Now from the sixth hour [noon] there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour [3pm]. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” That is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

We call those four haunting Aramaic words of Christ the cry of dereliction: “Eli, Eli lema sabachtani?” Dereliction means “an intentional abandonment,” or “the state of being abandoned.”[i] These are days of dereliction. Every day, every hour, thousands of cries of dereliction go up. Cries of those suffering under the COVID-19 pandemic, cries of abandoned children, cries of those in war-torn countries, cries of those treated unfairly by the justice system.

But one cry rises above the rest: Jesus’ cry of dereliction to his father.

Jesus’ words are not original. They are the first line of David’s 22nd Psalm. It was not uncommon for authors to shorthand quotes by stating the first line. For that reason, many commentators speculate that Jesus quoted Psalm 22 in full on the cross. Whether he did or not, Jesus likely churned over every word of the Psalm as he hung.