God’s ‘curse’

There are different traditions about our Lord’s last cry on the cross: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Originally it was taken for the cry it was, the opening verse of Psalm 22 as Mark records it. It is a powerful expression of the total abandonment by his Father that Jesus experienced as his life was drawing to an end.

It is confusing for those people who cannot separate the humanity of Christ from his divinity. He had laid aside his divinity (Philippians 2:7), emptying himself of his godhead to assume our human condition totally. Thus, at one level he would have known that he was not abandoned by his Father, but at that moment in extremis on the cross he felt totally derelict and on his own. That cry expressed powerfully the depth of his mental suffering.

But it is from the psalm that prophetically described so many details of the passion. The use of the opening verse brings in the psalm as a whole, but the vital truth to recall is that the psalm ends on a note of triumph: But he heard the poor man when he cried they shall tell of the Lord and declare his faithfulness to his people.

Luke gives a prayer of perfect resignation and acceptance, also from a psalm which formed part of the night prayer of Jews: Father into your hands I commit my spirit (Psalm 31:5). As always, Luke is the consummate storyteller and he can wrap up an otherwise hideous event with a neat and satisfying ending. John with his own agenda in presenting Jesus as the Lord in total control, even of his death, has Jesus call triumphantly: It is finished! He is declaring to his Father and to the bystanders that he has completed his mission. He has done what he came to do. By his sacrifice on the cross he won salvation for the world. Some people interpret this as a cry of exhaustion, giving up the struggle. But Jesus does not say: I am finished, as one throwing in the towel would. Jesus is presented as reigning from the throne of the cross: When I am lifted up I shall draw all men to myself.

The evangelists are all reticent about the actual process of crucifixion and death. Everyone in 1st century Palestine would have been familiar with crucifixion, having seen evidence of it outside the towns and on the highways. They concentrate rather on the attendant circumstances and interpret them as they illustrate the profound theological meaning of what has happened.

Even the theological accounts of the evangelists, paying the scantiest attention to the physical details, still leave the impression of the agonising torture which wrung the final great cry from Jesus, and the sense of relief and repose when at last death supervenes to free him from the horrendous struggle. All the versions of the passion story have Jesus buried by someone called Joseph. In the Roman world the final penalty for a criminal who had been executed was for his body to be left as carrion for vultures and dogs.

Lack of proper burial was not just the ultimate insult, it was the ultimate annihilation of the person. There would be no place where he could be mourned, visited and remembered by his family and friends. The law in Deuteronomy states: When someone is executed and you hang him on a tree, his corpse must not remain all night on the tree; you shall bury him the same day. Now the Romans had no concern to observe this Jewish law, which is why Joseph, a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one, had to approach Pilate to ask permission to remove the body before nightfall. Pilate granted permission, so the body of the dead Jesus was taken down from the cross.

John mentions another secret disciple, Nicodemus, who assisted and, presumably John, who was at Calvary, would have helped. They took the body down, wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid it in a rock-hewn tomb in which nobody had yet been laid. It was close to sunset that would herald not only the Sabbath, but that year also the first day of Passover.

Further, from the injunction from Deuteronomy: Cursed by God be the one hung on a tree (21:23). Paul picks this up and shows how, in addition to the horrendous sufferings endured by our Lord in the scourging and whole process of crucifixion, he also came under the curse of God: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law by being cursed himself for our sakes, since Scriptures says: Cursed be everyone who is hung on a tree. This was done so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might include the gentiles (Galatians 3:13). So heaped on all the physical suffering, the mental suffering, the sense of being abandoned by his Father, the crucified Son is technically also cursed by God.

My people, is there anything more that I could have done for you that I have not done?