Did God Turn His Back on Jesus During the Crucifixion?

St. Matthew writes of the death of Jesus,

From noon onward, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. And about three o"clock Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:45-46)

Modern non-Catholic exegesis, and by that I mean predominantly Fundamentalist and Evangelical interpretation, has concluded from reading this passage that God, for a brief moment, turned his back on Jesus; that Jesus was somehow seperated from God at the very moment when the he took on the sins of the world. The reasoning used to back up this interpretation is that as God is all good and pure love, he cannot be in the presence of sin so that for the brief moment when the sins of the world fell on Jesus, God was simply not able to be in Jesus's presence.

To be fair, many non-Catholic Christians do not believe the doctrine of the seperation of God and Jesus at the moment of attonment and not all non-Catholic churches teach this doctrine. I have personally heard this from more than one Evangelical however, and Catholics need to be on the lookout for this error.

As is all too often the case, this mistaken belief is caused by personal interpretation of scripture in the absence of an understanding of the historical and biblical context under which biblical characters operated and the authors of sacred scripture wrote. To a greater or lesser extent, the belief that Jesus was somehow seperated from God at the moment of attonment is also a matter of ignorance of scritpture.

To put it simply, Jesus could not have been seperated from God because Jesus -is- God. Because Jesus is God, for God to have turned his back on Jesus would have meant that God would have had to have turned his back on himself. To put it another way, for Jesus to have been seperated from God would have meant that Jesus would have had to have been seperated from himself. This is simply not possible.

Christians believe in the Trinity - three persons in one God. This is a great mystery to be sure, but it is one of the most fundamental (a-hem) ideas in Christianity, part of the foundation which makes up our entire belief system. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are three persons but one God, and they are inseperable.  Jesus himself even says, "I and the Father are one."

Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM." (John 8:58)

Jesus claims to be God, the same God in fact who spoke to Moses from the burning bush and identified himself by using the name, "I AM." In this passage Jesus claims not not only divinity but co-existence with God during the creation of the universe. Catholics profess belief in this when we say "...eternally begotten of the father..." and "...through him all things were made." in the creed at Mass. The audience in the temple who heard Jesus' words that day understood exactly what Jesus was claiming and that is why they took up stones to kill him.

Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe." Thomas answered and said to him, "My Lord and my God!" (John 20:27-28)

Thomas' amazing act of faith confirms Jesus' divinity. We sing of Jesus at Christmas time, naming him "Emanuel" which means "God is with us." St. John rightly identifies Jesus as the Word of God which became flesh.

It is an ancient heresty to seperate the divinity of Christ from the humanity of Christ. Those who base the claim that God seperated himself from, or somehow turned his back on Jesus at the moment of attonement, commit this heresy and need to be corrected. Catholics ought not to stand for it.

So what does Jesus' cry "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" mean and what are we to learn from it? Let us recall that Jesus was a devout Jew and then turn in our Bibles to Psalm 22. Verses 1 through 3 read,

My God, my God, why have your abandoned me?
Why so far from my call for help, from my cries of anguish?
My God, I call you by day but you do not answer;
by night, but I have no relief.

Sound familiar? The first line is the same words Jesus cried from the Cross. Reading further in verses 7 to 9,

But I am a worm, hardly human,
scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
All who see me mock me; they curl their lips and jeer;
they shake their heads at me;
"You relied on the LORD--let him deliver you;
if he loves you, let him rescue you."

Again, does this sound familiar? These verses contain the same words spoken by the chief priests and scribes at the crucifixion saying, "He trusted in God, let him deliver him now if he wants him." (Matthew 27)

Jesus' statement of "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" was a quote from the Old Testament, one which the devout Jews who were present should have immediately recognized. Psalm 22 is more than just a lament however. Psalm 22 is even more than a prophesy of the suffering of Christ during the crucifixion. It is all that, to be sure, but it much, much more. Verses 28 through 32 reads,

All the ends of the earth will worship and turn to the LORD;
All the families of nations will bow low before you.
For kingship belongs to the LORD, the ruler over the nations.
Alll who sleep in the earth will bow low before God;
All who have gone down into the dust will kneel in homage.
And I will live for the LORD; my descendants will serve you.
The generation to come will be told of the Lord,
that they may proclaim to a people yet unborn the deliverance you have brought.

Above all else, Psalm 22 is a psalm of victory and triumph and it was to this which Jesus was drawing the attention of those who were present, including the scribes and priests. Christians who read Jesus' cry "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" in Matthew 27:45-46 and claim that Jesus was forsaken by God or that God somehow turned his back on Jesus are ignorant of the fact that Jesus was quoting scripture.

And they would do well to read verse 25 of the same Psalm...

For God has not spurned or disdained the misery of this poor wretch,
Did not turn away from me, but heard me when I cried out.

...did not turn away from me... So much for prophesy, I guess.

Personal interpretation of scripture, without authoritiative oversight and in ignorance of the historical, social and Judaic Old Testament context under which Jesus, the Apostles and authors of sacred scripture operated has led to many of the errors presented to us as biblical fact by Protestantism in general and the Fundamentalist/Evangelical movement in particular. Mail-order pastoral degrees and the instant availability of erroneous information on the internet has not helped matters. Our cultural demand for instant gratification in all things and instant knowledge of all things enhances the liklihood that Christinas simply won't take the time to study what they are being told nor bother to seek out what Church Fathers and Doctors of the Church have to say on the matter at hand.

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is proof that God turned his back on Jesus during the crucifixion only in a world where every car has a bumper sticker which reads, "The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it." In a world where where logic and facts matter, where reason and intellect are gifts from God and where some things (such as religious truth) simply take more time and effort than a Google search to understand however, things are not always what they seem at first glance.

-Tim-