The Crucifixion by Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (c.1475-1533), Rijksmuseum
Maundy Thursday
Psalm 22
Fr. Alan Heatherington
(no audio recording)
Psalm 22
Fr. Alan Heatherington
(no audio recording)
Oh, use me, Lord, use even me, just as You will, and when, and where, until Your blessèd face I see, Your rest, Your joy, Your glory share. Amen. (Psalm 22, pp.18,19)
Why is Psalm 22 so important in Holy Week, so prominent that appears on Palm Sunday in all three years of the lectionary cycle and is read in its entirety on every Maundy Thursday, as it will be later this evening? Why do I preach from it every Holy Week? How did it come to be among the three most quoted psalms in the New Testament?[1] Why is it sometimes known as the “Psalm of the Passion” or the “Psalm of the Cross”?
In the accounts of the crucifixion in Mark and Matthew, those passing by the Cross shook their heads at Jesus, as was prophesied in vs 7. In the time of Jesus, this psalm was already so well-known to the Jewish people as a “Messianic Psalm” that vs. 8 could be quoted even by the ones who were mocking Him as He hung on the Cross: “He trusts in God; let God deliver Him if He delights in Him” (Matthew 27:43). All four Gospels mention the soldiers’ casting lots for the garments of Jesus, as prophesied in verse 18. In both Mark and Matthew, the first verse of Psalm 22 is spoken by Jesus from the Cross when He “cried out with a loud voice, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46)
Those people who heard Jesus say these words would have understood them as an “announcement” of this Messianic psalm, one that was already being fulfilled in part by the nails that “pierced His hands and feet.” This was mentioned in verse 16, nearly one thousand years before Roman crucifixion existed.
But if we are to understand the significance of Psalm 22 in the context of the crucifixion and the accounts of the Gospel writers, we need to start with a better understanding of the entire psalm. As early as verse 3 we encounter the conjunction “but,” called in Hebrew the “adversative vav.” It often turns the corner from lamentation to praise:
But You are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In You our fathers trusted; they trusted, and You
delivered them. To You they cried out and were rescued; in You they trusted and were not put to shame
(vs.3-5).
Now we begin to see where our psalm is going. This is the answer to what was meant by the questions in verse 1. Note that it is not one question, but two: “Why have you forsaken Me,” and “Why are You so far from hearing My groanings?” But we know that in our own darkest hours, God does not forsake us or refuse to hear us; rather, He hears us, rescues us and delivers us! Though there are three times in Psalm 22 that God is asked not to be “far away” (vs.1,11,19), yet, in v.26, we read that “those who seek Him will praise the Lord,” because, as Isaiah wrote, when we seek Him, He may be found, and when we call on Him, He is always near (Isaiah 55:6).
Jesus knew that. He knew that the Father had not forsaken Him, nor had He refused to hear His groanings. He had not gone “far away.” When we come to the final verses of this psalm, the shift from lamentation to praise is unmistakable. Verse 19 begins with another adversative vav, another Hebrew conjunction that changes directions:
But You, LORD, do not be far off. You are my strength; hasten to help me.
Then, building to a glorious conclusion, the word “praise” is used four times in verses 22-26, along with “glorify Him” and “stand in awe of Him”! What at first appeared to be a “psalm of lamentation” is now seen instead to be a “psalm of deliverance,” one that looks forward to all that God is yet to do in the future, just as He has done in the past. This is important, because reading only the first words of Psalm 22 out of context is misleading as to the essential character and meaning of this Messianic psalm, and as to the very character of God Himself. It is only as we go on that we find what this psalm meant to our Lord Jesus Christ when He cited it in His final moments on the Cross.
The question of Jesus, “Why have You forsaken Me,” is sometimes mistakenly called His “Cry of Dereliction,” a cry of “abandonment,” meaning that God the Father had to look away from His only Son in His moment of deepest need. This is said to have been necessary because God cannot look on sin, and only then had the sinless Jesus become the bearer of our sins. Yet, as John the Baptist proclaimed at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, He is the Lamb of God, Who is taking away the sin of the world.” The sinless Jesus came to be the sin-bearer. It is true that we do read in Habakkuk (1:13),
You (God) are of purer eyes than to see evil and You cannot look on wickedness.
But that is only the first half of the verse! It continues with these words:
Why is it that You do look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more
righteous than he?
The word for “look” is the same in both halves of that verse![2] When we say that God cannot look on sin, we mean that He cannot countenance it, He cannot look on sin with approval; but He does look on it with judgment. God Himself led His people through the wilderness for 40 years by a pillar of cloud by day and by a pillar of fire by night. He saw them repeatedly turn away from Him and from His appointed leaders, Moses and Aaron. And, seeing their sin, He punished them for it. But He never looked the other way. We read in Psalm 106 (:43-45),
Many times did God deliver them, yet they rebelled through their own devices and were brought
down through their wickedness. Nevertheless, He looked on their adversity. When He heard their
lamentation, He remembered His covenant with them and relented according to the abundance of His
lovingkindness.
How, then, could God possibly look away from His only Son, the One Who was lifted up on the Cross in order to “draw all men to Himself?” As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “The Son of Man must be lifted up so that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.” God sent His only Son into the world not “to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” [3] Our sin was judged on the Cross of Christ, once for all. God looked with judgment at the sin that Jesus bore. But He looked with love on His Son, the sin-bearer, so that He could also look with love on us, the sinners.
The key to this is found in verse 24 of our psalm:
(God) has not despised or abhorred the suffering of the afflicted One, nor has He hidden His face from
Him; but when He cried to Him for help, He heard.
The cry of Jesus was not a “Cry of Dereliction,” but a cry of deliverance, not of abandonment but of confidence, not of despair but of triumph, all borrowed from a “psalm of deliverance.” A revered German New Testament scholar wrote that in this moment, Jesus may have experienced “a mere passing feeling” of abandonment, a feeling that “must not be confused with actual objective desertion on the part of God… which, in the case of Jesus, would have been a metaphysical and moral impossibility.”[4] As Athanasius taught, the godhead is eternally undivided, and the Savior on the Cross was still God the Son.
The incomparable British preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, once made this extraordinary if slightly conjectural statement (emphases mine):
Psalm 22 actually may have been repeated word for word by our Lord when He was hanging on the
tree; it would be too bold to say that it was so, but even a casual reader may see that it might have
been. It begins with, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” and ends… in the original with “It
is finished.” We should read it reverently, putting off our shoes from our feet, as Moses did at the
burning bush; for if there be holy ground anywhere in Scripture, it is in this psalm.
Whether or not the entire psalm was on the lips of Jesus, it surely was in His mind and on His heart. And the fact that “It is finished” was the final word[5] of Psalm 22 is riveting. It ends with this promise in verses 30 and 31:
Posterity will serve Him; they will come and proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn, that
it is finished! (asah in Hebrew, tetelestai in Greek)
Even those who were said to have been “standing far off” from the Cross (Luke 23:49) might have heard Jesus “cry out with a loud voice, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’” (Mark 15:34, Matthew 27:46). But it is likely that only those closest to the Cross would have heard Him complete the psalm by saying faintly, with His dying breath, “It is finished,” as recorded only by St. John, who was the only disciple standing with Mary at the very foot of the Cross. John heard it, remembered it, treasured it, and recorded it for us.
What God is acknowledged in Psalm 22 to have “finished,” Jesus did once for all on the Cross,[6] in order to establish righteousness for all generations of His people and for “all the families of the nations” (verse 27). That includes all of us! When Jesus said, “It is finished” (John 19:30), He meant that it was complete, it was fulfilled, because it was “the full, final sacrifice,"[7] the consummation[8] of all that was required for our redemption. Atonement was complete, and God’s wrath was satisfied. Just two verses earlier, St. John explicitly wrote of Jesus’ having known “that all things were now finished.”[9]
All that was left was the ultimate validation of the victorious Christ, the Christus victor, Whose victory was demonstrated not only by a Cross, on which He was lifted up to draw all men to Himself (John 12:32), but also by an empty tomb, from which He would emerge as the One Who, near another tomb, the tomb of Lazarus, had said to Martha,
I AM the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me, though he were dead, yet will he live
(Jn. 11:25).
In His redeeming work on the Cross and in His role as the Pascal Lamb Who takes away the sin of the world, yours and mine, Jesus completed what He was sent to do. As he had said in His Bread of Life discourse (John 6:38-40),
I have come down from Heaven, not to do My own will but the will of Him Who sent me. For this is
the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal
life; and I will raise Him up on the last day.
In His great High Priestly Prayer in the Upper Room, Jesus said to the Father,
I have finished the work that You gave Me to do (John 17:4).
Another part of that finished work had been completed on the first Maundy Thursday, when Jesus gave to His disciples, to us, and to all who follow Him in faith, the gift of the Holy Eucharist, through which His very Presence is forever promised. “This is My Body, this is My Blood.” That same promise was among the final words of the risen Christ to His disciples, the last of His words recorded in St. Matthew’s Gospel: “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). He is here! He promised!
Yes, it was “for us and for our salvation” that God did not “hide His face” from His Son on the Cross; and He does not hide His face from us whenever we cry to Him for help, sinful though we may be. God heard every cry of His Son from that Cross: He heard Him when He cried out with a loud voice, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” But then, above and beyond that, the Father heard His Son’s final whisper:
‘ā-śāh: It is finished.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Along with Psalm 2 and Psalm 110
[2] Hebrew, nabat (נָבַט): to look, regard, behold, consider
[3] John 12:32; 3:14-17
[4] Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer (1800-1873)
[5] “It is finished” is only one word in Hebrew, ‘ā-śāh (עָשָֽׂה), just as the final word of Jesus from the Cross in John’s Gospel is only one word in Greek, tetelestai (τετέλεσται). Jesus might well have said “asah” just before “He bowed His head and gave up His spirit” (John 19:30)!
[6] ephapax, Hebrews 7:27, 9:12, 9:26, 10:10
[7] From Thomas Aquinas to Richard Crashaw to Gerald Finzi
[8] In Latin, consummatum est; “it is finished,” consummated, completed, fulfilled, accomplished.
[9] John 19:28, also tetelestai
Why is Psalm 22 so important in Holy Week, so prominent that appears on Palm Sunday in all three years of the lectionary cycle and is read in its entirety on every Maundy Thursday, as it will be later this evening? Why do I preach from it every Holy Week? How did it come to be among the three most quoted psalms in the New Testament?[1] Why is it sometimes known as the “Psalm of the Passion” or the “Psalm of the Cross”?
In the accounts of the crucifixion in Mark and Matthew, those passing by the Cross shook their heads at Jesus, as was prophesied in vs 7. In the time of Jesus, this psalm was already so well-known to the Jewish people as a “Messianic Psalm” that vs. 8 could be quoted even by the ones who were mocking Him as He hung on the Cross: “He trusts in God; let God deliver Him if He delights in Him” (Matthew 27:43). All four Gospels mention the soldiers’ casting lots for the garments of Jesus, as prophesied in verse 18. In both Mark and Matthew, the first verse of Psalm 22 is spoken by Jesus from the Cross when He “cried out with a loud voice, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46)
Those people who heard Jesus say these words would have understood them as an “announcement” of this Messianic psalm, one that was already being fulfilled in part by the nails that “pierced His hands and feet.” This was mentioned in verse 16, nearly one thousand years before Roman crucifixion existed.
But if we are to understand the significance of Psalm 22 in the context of the crucifixion and the accounts of the Gospel writers, we need to start with a better understanding of the entire psalm. As early as verse 3 we encounter the conjunction “but,” called in Hebrew the “adversative vav.” It often turns the corner from lamentation to praise:
But You are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In You our fathers trusted; they trusted, and You
delivered them. To You they cried out and were rescued; in You they trusted and were not put to shame
(vs.3-5).
Now we begin to see where our psalm is going. This is the answer to what was meant by the questions in verse 1. Note that it is not one question, but two: “Why have you forsaken Me,” and “Why are You so far from hearing My groanings?” But we know that in our own darkest hours, God does not forsake us or refuse to hear us; rather, He hears us, rescues us and delivers us! Though there are three times in Psalm 22 that God is asked not to be “far away” (vs.1,11,19), yet, in v.26, we read that “those who seek Him will praise the Lord,” because, as Isaiah wrote, when we seek Him, He may be found, and when we call on Him, He is always near (Isaiah 55:6).
Jesus knew that. He knew that the Father had not forsaken Him, nor had He refused to hear His groanings. He had not gone “far away.” When we come to the final verses of this psalm, the shift from lamentation to praise is unmistakable. Verse 19 begins with another adversative vav, another Hebrew conjunction that changes directions:
But You, LORD, do not be far off. You are my strength; hasten to help me.
Then, building to a glorious conclusion, the word “praise” is used four times in verses 22-26, along with “glorify Him” and “stand in awe of Him”! What at first appeared to be a “psalm of lamentation” is now seen instead to be a “psalm of deliverance,” one that looks forward to all that God is yet to do in the future, just as He has done in the past. This is important, because reading only the first words of Psalm 22 out of context is misleading as to the essential character and meaning of this Messianic psalm, and as to the very character of God Himself. It is only as we go on that we find what this psalm meant to our Lord Jesus Christ when He cited it in His final moments on the Cross.
The question of Jesus, “Why have You forsaken Me,” is sometimes mistakenly called His “Cry of Dereliction,” a cry of “abandonment,” meaning that God the Father had to look away from His only Son in His moment of deepest need. This is said to have been necessary because God cannot look on sin, and only then had the sinless Jesus become the bearer of our sins. Yet, as John the Baptist proclaimed at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, He is the Lamb of God, Who is taking away the sin of the world.” The sinless Jesus came to be the sin-bearer. It is true that we do read in Habakkuk (1:13),
You (God) are of purer eyes than to see evil and You cannot look on wickedness.
But that is only the first half of the verse! It continues with these words:
Why is it that You do look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more
righteous than he?
The word for “look” is the same in both halves of that verse![2] When we say that God cannot look on sin, we mean that He cannot countenance it, He cannot look on sin with approval; but He does look on it with judgment. God Himself led His people through the wilderness for 40 years by a pillar of cloud by day and by a pillar of fire by night. He saw them repeatedly turn away from Him and from His appointed leaders, Moses and Aaron. And, seeing their sin, He punished them for it. But He never looked the other way. We read in Psalm 106 (:43-45),
Many times did God deliver them, yet they rebelled through their own devices and were brought
down through their wickedness. Nevertheless, He looked on their adversity. When He heard their
lamentation, He remembered His covenant with them and relented according to the abundance of His
lovingkindness.
How, then, could God possibly look away from His only Son, the One Who was lifted up on the Cross in order to “draw all men to Himself?” As Jesus said to Nicodemus, “The Son of Man must be lifted up so that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.” God sent His only Son into the world not “to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” [3] Our sin was judged on the Cross of Christ, once for all. God looked with judgment at the sin that Jesus bore. But He looked with love on His Son, the sin-bearer, so that He could also look with love on us, the sinners.
The key to this is found in verse 24 of our psalm:
(God) has not despised or abhorred the suffering of the afflicted One, nor has He hidden His face from
Him; but when He cried to Him for help, He heard.
The cry of Jesus was not a “Cry of Dereliction,” but a cry of deliverance, not of abandonment but of confidence, not of despair but of triumph, all borrowed from a “psalm of deliverance.” A revered German New Testament scholar wrote that in this moment, Jesus may have experienced “a mere passing feeling” of abandonment, a feeling that “must not be confused with actual objective desertion on the part of God… which, in the case of Jesus, would have been a metaphysical and moral impossibility.”[4] As Athanasius taught, the godhead is eternally undivided, and the Savior on the Cross was still God the Son.
The incomparable British preacher, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, once made this extraordinary if slightly conjectural statement (emphases mine):
Psalm 22 actually may have been repeated word for word by our Lord when He was hanging on the
tree; it would be too bold to say that it was so, but even a casual reader may see that it might have
been. It begins with, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” and ends… in the original with “It
is finished.” We should read it reverently, putting off our shoes from our feet, as Moses did at the
burning bush; for if there be holy ground anywhere in Scripture, it is in this psalm.
Whether or not the entire psalm was on the lips of Jesus, it surely was in His mind and on His heart. And the fact that “It is finished” was the final word[5] of Psalm 22 is riveting. It ends with this promise in verses 30 and 31:
Posterity will serve Him; they will come and proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn, that
it is finished! (asah in Hebrew, tetelestai in Greek)
Even those who were said to have been “standing far off” from the Cross (Luke 23:49) might have heard Jesus “cry out with a loud voice, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’” (Mark 15:34, Matthew 27:46). But it is likely that only those closest to the Cross would have heard Him complete the psalm by saying faintly, with His dying breath, “It is finished,” as recorded only by St. John, who was the only disciple standing with Mary at the very foot of the Cross. John heard it, remembered it, treasured it, and recorded it for us.
What God is acknowledged in Psalm 22 to have “finished,” Jesus did once for all on the Cross,[6] in order to establish righteousness for all generations of His people and for “all the families of the nations” (verse 27). That includes all of us! When Jesus said, “It is finished” (John 19:30), He meant that it was complete, it was fulfilled, because it was “the full, final sacrifice,"[7] the consummation[8] of all that was required for our redemption. Atonement was complete, and God’s wrath was satisfied. Just two verses earlier, St. John explicitly wrote of Jesus’ having known “that all things were now finished.”[9]
All that was left was the ultimate validation of the victorious Christ, the Christus victor, Whose victory was demonstrated not only by a Cross, on which He was lifted up to draw all men to Himself (John 12:32), but also by an empty tomb, from which He would emerge as the One Who, near another tomb, the tomb of Lazarus, had said to Martha,
I AM the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in Me, though he were dead, yet will he live
(Jn. 11:25).
In His redeeming work on the Cross and in His role as the Pascal Lamb Who takes away the sin of the world, yours and mine, Jesus completed what He was sent to do. As he had said in His Bread of Life discourse (John 6:38-40),
I have come down from Heaven, not to do My own will but the will of Him Who sent me. For this is
the will of My Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal
life; and I will raise Him up on the last day.
In His great High Priestly Prayer in the Upper Room, Jesus said to the Father,
I have finished the work that You gave Me to do (John 17:4).
Another part of that finished work had been completed on the first Maundy Thursday, when Jesus gave to His disciples, to us, and to all who follow Him in faith, the gift of the Holy Eucharist, through which His very Presence is forever promised. “This is My Body, this is My Blood.” That same promise was among the final words of the risen Christ to His disciples, the last of His words recorded in St. Matthew’s Gospel: “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). He is here! He promised!
Yes, it was “for us and for our salvation” that God did not “hide His face” from His Son on the Cross; and He does not hide His face from us whenever we cry to Him for help, sinful though we may be. God heard every cry of His Son from that Cross: He heard Him when He cried out with a loud voice, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” But then, above and beyond that, the Father heard His Son’s final whisper:
‘ā-śāh: It is finished.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Along with Psalm 2 and Psalm 110
[2] Hebrew, nabat (נָבַט): to look, regard, behold, consider
[3] John 12:32; 3:14-17
[4] Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer (1800-1873)
[5] “It is finished” is only one word in Hebrew, ‘ā-śāh (עָשָֽׂה), just as the final word of Jesus from the Cross in John’s Gospel is only one word in Greek, tetelestai (τετέλεσται). Jesus might well have said “asah” just before “He bowed His head and gave up His spirit” (John 19:30)!
[6] ephapax, Hebrews 7:27, 9:12, 9:26, 10:10
[7] From Thomas Aquinas to Richard Crashaw to Gerald Finzi
[8] In Latin, consummatum est; “it is finished,” consummated, completed, fulfilled, accomplished.
[9] John 19:28, also tetelestai
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