Which reduces the Lord's cry to the Father that He was forsaken to be mere rhetoric.
No it does not. The life of Christ is played out in the words of prophetic Scripture. His emotions and suffering are real. So is His desire to teach His disciples. "My God, my God, why have you abandoned Me?" isn't the full statement that is being made from the Cross. It is all of Psalm 22 by reference. In the Psalm, we read of His suffering but also of His triumph. As the Psalm says, " For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard."
Jesus wasn't abandoned by God on the Cross as the Psalm says He wasn't. If we believe in a Just God, what justice is there in abandoning His Son in the moment of ultimate obedience? None. Some have rationalized that God can't look on our sins... but then how can He look on us at all? After all, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Rom 3:23). There is more to the story than just the words that were uttered. It was a full statement of abject dejection as well as of impending triumph. Jesus is teaching His Jewish audience, specifically His disciples, what they are seeing and telling them this isn't the end of the story.
It largely does, as rather than being forsaken in a real sense by God, you make Christ into saying the opposite, and in effect it reduces the suffering of Christ in being made sin and suffering in darkness not simply crucifixion, but the fellowship of the Father.
Do you really think that the cup the Lord the dreaded to consume was only being abused whipped and crucified? Rather, as dreadful and agonizing as that was, I believe that His greatest suffering was spiritual, that of becoming what He hated, even if by imputation, and losing the fellowship of the Father, even if for a moment, and which the long dark hours in the cross signify
And when the sixth hour was come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. (Mark 15:33) And if you were familiar with Scripture then you should know that being delivered over the hand of enemies is described as being forsaken by God, which word means "loosen, that is, relinquish, permit." Which is exactly what the Father did, Who "spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all," (Romans 8:32) in delivering His very own Son into the hands of wicked men, to atone for sin, as He made Christ to be sin for us. And God is of "purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity," (Hab. 1:13) and whose face of is against them that do evil. (Ps. 34:15)
Of course, God does behold the evil and the good, (Prv. 15:3) but in a real sense God God can hide His face even from good men as Job, and which the Psalmists cried, (Ps. 13:1; 27:9; 51:9; 69:17; 102:2; 143:7) as well as from the disobedient to bring repentance. (Dt. 31:17)
Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? but now the Lord hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. (Judges 6:13)
But which is not the same as being utterly forsaken, (cf. Ps. 119:8)
For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. (Isaiah 54:7)
For Israel hath not been forsaken, nor Judah of his God, of the Lord of hosts; though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel. (Jeremiah 51:5)
For we were bondmen; yet our God hath not forsaken us in our bondage, but hath extended mercy unto us in the sight of the kings of Persia, to give us a reviving, to set up the house of our God, and to repair the desolations thereof, and to give us a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem. (Ezra 9:9)
But Zion said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me. Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. (Isaiah 49:14-15)
As the Psalm says, " For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard."
Which in context is referring to all those of the Lord who are so afflicted, And which refers to not being utterly forsaken, though enduring dark nights of the soul, and thus the soul can proclaim the reality of the Lord's ultimate deliverance. As the old hymn states, "When darkness hides His lovely face, I trust in His unchanging grace." But the reason one can be afflicted, is because God has forsaken, relinquished them into the hand of the enemy, as Christ was and asked, but only for a moment.
Jesus is teaching His Jewish audience, specifically His disciples, what they are seeing and telling them this isn't the end of the story.
That much is definitely True. Thanks be to God.