Jesus' Cry of Dereliction

Today's Gospel (St. Mark 15:33-39) contains the mystery of Jesus' cry: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Like the mystery of Gethsemane, in which Jesus' will is seen in a sense to be different from His Father's (not as I will, but as Thou wilt), this mystery contains the complaint of the Righteous One: He must expect full deliverance, in accordance with the promise. This expectation is itself in keeping with His righteousness. Yet the Father abandons Him. Why? We know why (for the redemption of the world), yet there is here a divine conundrum of sorts, the heart of all that is mysterious.

But His abandonment is not eternal; He is not forsaken forever; weeping endures for a night, but joy comes in the morning, the morning of His glad resurrection.

So must we remember in the hour of our darkness that though His abandonment of us likewise brings grievous cries of "why?" yet He will resolve this and come back to deliver us. He must, for He conquered our enemies precisely in the cross. So His "loud voice" at His death was the roar or Judah's Lion. He gave the Spirit, which led the centurion and us to declare Him to be the Son of God.

The sermon.