Back in February, we looked at the story of the baptism of Jesus in Matthew's gospel. ("We", as in "Kemsing Church").
We noted that we don't need to work out how to understand what went on there. God himself explains it for us. He does so with a sight (heaven opens and a dove alights on Jesus) and a cry ("this is my beloved son"). So the baptism shows us Jesus as the Son that God the Father loves, the one on whom the Spirit rests to achieve God's purposes on earth.
As we reach Matthew 27:45-50, we are at the end of Jesus' public ministry. Here again, we have a sight and a cry.
This time the sight is 3 hours of darkness - heaven goes dark, shuts up. This time the cry is not from God the Father, who has nothing to say, but from Jesus: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Instead of heaven open, we have heaven closed. Instead of God speaking words of love about his Son, we have the Son expressing God's abandonment of his Son.
The question is then asked by those who misunderstood his Aramaic: Will Elijah come to take him down? The answer is "no". After a second cry, Jesus dies.
Why so? In order to save us, the one whom God chose to bless and God's only Son, must become the one God chose to curse and the one God has abandoned.
But is that the end? No. The very next incident in the gospel shows that. We don't have to wait for Easter Sunday to see this vindicated. The curtain in the temple is torn in two. Heaven is opened. And there is a voice - this time from "those who were with him" saying "Truly this was the Son of God".
Jesus is vindicated. And because he, the Son of God, died, heaven is open, and we can be blessed by God, and adopted as his children.
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