My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Matthew 27:11-54

11 Then Jesus was arraigned before Pontius Pilate, the governor, who questioned him. “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replied, “You say that I am.” 12 Yet when Jesus was accused by the chief priests and elders, he made no reply. 13 Pilate said to Jesus, “Surely you hear how many charges they bring against you?” 14 But Jesus did not answer Pilate on a single count, much to the governor’s surprise. 15 Now, on the occasion of a festival, the governor was accustomed to release one prisoner, whomever the crowd would designate. 16 At the time they were holding a notorious prisoner named Barabbas. 17 So when the crowd gathered, Pilate asked them, “Which one do you wish me to release for you? Barabbas? Or Jesus, the so-called Messiah?” 18 Pilate knew, of course, that it was out of jealousy that they had handed Jesus over. 19 While Pilate was still presiding on the bench, his wife sent him a message: “Have nothing to do with that innocent man. I had a dream about him last night which has been troubling me all day long.” 20 But the chief priests and elders convinced the crowds that they should ask for Barabbas, and have Jesus put to death. 21 So when the governor asked them, “Which one do you wish me to release for you?” they all cried, “Barabbas!” 22 Pilate said to them, “Then what am I to do with Jesus, the so-called Messiah?” “Crucify him!” they all said. 23 “Why? What crime has he committed?” Pilate asked. But they only shouted louder, “Crucify him!” 24 Pilate finally realized that he was getting nowhere with this—in fact, a riot was breaking out. Pilate called for water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, declaring as he did so, “I am innocent of this man’s blood. The responsibility is yours.” 25 The whole crowd said in reply, “Let his blood be on us and on our children.” 26 At that, Pilate released Barabbas to them. But he had Jesus whipped with a cat-o’-nine-tails, then handed him over to be crucified. 27 The governor’s soldiers took Jesus inside the Praetorium and assembled the whole cohort around him. 28 They stripped off his clothes and wrapped him in a scarlet military cloak. 29 Weaving a crown out of thorns, they pressed it onto his head and stuck a reed in his right hand. Then they began to mock Jesus by dropping to their knees, saying, “All hail, King of the Jews!” 30 They also spat at him. Afterward they took hold of the reed and struck Jesus on the head. 31 Finally, when they had finished mocking him, they stripped him of the cloak, dressed him in his own clothes and led him off to crucifixion. 32 On their way out, they met a Cyrenian named Simon, whom they pressed into service to carry the cross. 33 Upon arriving at a site called Golgotha—which means Skull Place—34 they gave Jesus a drink of wine mixed with a narcotic herb, which Jesus tasted but refused to drink. 35 Once they had nailed Jesus to the cross, they divided his clothes among them by olling dice; 36 then they sat down and kept watch over him. 37 Above his head, they put the charge against him in writing: “This is Jesus, King of the Jews.” 38 Two robbers were crucified along with Jesus, one at his right and one at his left. 39 People going by insulted Jesus, shaking their heads 40 and saying, “So you are the one who was going to destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days! Save yourself, why don’t you? Come down off that cross if you are God’s Own!” 41 The chief priests, the religious scholars and the elders also joined in the jeering: 42 “He saved others but he cannot save himself! So he’s the King of Israel! Let’s see him come down from that cross, and then we will believe in him. 43 He trusts in God; let God rescue him now, if God is happy with him! After all, he claimed to be God’s Own!” 44 The robbers who had been crucified with Jesus jeered at him in the same way. 45 At noon, a darkness fell over the whole land until about three in the afternoon. 46 At that hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” 47 This made some of the bystanders who heard it remark, “He is calling for Elijah!” 48 One of them hurried off and got a sponge. He soaked the sponge in cheap wine and, sticking it on a reed, tried to make Jesus drink. 49 The others said, “Leave him alone. Let’s see whether Elijah comes to his rescue.” 50 Once again, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, then he gave up his spirit. 51 Suddenly, the curtain in front of the Holy of Holies was ripped in half from top to bottom. The earth quaked, boulders were split 52 and tombs were opened. Many bodies of holy ones who had fallen asleep were raised. 53 After Jesus’ resurrection, they came out of their tombs and entered the holy city, and appeared to many. 54 The centurion and his cohort, who were standing guard over Jesus’ body, were terror-stricken at seeing the earthquake and all that was happening, and said, “Clearly, this was God’s Own!”

Priests for Equality. The Inclusive Bible (pp. 2178-2180). Sheed & Ward. Kindle Edition.

Holy Week is my favorite week of the year. It’s a beautiful testament to the presence of God in the darkest and most painful parts of life.

It isn’t an easy week—it’s spiritually rigorous and emotionally demanding.

But the difficulty of this week is a crucial set up for the joy of Easter.

Next week, we celebrate the resurrection,

the joyful hope that in the darkest and most fearful parts of this life, God is present and active,

always bringing forth new life.

Before he’s resurrected, Jesus has to die.

Why was Jesus killed? How did this happen?

From a narrative perspective, it’s not a straight answer, is it? There was a whole series of events without a single person to blame.

Many were complicit. Many contributed—in their own way—to the public slaughter of an innocent person.

As we hear this story (for many of us a story we’ve heard countless times) the world that killed Jesus may not seem like this is our world—we don’t execute criminals on crosses anymore.

But our current context is not so different. Since 1973 the United States have wrongly convicted and sentenced 190 people to the death pentalty.

Last year, US law enforcement killed at least 1,176 people, making it the deadliest year for police violence on record.

Let’s not forget the 14 billion animals killed this year in our country for food, who end their lives shuffled into slaughterhouses from their cramped cages.

We, as a society, are not off the hook for the death of the innocent.

We are not off the hook for the death of Jesus.

Why was Jesus killed?

Was Jesus killed because Pontius Pilate, Roman Governor, backed by all his military might, wouldn’t stand up to a crowd of commoners calling for this innocent person to be executed?

Maybe because Pilate ignored the warning from his wife about Jesus’s innocence!

Today’s gospel reading begins after Jesus is betrayed by one of his disciples,

after he’s arrested and tried by the high priest and religious scholars,

after all of the religious leaders have gathered together to try him,

to catch him in a lie so that they could kill him and not have to deal with him anymore.

This is after the priests and religious authorities have indicted him, beat him up, bound him, and led him to the Roman governor.

All four gospels in our Bible include details about the chief priests and pharisees trying to trap Jesus,

trying to run him out of town and stop him however they could.

All four gospels tell the story that Jesus’s ministry enraged the religious leaders because he preached a gospel of love, forgiveness, and repentance—

A gospel that freed his people from the burden of getting it right, and from the control and spiritual domination of the religious authorities.

Jesus preached a gospel that God is not some distant, far-off judge who needed to be appeased with animal sacrifice,

who must be worshipped in the right place, at the right time, in the right way,

Instead Jesus preached that God is present—now! God is with us—now! God is active in your life, in your heart, in the world around you—now! You don’t need to do anything to earn God’s favor—you already have it, just live like you do.

Jesus preached a message of grace—that there is no difference between the king and the beggar in the eyes of God—that every one of us is invited to live a life of faith, and it makes no difference how we pray, how much money we can offer, or what our reputation says about us.

Jesus preached a message of justice—that the Kindom of God would be given to outsiders,

that children and women and sinners and servants were vessels of God’s wisdom—

that wisdom was not found in impressive showy prayers at the temple or expensive sacrifices.

Jesus proclaimed this gospel of love and it got him killed,

At least in part because he challenged the authority of the Pharisees and High Priests, but

In our reading today the crowd is the one who seems to sentence Jesus to death. “Crucify him,” they shout louder and louder, building up to a riot

Why were these people so eager to see Jesus die?

The gospel text said the chief priests and elders were the ones who stirred up the crowd against Jesus.

How was this crowd so easily manipulated?

It’s part of our psychology to get sucked into crowds, to participate in thoughts and actions we never dreamed we would be a part of, to lose our personal ethics, to be swept away into a crowd.

We Western individualists shudder to think of ourselves as vulnerable to such a phenomenon, but the adrenaline increase we naturally experience in a crowd activates the fear center of our brain, the amygdala, and puts us in a hyper-stimulated state.

As a species we are wired for inclusion, which inclines us toward conformity—mimicking the behavior of those around us for fear of rejection.

Studies have shown that for most humans, what we know to be true, good, and right is easily challenged and reinterpreted simply by repeating and reinforcing false information from multiple sources.

This is even easier if the sources are authority figures.

In an age of scary advanced technology, of AI generated images and videos,

In a time when the crowd mentality lives on a screen in our pockets and it only takes a few thumb swipes to get sucked into someone else’s ideas,

In the ways our culture endorses violence and evil as necessary and natural,

Wisdom asks us to firmly plant ourselves on solid ground, so that we can remember the truth of who we are and who we are called to be when we encounter the sweeping power of the crowd.

Jesus’s last words in today’s reading are a prayer.

He has been betrayed, abused, and abandoned,

But he has not forgotten who he is.

Even in his darkest hour, with the weight of the absolute brutality of humankind holding him to a cross,

Jesus called out in faith to the God who led him there.

Jesus prayed one of the oldest prayers there is, in fact it is the first line of Psalm 22:

My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

God, have you forgotten me?

God, are you there? I don’t feel you anymore…

Before he is resurrected, before the world changes in his name,

Jesus felt the complete agony of feeling abandoned by God.

Jesus lived the fullness of the human experience. He is God With Us—even in our suffering, or maybe, as we still use the cross as a symbol of our faith—especially in our suffering.

There is no wound felt,

No tear shed,

No loss lamented,

No betrayal born

That Jesus, that God, is not with us,

Even when it feels like it.

Because while the story may end today with “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” next weekend we will celebrate the wonder of the resurrection—that even though it didn’t feel like it, God was present through it all,

Bringing from even this unjust, violent death,

new life for all who seek it.