ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CUENet AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION DOGMATICS 2 LESSON 35 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Okay. I appreciated that answer. Let me continue with another question that has been difficult for me to resolve. Since Jesus is God, how do we explain his words "My God. My God, why have you forsaken me?" >> DR. DAVID SCAER: Here is another passage which I think in our attempting to preach upon this has led to confusion and maybe false beliefs. Somebody could even suggest that maybe these words suggest that Jesus be forsaken by God. That there has been a division in the Trinity. That the Father and the Spirit are left up in heaven and they have forsaken Jesus who is the Son of God. What does it mean to be forsaken? Jesus here is speaking according to his human nature. He is speaking out of the state of his humiliation. And the prayer "My God, my God, why has Thou forsaken me?" Is taken from Psalm 22. I agree with Luther and with the pastor at Luther's church in that day Yohani Boganhagen that the Psalms have three references. First the reference is to the writer himself. And that would be Kind David. And then to Jesus and then to us. We Lutherans know the phrase the law and the Gospel. When we are under the law, for us there is no God. And if there is a God, there is a God who is accusing us of all of our sins so we can no longer bear them. The words "My God, my God, why has Thous forsaken me" are words spoken by Jesus under the law of God whereby he feels all of the guilt which every human being has earned since the foundation of the world to its conclusion. Now, we made the point previously that when Jesus descended into hell, we don't agree with John Calvin or anybody else that Jesus went to hell for additional suffering. Jesus did endure hell. And that hell was on the cross. We know now that crucifixion was a very common form of execution which the Romans borrowed from the Persians. It's very effective. Because you simply don't kill a person. You stone somebody. That can be handled rather quickly. A stone to the head and you're dead. But crucifixion you can be there for days. And the excruciating pain of crucifixion can never be exaggerated. But the real pain that Jesus felt was the feeling that God had deserted him. And God really had deserted him. But here we live within a contradiction. Because it was in the moment that -- of the desertion of Jesus that we really knew what God was about. Here really was a manifestation of the Trinity. Here we see what God himself was doing for our salvation, that the crucifix is not a side show but it really is -- it encompasses the entire stage of God's activity. This is what God is doing for us. On that account I think it's really marvelous that the Lutheran Church in comparison with all other Protestant churches is not ashamed to have a crucifix on the altar. Because that is where our attention should be. This is the moment of our salvation. I think many of us would have liked to have seen the saving moment as Palm Sunday. Hip, hip, hurray! Isn't that nice? But the moment of our salvation is Jesus crying out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And here he is like us. Because it's one thing to suffer physical pain. It's another thing to suffer mental and emotional pain. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***