Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

It is difficult to understand how the divine, holy, almighty, Son of God suffered in His agony for us on the cross. How does an almighty God experience suffering and agony? I have even heard people say, “Well, He was God. That is how He survived.” But I do not think that is faithful to the witness of Scripture.

 

The Bible recounts for us Jesus’ incredible pain, both emotional and physical. Perhaps we are not well served by the many paintings and crucifixes we see where the body of Jesus looks more physically fit and strong than most of us, and the expression on His face is as if He has just drifted off for a little nap, no marks on His healthy-toned skin except for a tiny dot of red on His hands and feet.

 

The crucifixion painting from the Grunewald altarpiece, of which there is a print hanging in the narthex, is a little bit different. There Jesus’ body is a pale grey and His skin is all diseased and pock-marked. He really looks dead from intense pain and suffering. In the movie “The Passion of the Christ,” there was an attempt to portray the reality of what a man would look like, enduring the treatment that Jesus suffered at the hands of the temple guards, the Roman soldiers, the mobs lining the streets, the beatings and scourging and abuse and then the crucifixion itself. Most people are not able to view it without turning away.

 

I cannot tell you what an honest portrayal might look like visually, but we have the sure and certain words of Scripture in the Book of Hebrews, which tells us: “In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence” (Hebrews 5:7).

 

There is deep, significant meaning to the fact that Jesus, the divine, holy, almighty, Son of God, cried out with tears in agony and desperation to be delivered from what He suffered for our sins. In Jesus’ recorded words spoken from the cross we hear Him making quotations from the psalms. “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me” (Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46). “Into Your hands I commit My spirit” (Psalm 31:5; Lk 23:46).

 

There are other aspects to those psalms which also parallel other parts of Jesus’ suffering. We rehearsed Psalm 22 last night as the altar was stripped and the chancel cleared, signifying the treatment of Jesus being stripped of all respect and reverence by those who also mistreated and abused Him physically. Likewise, the Psalm appointed for today (Psalm 31), from which the line, “Into Your hands I commit my spirit” comes, also says, “they scheme together against Me, as they plot to take My life” (31:13), as Judas Iscariot did with the chief priests and elders (Matthew 27:1). Also, “those who see Me in the street flee from Me” (31:11), as all the disciples fled away when Jesus was arrested (Matthew 26:56; Mk 14:50).

 

Jesus told His disciples that even what was written in the psalms, most of which are quite personal reflections of those who cried out to God in distress, were written about Him (Luke 24:44). What does it mean that Jesus takes on these prayers of distressed and desperate people pleading for deliverance? He did not just share their words, as if reciting them in a play. Rather, He also shared their desperation, their distress, their agony.

 

We cannot allow the confession of the deity of Jesus Christ of Nazareth to cancel out the confession of His humanity. The two were united together in Him. So even as He was true God conquering over suffering and death; He was also true man actually experiencing suffering and death as any human being would, enduring the pain of the body and feeling the desperation of His spirit, and so crying out for deliverance.

 

That says a lot about the impact of suffering and death upon humanity. The despair and desperation are natural responses. You are not less of a human being for crying out with tears and fears when you suffer. Even Jesus did that. You are not less of a child of God if you ask Him why He has let you go through these things. Even Jesus did that. You are not evading your responsibilities if you plead for God to save you from these things. Jesus did that too.

 

Psalm 31, which Jesus quoted, is attributed to David while he was suffering persecution and being hunted down by King Saul. And the psalm itself is full of bits and pieces of other psalm verses and phrases from Scripture, so that it looks like David in his despair was grasping hold of quotations that he had heard and learned from God’s faithful people in the past.

 

So, it makes sense, that Jesus of Nazareth, a direct descendant of David and one of God’s faithful people of Israel, would grab hold of such faithful sayings as he endured pain and despair both on the cross and in the hours and days leading up to His crucifixion. It is a true part of His human identity, not only ancestrally, but as a true human being fully experiencing His passion as a flesh and blood man.

 

And His quotations of these psalm verses that are recorded from His time on the cross, point us to the reality of what He went through as expressed throughout the entirety of the psalms from which those quotations come. For Jesus did not cite them as proof texts to try to convince us of His full humanity. He cited them as a man in agony and desperation, crying out for deliverance from His sufferings, just as David and all the faithful people of God experience “with loud cries and tears.”

 

And we are a part of that group, the faithful people of God who experience suffering, despair, and desperation and cry out to God for deliverance. At times God seems to have abandoned us to our sufferings. At times we can find no respite, no comfort, no rescue physically or emotionally. Everywhere we turn we seem to be confronted with the cold truth that we are only getting what we deserve. At times even God seems to have cut us off.

 

But when we grasp in desperation for words to express our torment and latch onto the words of the psalms: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me? Why are You so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning”; or from today’s psalm, “I said in my alarm, ‘I am cut off from Your sight,” (Psalm 31:22), then we remember that we are in the same place that Jesus was. And even though it seems that we will never be delivered or relieved, there is the reality that we are speaking the same words that Jesus spoke. We are feeling things that Jesus felt. We are suffering the way that people of God wrote about when they were pouring out their hearts in pain and anguish. We are stretched out with Christ upon the cross.

 

And as true to life as these words of despair and anguish are, that come to us from the psalms, so as true to life are the words that they speak of God’s mercy and deliverance coming to His people. “I had said in my alarm, ‘I am cut off from Your sight.’ But You heard the voice of My pleas for mercy when I cried to You for help.” And as “in the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence” (Hebrews 5:7), so we also are heard by the same merciful and gracious heavenly Father as we cry out to Him.

 

We not only share in the sufferings and pains and despair and death as the Son of God suffered in human flesh, we also share the same words as we cry out in our desperation with the words of the faithful recorded in the psalms. And we not only share the same words in our prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears, but because Jesus’ sufferings and death were to take away the penalty of our sins, we also share in the same answer to those prayers.

 

He suffered on account of the evil we have done, and yet His suffering benefits us. He died in pain and agony to pay for our sins, not in consequence of any sins of His own. And this is where His experience of pain and suffering diverges from our own. The thief on the cross next to Jesus said to the other criminal, “we are receiving the due reward for our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:41). Does His innocence lessen His suffering at all or make it any easier to bear?

 

God the Father heard Jesus because of His reverence, because of His obedience to the heavenly Father in carrying out the plan of our salvation. We are heard because of our reverence, expressed in the faith that directs our cries of desperation to God the Father in heaven and to no one else. Because we share in the sufferings and the words of desperation, we also share in the answers and the words of thanksgiving and praise.

 

Even under such suffering as Jesus suffered, we are not cast off. Even when it seems there is no deliverance we are not without hope. The faithful prayer for deliverance and salvation has been answered. It was answered through the suffering and death of Jesus for your salvation. Through your sufferings and death you are drawn into His life.

 

You also share in His victory over suffering and death. You share in His resurrection from the dead. You share in His eternal life in the presence of God with all the faithful who have cried out to Him for salvation. And you share in their words of thanksgiving and praise. “Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God.”

 

The divine, holy, almighty, Son of God suffered for us on the cross. His sacrifice was of infinite value to cover the sins of the whole world for all of time. But His divinity and almighty power did not make that suffering any easier for Him, for He suffered in His flesh. He suffered as one of us to take on the burden of our sins, to be the fitting redemptive sacrifice as our true substitute. The holy, divine, immortal Son of God took on our human nature and so “In the days of His flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence.”