He is praying in a garden while his friends sleep. He wishes they could stay awake and keep him company. He knows what is coming, and even though it is the moment his life has been leading to, he asks his Father if there is any other way. But he knows the answer. When the soldiers arrive, his friends flee just as he knew they would. The only friend who does not run is the one who has come to betray him. And just like that, Jesus is alone.
This is not the first time he has been abandoned by his friends in a garden and perhaps in that moment he remembered that day, at the beginning of all things. The man and woman had been his first friends before they had betrayed him and run away to hide. But this day is about undoing that day, and so he lets himself be arrested.
For the rest of that tortuous Friday, which we have come to call “Good,” Jesus will be surrounded, yet alone. He is surrounded by his accusers in a secret nighttime trial. They lie about him and he stands by himself, not even willing to speak in his own defense.
He is encircled by the soldiers who beat him, isolated by blindfolded darkness, as they mockingly ask if he knows who is landing the blows. He does not need to see—he formed each one of the hands that strike him. Those same hands put a cross on his back and command him to carry the tool of his own execution. Weak with pain and blood loss, he cannot do it.
This is his supreme test. Not the pain or the humiliation. This is the first time he has been truly alone. For this man is God, himself, and from eternity past has enjoyed the fellowship and endless, selfless love of the Trinity. The Father, Son, and Spirit—three yet one, perfect in relationship and love. Yet now the Son is forsaken and left alone.
“It is finished.”
Jesus
In his anguish, he cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” His words come from Psalm 22, “Be not far from me, for trouble is near, and there is none to help.” But the Father stands far off. David ends his psalm in triumph, knowing that God will deliver him. Jesus quotes it in despair, knowing that for others to be delivered he must be abandoned.
It is time. Before he dies Jesus shouts “It is finished!” The soldiers sitting on the ground must have wondered at that. They have brought this man here, they have nailed him to this cross, and yet he behaves as though he is in control! Jesus speaks as though he alone has the authority to decide when he will die. As his final breath leaves him, replaced by an earthquake and a darkening sky, only one of the soldiers begins to grasp what they have done, who they have killed. “Truly,” he says, terror taking hold of him, “this man was the Son of God!”
One day in Eden, long ago, we left God. Ever since, we have been separated from the only One who can heal our desperate loneliness. And every step Jesus took toward the cross, the abandonment he suffered, the utter forsakenness that made him cry in desperation to the Father—Jesus chose all of it so that none of us, himself included, would be alone ever again.