Hello everyone and thanks for tuning in to our sermon here at Trinity Streetsville.
Here at Trinity Church Streetsville, we want to share with you sermons that inspire and
encourage you in your faith journey, as together we are learning to love Jesus, live like Jesus
and lead others to Jesus.
Today in this sermon, we continue our series on the last words of Jesus from the cross
and are joined with Reverend Peter Mills who will unpack when Jesus cries out,
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Now before we begin, we'd like to invite you to follow our podcast, check us out on
social media and visit our website at trinitiestreetsville.org.
Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.
God bless.
A reading from Mark chapter 15 verse 29 to 36.
Those who pass by really insult at him, shaking their heads and saying,
So you who are going to destroy the temple and building the tree days, come down from
the cross and save yourself.
In the same way, the chief priests and the teachers of the law mock him among themselves.
He saved others, they said, but he can't save himself.
Let this Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and
believe those crucified with him also reap insult of him.
And the six hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour.
And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in loud voice,
Eloi, Eloi, let my subordinate with me, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
When some of those standing here had this day said, listen, he's calling Elijah.
One man ran, falling sponge with wine vinegar, putting on a stick and offering to Jesus to
drink the word of the Lord.
Well good morning Trinity Church.
I am delighted to be here with you.
Actually I'm over the moon to be here with you.
I can't quite believe that I am here.
In fact, I was thinking on my way here this morning that I'm going to wake up tomorrow
and I'm going to say to my wife, you know what, I had a crazy dream that we went to
Trinity Church and I preached at Trinity Church in Streetsville.
You'd never believe it, but it was great.
And why would I say that?
Well, I'm a country person.
I've been serving for the last 16 and a half years.
I just retired at early retirement, December 31st, and I've been serving at Country Parish.
And I mean, since COVID, maybe on a good Sunday, we'd have 50 people.
On a really good Sunday, 60 people, you know, so you get the idea.
But I did serve another church too for about 15 of those 16 and a half years.
I'm sure you've never heard of Ida.
Has anyone heard of Ida by the way?
No, I'm not surprised at that.
Maybe you've heard of Omimi.
Has anyone heard of Omimi?
You have one person?
Okay, two?
Okay, yeah.
I also served Omimi.
So I have a cousin who lived her whole life in Toronto, never much above Eglinton Avenue.
She's at two churches?
And I'm not usually very fast at these things, but I think the Lord gave me a little inspiration.
I said, yeah, I said, they give the good ones too.
And then I smiled and a little wink.
And anyway, it's, yeah, where is it?
It's about 15 minutes this side of Peterborough.
So if you're on your way to Peterborough, peel off the 115 before you get to Peterborough
and you'll be about 10 minutes before and you'll be in Cavern.
Maybe you've heard of Cavern.
And Ida is a little group of six houses in Cavern.
If you sneeze, you miss it.
So I kind of feel like I've been playing for the Peterborough Peets and I've been invited
for a game to come and play for the Toronto Maple Leafs online with Paul Henderson.
I mean, it's living the dream.
You know, does it get any better?
I don't think so.
Anyway, enough about me.
Let's pray.
Shall we always pray before I preach?
I mean, yeah, well, I just need the Lord's grace and mercy.
So Lord, without you, we are not able to please you.
Mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts through
Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Well, it's good to be here and to be in a church that takes Jesus' words seriously and
especially his words from the cross.
You know, a lot of churches talk about many wonderful things, but often they don't talk
about the cross or much about the cross or Jesus' crucifixion.
This isn't actually a brand new thing.
About 100 years ago, the theologian Richard Niebuhr said he was kind of assessing the
situation and he said, it's as though a God without wrath brought people without sin into
a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.
And I'm not entirely sure why we do this, but I think part of it is that it's difficult
for us to make sense of the cross.
We try to get our heads and our hearts around it, around Jesus' crucifixion, and you know,
well let's face it, it's not all that easy to do.
When I was about 19 or 20 years old, before I came to know the grace and mercy of God
in a real intangible way, I was asked to teach Sunday school.
Now you might think that that's not a crazy church.
What kind of church would ask someone who doesn't know really what they believe about
God to teach Sunday school?
Well, I think they were desperate, frankly, but you know, then again, I've never really
known a church that's been overrun with Sunday school teachers or people lining up.
So anyway, I was teaching this class, I think they were sort of grade one and grade two,
and this little girl who was there every week, almost every week would say, Jesus Christ
died for our sins.
And that expression got under my skin in a new way.
I mean, I've heard it before, but I thought, what in the world does that mean?
And I started kind of puzzling about it, then I asked other people what it meant, and everyone
kind of scratched their heads when I asked them, well what does it mean to say Jesus
Christ died for our sins?
Anyway, I mean, to make a long story short, God used that little six-year-old girl to
draw me, to stir up something inside me and to draw me to Himself.
And He put His song, as the psalmist says, in my heart and on my lips, and I started
singing that song.
And I've been singing it for the last 40 plus years, and that's why I became an Anglican
minister to help other people come to know the reality of God in Christ.
So this morning, we're considering Jesus' words, my God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?
And as I got working on this, reflecting on this and reading some commentaries, I realized
that when I saw the passage, actually, oh my goodness, there are so many wonderful things
in that passage that we just heard read that I said, gee, I think I want to talk a little
bit about that before I get to my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
And I thought, well, I better check with Rob to make sure it's okay.
So I sent him a text.
I said, Rob, is it okay if I talk not just about my God, my God, why have you forsaken
me, but the parts leading up to it a little bit?
And he said, that's fine.
He said, just don't talk about the other words from the cross.
You know, he didn't want me stealing his thunder from next Sunday's sermon.
So I said, no, I won't.
I promise.
So I will get there.
But I just have a few observations.
You know, the cross is central to Mark's message.
Well, it's central to the Bible's message.
And you may know this.
In all the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, about half of the pages are devoted
to the last week of Jesus' life.
So the first half is for the first three years of his earthly ministry.
And then everything slows way down as Jesus enters Jerusalem, what we call the triumphal
entry into Jerusalem, and enters into his passion, which in this context means his suffering,
and is raised victorious.
Well, it's an important part of what we believe and the church's teaching.
Jesus warns us that there are troubles ahead.
Mark tells us two times of this.
He says, Jesus then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and
be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must
be killed and after three days rise again.
And well, this is exactly what happens.
Jesus does suffer many things, and he is rejected by the religious and the political leaders.
He's betrayed by Judas, disowned by Peter.
And except for a few of the women, everyone deserts him.
In our reading, the pastors by taunt him, so look at you now.
You said you would tear down the temple and rebuild it in three days.
Come down from the cross and save yourself.
And the chief priests and the teachers of the law likewise taunted him and said, he
saved others, but he can't save himself.
Let this king come down from the cross.
We have our own version of this.
When we look at the cross, we're tempted to think, didn't God get carried away?
You know, didn't God overplay his hand at this point?
Was this really necessary?
I mean, do we have to behold this spectacle?
Is our sin and rebellion against God so bad that God has to go to this length?
Jesus, please, just get down from the cross.
And you know, if you think of it, what if he had got down from the cross?
What if he called on the heavenly angels to give him this superhuman strength to pull
the nails out of the wood that held his hands and his feet, and he steps down from the cross?
Imagine that.
That would have been pretty special, right?
That would have been pretty spectacular.
No one had ever done that before.
And you know, people would have been impressed.
But I doubt that we ever would have heard about Jesus.
You see, the Romans crucified thousands of people, and we only know the name of one of
them.
Crucifixion was meant to wipe the people out, wipe them off the face of the earth and their
identity gone.
But you know, that wouldn't really be the big thing.
We might not have heard of him.
But if we did hear of him, we would have thought, well, that's pretty amazing, this guy who
pulled the nails out of the cross.
But we would always have that niggling question in the back of our minds.
Could he defeat death?
And we'd never know.
When I was a kid, I thought of Jesus as a kind of superhero.
Does anyone here remember Batman?
I mean the TV show.
I don't even think I watched the movies.
I was, yeah, but the TV show, I loved it.
But what I hated was when they would break up the story halfway through.
And I remember two.
One where Batman is strapped to this conveyor belt and he's going down, down, down.
And at the bottom is a big circular saw, a massive circular saw that's spinning around.
And then the screen froze.
And it would say, you know, stay tuned next week or tune in next week.
And I think, oh, brother, I can't wait.
And then another time these walls were coming in on him and going to crush him.
And same thing, stay tuned next week.
Well, you know, if you think about Jesus, there are some things that are kind of like
a superhero.
He's at a big outdoor gathering with a few thousand people.
And they're in need of a lunch in a big way.
And they have five loaves and two fish.
And you know, he takes it, he blesses it, he offers it to God and multiplies it.
And you know, then another time he's asleep in the boat.
Remember that one?
When there's a big storm that whips up and the disciples are terrified and they wake
him from his sleep and Jesus gets up and he commands the wind, be still.
And the gospel writers tell us, and the wind stopped and the water became crystal or smooth
as glass.
And then another time, I'll just end with this one.
Every preacher to sermon, some people really ticked off at him and wanted to shove him
over a cliff and he walked through the crowds.
You know, so there are some things that Jesus did that kind of seemed like a superhero.
But then there are other ways in which Jesus is very unlike a superhero, rejected by pretty
well everyone, stripped of everything he had.
And as we read in the gospel according to Mark, we get on, things are getting darker
and darker.
The forces of evil are coming against Jesus in a massive way.
And in fact, he says, at noon darkness came over the whole land.
And then into that darkness, Jesus calls out in Aramaic, the Hebrew dialect, Eloi, Eloi,
Lama, Sabak, Thani, which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Jesus is not only stripped of everything he has, not only rejected by the people around
him, he's forsaken, abandoned by his heavenly father, the one to whom he shared the most
intimate relationship about whom he said, those who have seen me have seen the father
and I and the father are one.
And at this point, we are touching a profound mystery.
And you know, actually, the preacher needs to be careful because he can end up in the
weeds.
Like in the country, we talk about weeds.
Do you talk about that in Mississauga?
Yeah, the weeds.
I was thinking Elizabeth might have to interview Professor Stratis and do a little theology,
remedial theology.
You know, I hope not.
I hope not.
But I know that that could be kind of plan B, perhaps.
I'll just offer this word of caution about a crude caricature of the cross that we sometimes
hear that depicts an angry father who needs to inflict pain and suffering on his son in
order to save us.
Paul says, not so.
God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.
On the cross, God was in Christ.
On the cross, God offers himself in Jesus Christ for the sins of the whole world.
And yet, at the same time, to do this, Jesus enters the deepest, darkest place of suffering
and alienation known to humankind.
The reformer John Calvin believed that when Jesus cries, my God, my God, why have you
forsaken me, he enters hell.
You know, as it says in the creeds, the Christian creeds, he descended to hell.
Well, Calvin said, I mean, he was still on the cross, but in one sense, he enters hell.
This total separation from and alienation from God the Father.
And while there is much debate among the theologians about what actually happens to Jesus at this
point, they all agree that Jesus experienced separation and alienation from God the Father.
You see, if Jesus has come to save us, and he has, he has to come all the way to do so.
Apart from God's kindness and graciousness to us in Christ, we are alienated from God.
And in order to save us, Jesus enters this place of alienation.
He goes to the very bottom of human existence and experience in order to raise us up from
this alienation.
In his cry, Jesus is quoting the first line from Psalm 22.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
That's right.
That's how Psalm 22 begins.
And he got thinking, why would Jesus quote this Psalm?
Why wouldn't he go on to Psalm 23?
You know, much more famous.
The Lord is my shepherd.
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
And yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil
for thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Wouldn't that be better?
Wouldn't that be a more faith-filled Psalm for our Savior to pray?
That, you know, who am I to tell Jesus what to pray?
And besides, Jesus' prayer is the honest prayer of one who has experienced the complete absence
of God.
And honest prayer is faithful prayer.
We don't serve anyone by glossing over things, you know.
I hope Trinity Church isn't a place where things just get glossed over.
You know, I hope it's a place where if you're going through the valley of the shadow of
death, you can say, you know, someone says, how are you?
All fine.
You know, it used to drive me bonkers in the church when people would say that, when you
knew or you kind of had suspicions that things weren't that great, you know.
We need to be honest with God and with each other, that Jesus was.
And the truth is, there are times in life when we feel abandoned by God.
We look around at the chaos of the world, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to name two.
I remember when I was in university, my professor said at any one time there were about 30 armed
conflicts going on in the world.
I don't think that's changed much in the last 30 years or so.
But anyway, you know, we look around and we see the chaos and we wonder, has God abandoned
us?
We see the rising numbers of homeless people on our streets and we wonder, what's going
on?
And we hear of the rise of mental illness among the young people.
We say, God, what's going on?
And a marriage is on the rocks.
And instead of going to a marriage counselor, always the best thing, really the only thing
to do, the high-priced lawyers are called and it's a fight to the bitter end.
At times it seems as though God has abandoned us.
And at this point, it makes perfect sense to pray.
God, where are you?
What's going on?
Why have you abandoned me?
But that is not the end of our prayer.
It's the beginning of our prayer and maybe the middle of our prayer, but it's not the
end of our prayer because Jesus has gone before us.
He is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, as we're told in Hebrews.
He goes before us and he enters that place of total abandonment so that in our times
of desolation, we would meet him there.
And our Psalm 22 prayer, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, would be turned into
our Psalm 23 prayer.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou
art with me.
Jesus cry, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me, takes us to the heart of God's saving
work in Christ and speaks to the sacrificial nature of Jesus' death on the cross when
he enters the place of complete abandonment by his heavenly Father.
And since Jesus has been rejected and abandoned, he's able to meet us in those dark times when
we feel rejected and abandoned.
And in meeting us there, he assures us of his good and loving purposes for us from which
we will never be separated.
As St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans after reflecting deeply on Jesus' death for
us sinners, he says, in view of all that God has done for us, I am convinced that neither
death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor
any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate
us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Amen.
Thank you so much for joining us and we hope that you enjoyed what you heard today.
Make sure to come back next week as we continue our series on famous last words.
Today's sermon was taken from the March 10, 2024 service at Trinity Church, Streetsville
in Mississauga, Ontario.