[AI translation] Dear Brothers and Sisters! From this sad story that we have just read, I would like to bring the last cry of Jesus, and to draw your attention to it. Let us try to live in the reality of Jesus' sufferings and agonies, and accept the fruit of his suffering with humble gratitude. The greatest depth of our suffering and the greatest degree of our gratitude is expressed in this cry: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' How much anguish there is in these tiny words! What grace in the answer to it! Let the Holy Spirit of God show us now in the Good Friday Gospel!The Reformed consider Good Friday to be their greatest feast. This statement is correct in that the sum of the whole gospel, its central truth, is concentrated in the cross of Jesus. The whole of Christendom, all over the world, and perhaps at this very hour, is flocking around the cross of Jesus, there, at Calvary. You could not do better. But are we seeing this cross as it really is? Are we not too used to seeing Jesus' suffering, agony and death in a certain artistic representation? To see our Saviour on Calvary through the eyes of Dürer, Rembrandt or Munkácsy? Or to sway our souls in a particularly moving, solemn reverence, delighting in the sublime music of the St Matthew Passion? Does not our Good Friday devotion become a special experience? And, indeed, do we not see the figure of Jesus Christ girded with the glory of nineteenth-century reverence? Seeing as a halo the crown of thorns that was the symbol of his greatest humiliation?
Let's try to realise: the crucifixion of that time, some 1900 years ago, was very different from what we imagine. What happened then, on that Friday at Calvary in the thirty-third or thirty-fourth year of our era - we don't know exactly - was not something devoutly beautiful, but something quite horrible. It was a terrible reality! The one who was hanging on the cross at that time was not at all the glorious Christ in the eyes of the people, but a dangerous evil-doer who had to be executed! He was surrounded by an angry crowd as he was dragged to the cross. They pointed at him as a rebel, as one who had broken God's law and was now rightly going to a well-deserved calvary. He was not accompanied on the road of sorrows by a crowd of admirers, then there was none of this Christianity. Even his relatives only glanced at him from afar, with a frightened look. Those who believed in Him and walked with Him were scattered in every direction of the wind, running for cover and safety. In great desolation, He walked the path of His suffering alone. Not only outwardly, but also inwardly quite alone.
Dear Brothers and Sisters, the cross, which has since become a concept for us, was at that time a gallows. It was used to hang slaves, murderers and the most vicious sinners. What a horrible sight: the kingdom of God on earth was represented on a gallows! It was the only place for God. And this cross was set up along the highway. The people passing by felt called upon to throw a sharp stone or a sharper word of derision at it, and they did. Who can see into the sea of anguish that was rushing through Jesus' soul at that hour? Oh, how wickedly and foolishly they cried out, "He saved others, he cannot save himself. If he be King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him. He trusted in God; now save him, if he will; for he said, I am the Son of God." (vv. 42-43) What shall he say to these men? Say, I will not come down from the cross because I am the Son of God? Tell him, 'People, understand that I do not want to save myself, but you! That is why I must die such a terrible death on this earth! He does not say! Why would he say? No one would have understood then anyway. Now you must go through and fight all the battles all alone. We read that it was dark from six o'clock until nine o'clock. In our time, this darkness was from noon until three o'clock. Evidently due to a total eclipse of the sun in broad daylight. It was as if a terrifying, cosmic mourning had fallen over the whole of Golgotha. A stunned silence fell around the cross. In that deep, dark silence, there hung Jesus. He could not even see the sky. It was as if the dark powers of the underworld were pulling him further and further down. As if God didn't want to know about Him. He hangs there between heaven and earth. Like a cursed one, cast out by earth and refused to be received by heaven.
For three hours this terrified darkness lasted. So much so that Jesus, unable to bear it any longer, cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The writer notes that Jesus cried out with a loud voice. This was not a dying sigh, the last groan of a dying man. A cry of anguish, as when one sinks among the waves. A sharp, shuddering scream filled Golgotha at this moment. Who can feel the terrified pain expressed in this cry? For, Brothers and Sisters, this is the horror of horrors! It is hell itself! This is the sentence of damnation: to be abandoned by God, to be separated from God! What do we know what it means to come before the judgment seat of God, laden with the sins of the world?! To be at the mercy of all the power of darkness that sin deserves! The agony of the damned soul trembles through the parched body. It is put into words when it cries out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Brothers and sisters, this is the moment which, centuries later, was expressed in the Apostles' Creed: "To hell with the straw". It was the most terrible, the most horrible! To be separated from the Source of Life, from the God with whom he was one. Of whom he said: 'I and the Father are one', 'He who has seen me has seen the Father'! Not the nails that pierced his body, not the taunts and other torments, but the fact that he lost the consciousness of God's presence. His being was broken and his human being suffered damnation. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?". We too, with shaken souls, say afterwards, "why"? Why did God also have to abandon Jesus?
Now we see that this was not a general execution, as there have been so many on this earth. Someone has gone through hell! Here was a redemptive death! For another, for another! Someone else was substituted when he took this terrible sacrifice. He took the sentence of damnation from someone else, he saved someone else from hell, he redeemed someone else from judgment by this terrible death on the cross. Someone else. But who? Who could it be for whom God made such a sacrifice? You, and you, and me! Brothers and sisters, we no longer have to ask: My God, why have you forsaken Him? But this way: My God, why have you forsaken Him? We can only acknowledge on our knees that for me, because of me, for me! God has cast all our sins upon Him, and He stands accused on our behalf before the judgment seat of God. Jesus not only feels as if he has been abandoned by God, but he also feels the full agony of being abandoned by God - because this is hell! To be separated from God, the source of life. To be cut off from eternal life. That is hell! That's what He redeemed us from, that's what He saved us from. That's why even God had to leave Him. That is why Jesus had to be separated from God, so that we would never be separated from Him. So that there would never be a moment in our lives when we feel abandoned by God. To always remain in the closeness and love of God. Never to cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
In our lives, too, there may come times that resemble to some extent that darkness of Golgotha. It is as if all the light has gone out, as if the darkness of despair has fallen upon us. As if even God has departed from us and does not want to know about us. There may come a time in any of our lives when we especially understand Jesus' cry, "Why have you forsaken me? It doesn't take a great tragedy. It is enough that someone feels very lonely, very abandoned. You know, Brothers and Sisters, that the most painful feeling is the feeling of loneliness, of abandonment. Psychologists have found that modern man needs nothing more than a sense of protection, a feeling of being sheltered. He has lost God, and with him a sense of security on earth. You remember, once, at Bethesda Lake, a man who had been ill for thirty-eight years sighed, "Lord, I have no man!" Since then, that sigh has been uttered by millions. It is the greatest tragedy of modern man that, though he has walked on the moon and hurries towards Venus, he is an orphan in the crowd. Abandoned among his friends, lonely even in his family. I have no man! Just as a small child needs the protective love of his mother, so does a grown man need the sense of protection that only God can give. In this respect, even the oldest man is like a small child who needs someone to protect him, to love him, to cuddle him.
Dear Brother, if you have such a moment in your life, take a look at the One whom God has abandoned for you. So that you may never feel abandoned by God. Jesus knows this state of mind very well, He stands beside you and says: Do not be afraid, you have someone! Here I am! I have suffered all the pains of being alone for you, you can never be alone again! If you ever sigh, "Oh, God, I have no one," then immediately afterwards say, "But I have a God! I have a God who suffers with me! There is no depth of earthly life so terrible that Jesus is not beneath us! If you know that you have a God, then stand by the side of the man who has no man! It is always in the act of solidarity with others that we feel best how we are not alone. How truly God is with us. Perhaps that lonely soul is your son or daughter, or your wife, or your mother who is lonely, or your father who can barely walk. Don't leave them alone! If you don't leave them alone, you won't be alone. You will not feel alone. It is when you want to be a man for others that you really feel how much you have God!
Brothers and sisters! At the moment of Jesus' death, something happened that has symbolic significance. You heard it: the veil of the temple, which separated the Holy of Holies, the dwelling place of God, from the rest of the temple, was torn in two from top to bottom. The great intervening space between the holy God and sinful man has disappeared. The way is made free, no one is excluded from the presence and nearness of God. The door of the heavenly realm has slammed shut upon this earth. Into our life on earth the air of eternity is breathed. This world and the world beyond are one world. The temporal is permeated by the eternal, and the visible is carried by the invisible. There is no darkness on this earth, whatever one's fate, through which the light of eternity does not shine. Indeed, as we sing, God is here among us!
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" There, at Calvary, is the source of God's redemptive power for us too. Let me tell you that I too go there every day to draw faith, hope and love. I return there again for forgiveness, for renewal, for consolation, for strength. For those who are truly standing here in spirit before Jesus on Calvary, something must happen: a miracle. Whoever seeks forgiveness for his sins will find it only here! But it is here! Those who are tired of life's struggles can be renewed here! If this cold world has drained the love from one's heart, here it can be filled again with heavenly love. Is someone's soul tired of sadness or the pain of grief? Here you will surely find comfort! Is someone's faith failing? Come here, to Golgotha! Here you will be renewed by faith! Is there pain? Here you will find the cure! Is your soul on fire with temptation? Here, flee to Calvary, for here you shall have victory! Do you seek courage against the fear of death? Here is eternity, the fountain of salvation! Bathe in it, draw assurance of your own salvation! Are you seeking God? Here you will find it most surely, at the cross of Jesus!
Let's not just make Good Friday a celebration, but let's open ourselves to the heaven opened up before us, let God's energy pass through! Let God's energy enliven us at home, in our families, out in the world, in all our work, and even in the hour of death. Let us pray for this:
Jesus, my consolation!
I pray
Your blessed word!
Your presence
You cheer me, you give me life,
Gives you a brave heart.
Be with me,
Oh, my all!
Without you I cannot live:
You are eternal life!
(Canto 294, verse 1)
Amen
Date: 8 April 1966.