And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" that is, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Matthew 27:46, NKJV

There are certain things about life with a preschooler that I really wish we would never outgrow.  As I walked with my youngest across a parking lot today, my hand reach down without looking, and a moment later her hand reached up.  It's normally something we do without thinking -- a habit when we're pressing through crowds, navigating stairs, or just taking a stroll.  No words or visual prompts needed.  Just the natural reaching for one another when we walk...so we can walk together.  On Calvary's cross, Jesus cried out in Matthew 27:46 like a Son reaching up without sensing that His Father was reaching back.  They'd been walking together since eternity past, but there as the darkness lifted from Golgotha, Jesus felt a loneliness never known before.  Some who heard Him that day mistook His plea as one directed to Elijah, a plea for aid or escape from His physical suffering.  They ran to offer Him a drink because they viewed the cross on merely a material level, but Jesus was enduring the cross on a much deeper level.

A RUNWAY OF ABANDONMENT

Just days before all this, Jesus brought awareness to the disciples of what His final days would involve:

“You know that after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.” Matthew 26:2, NKJV

Jesus knew that crucifixion lay ahead, and the road to it involved being "delivered up." The term expresses the idea of handing something over to another, no longer claiming ownership of an object but passing that along to someone else.  And as we track the Gospel writers' narrative of what took place from this point on, we see Jesus handed over again and again.  

Like a hot potato, Jesus was passed along by those who refused to claim ownership of Him.  

Judas agreed to "deliver Him" to the chief priests for thirty pieces of silver (Mt. 26:14-15).  Peter denied Him three times before dawn.  The Jewish Sanhedrin rejected Jesus as the Son of God and "delivered Him to Pontius Pilate" (Mt. 27:2). And Pilate, though clearly seeing Jesus' innocence, still "delivered Him to be crucified" (Mt. 27:26).  

As Jesus became the Sin-Bearer for all of humanity, He felt severed from earthly support.  No one claimed Him or advocated for Him.  He was betrayed, left, denied, and eventually delivered over to abuse, mockery, and crucifixion.  So when Jesus cried out "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me," it revealed an experience of rejection from a different direction.  That runway of abandonment by His own disciples, His own kinsmen, and Rome itself paled in comparison to the thought that He had been forsaken by the Father.  Suspended between heaven and earth, Jesus felt disconnected from not only every earthly support, but even every heavenly one.  No one to claim Him...not even His Father.

But again, don't misunderstand Jesus' suffering like those around the cross that day.  He wasn't calling for deliverance from the cross (cf. Jn. 12:27), but was declaring His submission to the Father's will and trusting that His sacrifice would be enough (cf. Lk. 23:46; Jn. 19:30), that His experience of soul separation from God would ensure humanity's ability to be reconciled to God!  Jesus died not to save us from physical hardship.  He died to save us from being eternally separated from God.  

On the cross, Jesus was handed over and forsaken in ways we'll never fully understand.  For what purpose?  So we could forever be "accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1:6), forever assured that He will never leave us nor forsake us (Heb. 13:5), never outgrowing our ability to reach up our hand to God and discover He's forever reaching His hand back to us.