of dereliction comes into place.
And you'll note that with the sun darkened, moon can't even give its light, the earth itself is going to shake and quake when Christ gives up his spirit. But the big suffering here is the separation from God the Father.
God made him to be sin, Scripture says. Your sin, my sin. And so the cry of dereliction reveals to us that in the midst of all of this, Christ truly taking our sins upon himself, that now the face of the Father has turned away from the Son.
And this is the greatest agony that Christ is going through now. My God, I cry to you by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. And as you're reading Psalm 22 here, this is really a depiction of Christ's inner dialogue, and I really am becoming convinced that it is.
You have to kind of throw into the mix. With each of these thoughts, Christ is pulling himself up, taking in a breath, letting himself down, exhaling, coming back up, taking a breath. There's a rhythm to it.
And in the midst of this, God the Father having turned his face away from the Son, the Son then says, yet you are holy, you are enthroned on the praises of Israel. At no point does Christ's faith in the Father flag.
In you our fathers trusted, they trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried and they were rescued. In you they trusted and they were not put to shame. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
All who see me mock me, they make mouths at me, they wag their heads. He trusts in the Lord, let him deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him. And you're going to note here that with graphic detail, explicit detail, things that Christ could have had no control over, at least in a human way of speaking, it is all recorded here hundreds, nearly a thousand years before Christ was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
So he's describing from a first person perspective how they're wagging their heads at him. In fact, the very words that they are using to mock him, he trusts in the Lord, let the Lord deliver him, let him rescue him, for he delights in him.
And now back to the inner dialogue, and you have to take a breath. Yet you are he who took me from the womb and you made me trust you at my mother's breast. On you I was cast from my birth and from my mother's womb you have been my God.
Be not far from me for trouble is near and there is none to help. Many bulls encompass me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me. They open wide their mouths at me like ravening and roaring lion and poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax. It is melted within my breast. My strength is dried up like a pot shirt and my tongue sticks to my jaws and you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs encompass me, a company of evildoers encircles me.
They've pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. They stare and they gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots. Have you ever stopped to think why are these not part of the red letters?
They should be. But you, oh Lord, do not be far off. Oh you, my help come quickly to my aid. Deliver my soul from the sword, my precious life and the power of the dog. Save me from the mouth of the lion.
You have rescued me from the horns of the wild oxen and then I will tell of your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him. All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him and stand in awe of him.
All you offspring of Israel.". So what does it all mean? It's a little portion of the agony of Christ. Luther, in writing on the sufferings of Jesus, in his Apostles, talks about the importance of rightly meditating on the sufferings of Christ.
If you were to merely look at them as some kind of an example to follow in your own life, you know, when you're having trouble or whatever, then you're going to note that following the example of Christ will not give you comfort.
Because each and every one of us, we know firsthand that our sin is, well, damnable. And when we hear the law of God preached, when the law of God does its work, well, over and over again we are made to feel guilty.
Our hearts are pricked. And you'll note that when God's law does its condemning work, you have to find some way. Some way to find some peace and some comfort. But you'll never find it from the law. The law cannot comfort you.
But the sufferings of Christ can when you recognize that what is happening here, in the midst of this circus-like environment, people expecting Jesus to do a magic trick and have Elijah come and rescue him and free him so that he can take a bow like Houdini, in the midst of all of this, what was really going on here was that Christ was forsaken so that we would never be as we deserve.
And when we see the agony that he's going through and we hear the inner dialogue from Psalm 22, then you're going to note that sin begins to lose its luster. Sin begins to not look so fun anymore when we consider the magnitude of the suffering that Christ had to go through, including the very Father himself turning his face away from Christ.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And so Luther rightly points out that when we rightly see that here what is happening is that Christ is suffering in our place, that he's bleeding and dying, taking on the wrath of God and being forsaken because that's exactly what your sin and mine demands be the penalty.
But that he did it for us, did it in our place, did it so that we can live. This then is the thing that we can put against the guilt that we feel when we consider our own sin, when we hear the law of God condemning us and saying that those who do such things do not have eternal life.
And you say, yeah, but what about me? I've done such things. Then know that Christ bled, died here, forsaken so that you would be adopted, abandoned so that you wouldn't be. And that's the whole point.
And you miss it if you are distracted by the yahoos who can't even hear correctly what Jesus is saying, don't even know their Bible well enough to know that he was quoting the psalm. And so as we consider our meditation here, the misheard words of Jesus, don't let that distract you.
Come back and let you hear his words rightly so that then you can think along with Jesus and hear his inner dialogue that is recorded for us in the passage that should be full of red letters because these are the thoughts of Christ himself, the words that he spoke from the cross, written from a perspective of the one who is suffering, bleeding, and dying for you.
And although he was made to be sin and God laid on him the iniquity of us all, you'll note that in the midst of all of this, Christ never despaired of the faithfulness of God and that God would rescue him and that God would vindicate him.
And because Christ has done all of these things, God is faithful to forgive us our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. It is the glory of God to pardon our iniquities all because of what Christ has done for us in our place.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
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