Jesus Is Nailed To The Cross

This Station brings us to our knees - for some, quite literally. The brutality - both in the seen and the unseen realm - that brings Jesus to this place buckles the knees.

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“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

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Staggering, and yet it is in this posture that we find ourselves in worship. This cross symbolized shame, humiliation, rejection and the social marginalization of the judged and condemned in social, political and religious spheres. It is because God is forgiving that Jesus has journeyed humanity’s path culminating here in his ultimate identification with all those who are under the boot of the Kingdom of Darkness and all its representatives and representation on the earth and in the realm of principalities and powers.

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It is to this place of solidarity with the oppressed that we follow Jesus. Take up our cross too. But to do so is “not to endorse the symbol but to reframe its violence … ironically the cross will reveal the empire’s limits. Though it has done its worst in crucifying Jesus, God will raise him up and thwart the empires presumed power.” (Warren Carter, “Matthew and the Margins” pg. 243-244).

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The stunning thing here is that It is not the nails per se that held Jesus to this jagged wood. It is not the powers of the age that pin him there. What holds him is “the joy set before him.” (Hebrews 12:2) The joy in knowing that this step of obedient, self sacrificing love, will be the capstone of his Messianic vocation and mission. To proclaim good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for the captives and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour! (Luke 4:18-19).

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Even with that sustaining joy pulsing through is mandate, this last leg of the journey is brutal. He has already lamented to the Father that if there was any other path, any other cup, he would take that option. Yet he surrenders and trusts the will of God to not only demonstrate love in this moment, but release its divine power to silence and break all other powers. Even that of the greatest enemy of all. Death. But the shadow cast by this appalling spirit is cold. It is enveloping. It is utter darkness.

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Jesus loudly cries out from the cross, “… 'Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’, that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ …” (Matthew 27:46) Jesus here is recalling the prophetic utterance of the Messianic lament captured in Psalm 22:1-2,

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"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?

O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;

and by night, but find no rest.”

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This is a prayer. A prayer to God. As much an act of worship as a declaration of doubt. Ah, another paradoxical moment we experience with Jesus. Tension. Even Jesus living through the moments of torment that we can go through in the “now and the not yet” of the Kingdom.

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"The ‘why' question is often on the lips of the faithful. It is precisely faith that makes the question urgent and appropriate. If one does not believe in God who is good and sovereign, there is no reason to ask “why?” in the face of suffering. Suffering remains a stark reality, but it is not really a theological problem unless one is a person of faith. Scripture is full of faithful people questioning God in the face of apparent God forsakenness (e.g., the book of Job, the Psalms of Lament, and the book of Lamentations). Matthew’s accounting of the crucifixion begins in this kind of experience and ends (nevertheless) with a faith affirmation that anticipates resurrection and the universal inclusion in the age to come.”

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(Case-Winters, A. (2015). Matthew. (A. P. Pauw & W. C. Placher, Eds.) (First edition, p. 311). Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press.)

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As much as the opening of Psalm 22 was in the mind and on the lips of Jesus on the cross, it is fair to assume that the final words of this same Psalm, verses 27-29, were ringing in his spirit:

All the ends of the earth shall remember

and turn to the Lord;

and all the families of the nations

shall worship before him.

For dominion belongs to the Lord,

and he rules over the nations.

To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;

before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,

and I shall live for him.

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Jesus, thank you for so courageously revealing the love of the Father to us. Thank you for stepping into all the mystery and breath taking beauty of the Incarnation. We are in awe. We are in wonder. Indeed, as all the earth shall bow down, we, who go down to the dust, lift our eyes to the cross, embracing your redemption and grace, and we shall - we will - live for You.

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Art by Scott Erickson