About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When some of those standing there heard this, they said, “He’s calling Elijah.” ((Matthew 27:46-47))

I find in [Jesus Christ] the loneliness of grandeur.⁴⁵ Jesus was supremely lonely, because he was supremely great. There is a type of character with which we are all familiar that makes few demands on the love of others. It is severe. It aims at self-sufficiency. It will not lean hard on anyone. And while we may admire that type of character—and do so justly for it is often noble—we must remember it is not the character of Christ. It was the passion of Christ’s heart that people should trust him. It was the yearning of his soul that people should love him. In those rare moments when he was understood, he was thrilled to the finest fiber of his being.

And it is when we think how people misunderstood him and were blind to all that he was and all he lived for that we realize the loneliness of Christ. To crave for love and, craving, not to find it, to have one’s every action misinterpreted, to feel that one’s dearest do not sympathize, to long for trust and to be met with scorn—for certain natures quivering with life there is no loneliness that can compare with that, and such was the loneliness of the Redeemer. I do not imagine that had you seen the Christ you would have said, “There goes a lonely man.” The Pharisees never thought to call him lonely. They called him the friend of publicans and sinners. But the ecstasy of joy that filled his soul when one understood him and cried, “You are the Christ,” betrays how unutterably lonely he had been. Was ever anyone misunderstood like this man? “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—and they thought he was calling for Elijah. It is only when you remember that, and all akin to it in the Evangel, that you come to feel how awful and unceasing must have been the loneliness of Christ. – George Morrison

 

 -Diana Wallis, Take Heart: Daily Devotions with the Church’s Great Preachers, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2001), 53.