Jesus used the Jewish scriptures to speak of his suffering. In Mark’s gospel his only words on the cross are from Psalm 22, a cry of lament. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” The psalm is a window into Jesus’ mind and his feelings as he suffered and died.

His suffering is so great that he feels abandoned by God. Life and hope seem gone. Still, he holds on. The psalm ends with a cry of faith: “God did not turn away from me, but heard me when I cried out.”

The psalm describes the real, acute pain Jesus endured:

“Like water my life drains away;
all my bones are disjointed.
My heart has become like wax,
it melts away within me.
As dry as a potsherd is my throat;
my tongue cleaves to my palate;
you lay me in the dust of death.”

There’s no relief in his suffering, no comfort from the abuse of his enemies:

“ I am a worm, not a man, scorned by men,
despised by the people.
All who see me mock me;
they curl their lips and jeer;
they shake their heads at me:
“He relied on the LORD—let him deliver him;
if he loves him, let him rescue him.”

The love he knew all his life, from childhood and his mother’s womb, the respect he had from his years of his ministry, the warmth of God’s presence seem gone. Where is God, the psalm complains “ who drew me forth from my mother’s womb and made me safe from my mother’s breast?”

“They have pierced my hands and my feet
I can count all my bones.
They stare at me and gloat;
they divide my garments among them;
for my clothing they cast lots.”

The gospel writers later used Psalm 22 to frame the story of the Passion of Jesus.

Paul the Apostle says in his Letter to the Philippians, that Jesus ” who was in the form of God, emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, and coming in human likeness and found human in appearance, he humbled himself becoming obedient to death, even to death on a cross.”

Psalm 22 describes further what is meant when we hear Jesus humbled himself. Far from being immune to the human experience of death, Jesus experienced the darkest form of human experience: when he experienced death on a cross.

Psalm 22 gives no answer for the suffering. It says only that God does not abandon his creatures when suffering occurs, even suffering of the worst kind.

God did not abandon Jesus on the Cross, Paul tells the Philippians. He “ greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,

that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”

God did not abandon his Son, nor does he abandon the world. “God so loved the world that he sent his only Son,” Nothing in creation or humanity is abandoned by God, the creator. God sent his Son into the world, not to condemn it, but to save it and give it life.

We draw hope from Jesus on the Cross . This is a blessed mystery. We bend our knee before it and confess with our tongue, that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior.