“You are mistaken! I have never met the man. I am not one of his disciples.” “Crucify him! Crucify Him! We have no King but Caesar.” “I wash my hands of this man. His blood is on your heads.” Those are the words of a friend, countrymen and Rome’s judge. They speak in harmony today. The Christ, who alone can save, will die alone, the solitary Savior.
Read Matthew 26:36-27:61. Read for the e broad narrative strokes and not the details.
Christ is alone upon the cross, abandoned by friends, rejected by countrymen. His piercing grief and pain is so full and so deep that the Messiah cries out “My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me.” The loneliness of crucifixion is a bruising burden that crushes him. A man dies today on that cross and in death he will taste every sorrow we do and infinitely more.
Read Psalm 69:20-21 and Matthew 27:28 and ponder the solitude of an uncomforted Savior.
Prayer
To Him we left alone, yet did not flinch to save us,
To Him who was so alone that angels hid their faces,
To him alone we offer up our litany of praises.
May the multitudes return again to feast upon your graces,
May the nations offer you endless praise for ending sacrifices,
May the Bride surrender on her day to your divine embraces,
And may endless praise attend the One we left to suffer our disgraces.
Prayer Prompts
Pray for faith to feel the weight of your own sin as demonstrated in the Cross. Could it be that you deserve that?
Pray for faith to feel the weight of God’s grace as demonstrated in the Cross. Ask for insight to God’s love.
Pray that the world would know of God’s justice and his mercy and of Christ’s perfect life and undeserved death.
Pray for understanding into the spiritual, relational, and physical solitude Christ’s endured too ultimately be with us.
Pray for the moment of your own death, that you might have lived in faith up to then, and die with hope.
