It’s Easter Sunday and I don’t want to write about eggs or bunnies, chickens or bilbies. They seem so trite next to the grand and wonderful truth of this day. He is risen!
· The one who cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps 22:1).
· The one who was “scorned by everyone, despised by the people” (vs 6).
· The one who was mocked and insulted (vs 7-8).
· The one who was “poured out like water” (vs 14), His tongue sticking to the roof of His mouth (vs 15).
· The one with pierced hands and feet (vs 16), stripped, exposed (vs 17).
Jesus prayed Psalm 22 on Friday while He hung on the cross. F B Meyer calls this psalm “a photograph of Calvary”. He explains: the one who says in verse 2 that God does not hear him, declares in verse 24 that all the while God has been hearing and helping.
In light of Sunday, these words take on new meaning. Because Jesus didn’t just pray the words that express the separation He experienced from the Father while bearing the sins of the world on His shoulders; He also prayed the words affirming that the Father had not despised or scorned His suffering (vs 24a), had not finally and eternally hidden His face from him (vs 24b), but had – in His great Love – done it all so that:
· All the ends of the earth could turn to the Lord (vs 27).
· All the families of the nations could bow before Him (vs 27).
· All people – poor and rich alike – could know the only One who can truly satisfy (vs 26, 29).
· All of us could be told about the Lord our Saviour, proclaim His righteousness, and declare to those not yet born, “It is finished!” (verse 31).
All this was made possible, not just by Christ’s death, but by His resurrection. He is risen indeed.
“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Ephesians 2:13
Sue McPherson
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