It Is Finished: Matthew 27:45-56

From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land.

Darkness. Not an eclipse—impossible during Passover's full moon. Something else: creation itself recoiling, the sun refusing to shine on the murder of its maker. Three hours of preternatural night.

About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" (which means "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?").

The cry ripped through the darkness. Aramaic words, torn from Psalm 22. The Son crying out to the Father who had always answered, always been present, always loved him—and finding, for the first time, something like absence.