The closest followers of Jesus were totally devastated. “We had hoped….”, but those hopes were dashed. “Could not he who…?” but he had not, and there was nothing they could do about it. “If you are… save yourself!” but he did not.

Even Jesus himself, who had taught his disciples to speak to God with the intimacy of “Our Father,” after being cruelly beaten and whipped within an inch of death, then mocked with a crown of thorns and nailed to a cross — the most inhumane, torturous means of execution devised by man — cried out in excruciating pain, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Was the extreme suffering Jesus experienced only that of his contorted body and anguished mind, or was there a heightened level of indescribable distress, an agony of the spirit that can only be approximated with “the flames of hell,” rooted in his sense of abandonment and loss of the intimate fellowship with his Father he had always known before? “My God, my God, why… ?”

The Apostle Paul explains that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.” That “he who knew no sin became sin (on the cross) that we might be made righteous (right with God).”

The theologians explain man’s rebellion and sins against God and man demanded punishment, and Jesus — the sinless one —stepped in to take our place and pay our penalty, so we could live forgiven and have our fellowship with God restored.

But is it possible that at least one of the reasons Jesus embraced the suffering agony of the cross, one of the reasons he came to the momentous, inescapable experience of “My God, why…?” was so none of us in the human race would ever have to say “My God, why…?” all alone? That Jesus has already been there ahead of you and me, and is with you in your “Why?”

When nature’s extremes we call “acts of God” — earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, tsunamis, tornadoes, wipe out whole villages, destroying happy homes and pleasant memories, and those left to survey the destruction ask “Why?” Jesus is standing in their midst.

When man’s political power and military might wreak the havoc and devastation of war, killing millions of innocents along with the combatants, and the survivors of the Holocaust ask “Why?” Jesus is there with them.

When man’s inhumanity to man generates senseless, selfish acts of crime, or random acts of violence take the lives of innocent bystanders, or fluke accidents rob us of a loved one, and we ask “Why?” Jesus is there with us.

When cancer or heart attack, ALS, Alzheimers and myriad other diseases take a child, a mother, a wife, a sister or brother, and we’re left alone in our grief asking “Why?” would it make a difference in the midst of our grief and sorrow to know that Jesus has already been there ahead of us?

That’s comforting news. But the good news is, after the cross, after they placed Jesus’ body in the tomb, God didn’t allow it to be Jesus’ “final resting place.”

And the best news of all, for those who find themselves now able to see through the cross to trust God’s ultimate intention, hearts begin to fill with hope and the expectation of joy unspeakable full of glory into a love unending.

-Tom Mackey