“Great disappointment”
It had been a long day, and he was exhausted. When he came to town crowds of people swarmed to meet him. People had been cheering for him and even acclaimed him as their king. Now, he was emotionally exhausted and empty, and in the midst of all the excitement and cheering, he didn’t feel like a king. He felt all alone.
As he rested on the bed he reached for a pad of paper on the bedside table and wrote these words: “I feel alone sometimes. The night is quiet for me. I’d love to be able to sleep. I’m glad that everyone is gone now. I will probably not rest tonight. I have no need for all of this. Help me Lord.” They are the words written in a Las Vegas hotel room in December 1976, by Elvis Presley. Millions of people called him the king, one of the biggest rock stars of all time. But despite all the fame, fans, all the people, he still felt all alone.
The fear of abandonment—of being alone—is one of the most common causes of anxiety in the world today, so much so that it has a clinical name—monophobia. For some people a sense of loneliness can be crippling, unseen by others. People are afraid of being rejected by others, living alone, dying alone. People impacted by a deep sense of loneliness can actually have people around them and with them—but have an inner sense that no one really understands them or knows what they are going through. Despite all the advances of technology, we are in a pandemic of loneliness, people scrolling through their social media feeds desperate to see how many ‘friends’ or ‘likes’ they have.
Christians can know the empty feeling of loneliness as well, and the pain of rejection and abandonment by others—and sometimes perhaps even thoughts and feelings that God himself has abandoned us too. We can know great disappointment with God when our hopes and dreams have been crushed and he seems far away, as if he has turned his back on us.
The disciples knew this, when their hopes and dreams had been crushed. After Jesus’ death, his disciples were so disappointed. Jesus was meant to save them from the rule of the Romans they loathed so much. They had pinned all their hopes on him, but he had been put to death—crucified! This wasn’t the way it was meant to turn out! As they reflected on everything that had happened, and a future suddenly different from what they had anticipated, their faces are downcast in confusion, grief and disappointment: “The chief priests and our rulers handed [Jesus] over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel” (Luke 24:21-22).
They are so disappointed. Where was God? It seemed as though he had completely abandoned them. Who was going to save them, now that Jesus was dead?
When life takes a sudden hard turn we did not want, God understands our disappointments. He understands what it means to feel all alone…to be all alone. You might be familiar with the saying: “No use complaining, no one listens anyway.” But God listens. He wants you to express your pain, fears, disappointments and feelings of abandonment to him, when it seems as though he has not been with you and abandoned you. He is so serious about this that he has given the very words to pray—God-given words to express lament and sense of being all alone in brokenness and suffering, in the Psalms. One of those Psalms is one that features in worship over holy week—Psalm 22: My God my God, why have you forsaken me? It’s a Psalm that paints the most haunting picture of helplessness in the face of trouble: “My God my God, why have you forsaken me?”
These words were prayed by Jesus himself from the Cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus not only felt alone…he was alone. He was abandoned by God, he was forsaken by him. In the chapters in Matthew, Jesus increasingly experiences desertion by others, which now moves to abandonment by God, as Jesus hung on the Cross.
God did not only sympathise with our weaknesses. He does not merely understand how we feel. He did something to about it. He gave us the Psalms to pray, but he also gave up his only Son: From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. 46 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?”).
God did abandon his one and only Son, so that we never would be forsaken by God. The moment Jesus died was the very way God did bring salvation—salvation from a life and world where we could not approach him and receive his favour. He poured out the fulness of his wrath against sin and evil on Jesus, instead of on us. At the very moment Jesus gave up his spirit, breathing his last, the curtain of the temple—about as thick as a hand span– was torn in two from top to bottom.
This curtain was a barrier that restricted access to the Most Holy Place in the Temple where God resided. Only one person, on one day of the year, was authorised to enter past this place—the high priest on the Day of Atonement. He entered to offer blood sacrifices and incense, making atonement for himself and the nation.
When Jesus died he brought a permanent ending to this barrier, opening the way to God’s gracious presence for all through a new and better way—his own body which is now the once for all perfect sacrifice of sins. His death is the perfect sacrifice that ended the need for the sacrificial system. His blood makes atonement for you; that is, he pays the penalty of our sin required of us. Instead of us laying down our life, Jesus laid down his life for you. Instead of us being lifted high on a Cross, Jesus was lifted high on a Cross for you. Instead of us shedding our blood, Jesus has shed his holy and precious blood for us, to make us clean.
And so with all the conflict around, and all the troubles life brings each day, when our conscience is pressed hard and we know the guilt of our sin, in times of sickness, in living and in dying, Jesus has opened the way for you to approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, to receive mercy and find grace from God to help us in our time of need.
No matter what happens in life, you are not alone. God loves you so much that he has given his one and only Son who went to the Cross with arms outstretched, hands pierced with nails and pinned to wood, crowned as our King with a crown of thorns, so that you would never be left alone. He was the one God-forsaken so that you never would be. When you can’t see God he is still looking upon you with favour for Jesus’ sake. When you feel like the darkness is closing in around you, the light of the world was sent to save you and reconcile you to God so that there is no place on earth you are ever alone. Even when you sit by yourself he is with you. Even though when it seems that nobody knows your name you feel that nobody cares about what happens to you, God knows exactly who you are and cares about you. Jesus said: “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28). Jesus said that no one could snatch his people out of his hand, and he went to the Cross to prove it. The death of Jesus was not the defeat of God’s plan but the very victory to end the separation we had with him, reconciling us by Christ’s own holy and precious blood.
That precious blood of Jesus says that no one is abandoned by God. That cross reaches from earth to heaven bringing God’s compassion down to us in Christ crucified, arms outstretched wide in a loving embrace for all people in all life situations and contexts.
Jesus knows what it means to be betrayed, because he was betrayed for you.
Jesus knows what it means to be treated unjustly because he was falsely accused and treated unjustly for you.
Jesus knows what it means to be mocked and insulted, because he was mocked and insulted for you.
Although Jesus knew no sin, he became sin for us, that in Christ, we might become the righteousness of God.
Jesus knows what pain, shame, suffering and death are like, because he suffered the most excruciating torture and humiliation for you that we would have life in him by believing in the name of God’s one and only Son—a name to call on in all your troubles and sufferings and great disappointments, because nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Nothing can separate you from the favour of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Nothing can separate you from the peace of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Because he loves you so much, Jesus did not come down from the Cross to save himself, but he stayed there to save us, that by his death you have life with God, through faith in him, you access to his grace and favour and ever present help in Jesus, who is with you always, so that you are never alone. Through faith in him, you too will be among the holy people whose bodies are raised to life. And when we see him in glory, every tear will be wiped away, all our darkness will be washed away by unending light, and all our disappointments will be lost in unending praise. Amen.
Pastor Tim Ebbs
St Paul’s Lutheran Church, Glenelg
Good Friday, 2026
