"The Gospel of the Cross" (1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5)

 

watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCE6NC0IICs

3^rd Sunday of Lent, March 7, 2021

 

            Theologians get frustrated by the idea of “the Gospel;” at least, they should!  People all over the world have their own ideas of what the Gospel is.  With so many different viewpoints, is it possible to define it at all?  And if it can’t be defined, does it mean anything?

            Theologians are stimulated by the idea of “the Gospel;” at least, they should be!  With the different ways cultures around the world have lived out the Gospel, the depth and breadth of the Gospel’s meaning and beauty of the gospel’s expression seems inexhaustible! 

            “Time out!”  You tell me.  “I’m not a theologian,” you say.  “Why should I worry about the dozen different gospel definitions that spill out of the pointless musings of one or two theologians?”

            I see your “time-out” and acknowledge it.  The work theologians do is important for Christianity, yet I agree that you don’t have to do a theologian’s job.  However, when we claim to be Christ-followers, we accept all the to share the Gospel. Jesus does not recognize followers who refuse to bear witness to him. We understand that Jesus is not interested in believers or admirers.  Jesus seeks out disciples.  In Mark 3:11, Jesus silences demons who express their belief in him.  In John 12:23, Jesus ignores the fan-boy Greeks looking for an autograph and instead insists that his concern is his followers (v.26), disciples.  To follow him, is to share the Gospel.  To share the Gospel, we have to have some idea of what it is.

            So, what is it?  Since the first century, Christian thinkers have debated this question.  In 1 Corinthians 1 & 2, the Apostle Paul provides a foundation.  If we stand on this foundation, we will be able to live within the Gospel, we will be empowered to share the Gospel, and we will find ourselves freed by the Gospel. 

            In his work A Theology of the New Testament, the late George Eldon Ladd writes, “The Gospel is the proclamation of the historical fact and the redemptive meaning of the cross, which includes both present and future blessings.”[i]  Note, the gospel is event and meaning.  That Jesus died on a Roman cross outside of Jerusalem is an event in history.  Few historians, Christian or not, question this.  A lot of unfortunate people died on crosses under Roman oppression.

            This historical fact matters.  We believe Jesus was innocent and was God’s son, and in his death took on himself the eternal penalty all people deserve because of their sins.  So, the Gospel says this is a historical happening filled with significance.  In fact, Christians hold that the death of Jesus on the cross and the subsequent resurrection is the most important event in history.  Because of this historical fact and what it means, we can develop the mindset of disciples.  

            Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2:2, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.”  In 1 Corinthians Paul teaches on more topics than in just about any other letter.  He addresses leadership within the church.  He condemns sexual sin while affirming sexual relations between a man and a woman in the confines of marriage.  He commends singleness and celibacy, but says if you must get married be sexually active; if you must be sexually active, get married.  He gives his most detailed instructions on how to celebrate the Lord’s supper, and on spiritual gifts in this letter.  He delivers his most developed teaching on the resurrection.  It’s all in 1 Corinthians.  After chapter 2, he doesn’t really address atonement – Jesus’ death on the cross for our sins.  So why does he make this sweeping remark: “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified?”  He deals with much more than that. 

            He can touch on so many topics because he’s standing on the solid ground, the foundation of the crucified Christ.  In chapter 1, verse 23, he makes a point of saying that for Jewish people the thought that Messiah would die so shamefully, on a Roman cross, is a stumbling block. The Greek word for stumbling block is skandolon.  A crucified Messiah was a scandal for the first century Jews who had rejected Christ.  For Greeks, who generally rejected any value in the body and instead esteemed spiritual ideals, the thought of following a man who died was foolish.  And, of course, the Romans saw those they crucified as weak. 

            In different ways, Jews, Greeks, and Romans, devalued the crucifixion of Jesus, but Paul says for everyone – Jews, Greeks, everyone – it is the power of God and the wisdom of God.  God did not magically make sin disappear.  Doing so would ignore the serious offense and awful consequence of sin. God does not force us to not sin.  This would strip us of our free will and we would no longer be God’s image-bearers.  God decided to love us so deeply, our sins would be paid for with the death of God’s beloved son, God-in-human-flesh, the sinless one, Jesus. 

            Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 1:21, salvation comes through the preaching of the cross to all who believe.  Note how many different actors God includes in the process of salvation.  First, there’s Jesus who willingly dies because he loves everyone.  Next, the Holy Spirit inspires disciples to believe in Jesus and follow him.  Third, there’s disciple who preaches the story and truth of Jesus.  It could be someone preaching to 1000’s in a large auditorium, or someone sharing the gospel with one other person.  Fourth, the listener receives the story, responds to the nudge of the Holy Spirit, and puts his or her faith in Christ.  Finally, the Father accepts that expression of faith and adopts that person as a son or daughter of God. 

            Just as Jesus’ death on the cross was a moment in history, so too comes a specific moment when an individual puts his or her faith in Christ.  Sometimes the new believer is baptized in that moment.  Other times, baptism comes later, as a visual expression new life.  We keep in mind that salvation is something that happens.  It is also a process that takes place over a lifetime. 

            Oxford theologian Paul Fiddes details the way salvation is a lifelong, continuous processg for a disciple in his book Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement.  First, he explains that divine-human relationship can be repaired.[ii]  Our rebellion has severed our tie to God.  We need the connection re-established.  That repair happens in the death of Jesus on the cross. 

            Are things in your life broken?  Do you stare into a hopeless future convinced the broken things never get fixed?  The cross is all about repair.  The cross is a sign that the love of God moves us past our brokenness.  You can live life in a right relationship with God.  With the Holy Spirit in us, we can truly love each other. 

            Second, with the God-human break having been repaired, we come into human community in a new way.[iii]  Made new in Christ, we make up the church with others who have also been made new in Christ.  Thus, salvation effects not just the individual, but also the community.  “I am made new.” And, “we are made new.”

            Third, Fiddes observes that this repaired relationship and transformed community results from a complete upending of our understanding of God.  Fiddes writes, “If God has made a crucified man lord of the universe, then all the securities by which we live and all the achievements by which we justify ourselves and give ourselves esteem, are shown to be hollow.”[iv]

            What makes us feel safe?  The American army?  In other countries, our American power is a threat.  What makes us feel safe?  Our police force?  Many people in our communities feel their lives threatened by that very police force.  What makes us feel safe?  What achievements make us feel good about ourselves?  Our salvation rests on a Galilean peasant carpenter who was crucified, the most shameful of death.  God has declared that he, not some great warrior, king, or champion, but the crucified one is Lord and Savior. 

            Fourth, in Fiddes’ explanation, this salvation that upends our understanding of real power is, in addition to being an event, also an on-going reality.[v]  The Holy Spirit links our lives to what happened at Calvary 2000 years ago.  Through the daily transformation the Spirit effects in us, the love God shows on in the cross flows through us to the people we meet. 

            Paul could touch on so many topics in 1 Corinthians because he set his writing up on the foundation of the cross.  We stand on that same foundation, live our salvation, and share the good news with people who have not yet put their trust in Jesus.  We are freed by the Gospel.  Greed, racism, injustice, oppression, jealousy and so many other sinful ways of being that drive people apart do not bind us.  Freed from these godless obstacles, we are able to live in love and to give love. 

            Life will frustrate us.  That’s a given.  The Gospel, though, frees us.  Theologians can delight and struggle in the work of defining the Gospel and our faith is strengthened by their efforts.  For out part, we look to the cross and realize we are free.  We are free to live as children of God.

AMEN

---

[i] G. Ladd (1974), A Theology of the New Testament, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (Grand Rapids), p.385.

[ii] P. Fiddes (1989), Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement, Westminster/John Knox Press (Louisville), p.4

[iii] Fiddes, p.13.

[iv] Fiddes, p.24.

[v] Fiddes, p.29-30

The Cross: Our Foundation (1 Corinthians 1:18-25; 2:1-5)

Sunday, July 14, 2019

            Each week at the end of the message I say, “Now is the time to respond to God.”  I invite us all to open our hearts to what God is saying to us and doing in our lives.  I invite any who feel the need to come to front for prayer, whether kneeling at the steps or with me or Angel, or in the back with the elder of the week. 

            I’ll close with this same invitation today.  I’ll say, “Look at the cross and think about what it means.” God in human skin, Jesus who was innocent of crime and had not sinned.  God accepted his sacrifice as atonement for the sins of all people.

            Think about the implications.  God will sacrifice for our benefit.  He didn’t need to die on the cross in order to be God, wholly sufficient and wholly loving and good.  But we need that because our sin separates from God and we all sin.  We make choices, speak words, and commit actions that indicate we have, in small and large ways, chosen ourselves over God. That sin separates us and we cannot wash the sin away with good deeds or with endless repentance. 

The sin is covered by Jesus’ death on the cross.  We are made right by Jesus’ death on the cross.  And Jesus was fully human.  It hurt his body as much as it would yours to be flogged and then crucified.  It hurt his pride and dignity as much as it would mine to be stripped, mocked, and paraded through Jerusalem carrying the beam on which I was to be nailed.  It hurt his heart as much at it would hurt mine or yours to be abandoned by friends, and then seemingly ignored by Heaven when he prayed for another way.  The cross is an indication of how much Jesus sacrificed to help us be right with God. 

So, I will say, “Look to the cross.” 

Then, I will say, “Be fully open, honest, and receptive with God.”  Open – don’t hold anything back, not before He who sees all. He knows your story, but God wants to hear you tell it.  Honest – don’t try to impress God; you can’t.  Don’t try to be tough with God; he knows the weakness in Chuck Norris, and even he has them; and God knows the weakness in you and me.  Don’t try to act like you don’t need God.  There are longings in our lives only God can satisfy, hungers only God can feed, holes in our lives only God can fill. 

Look to the cross.  Be open and honest before God.  Then I will say, “Come and receive what God has for you.”  You might need God to give you a nudge because you’ve hesitated when God said “Go.”  You might need forgiveness because you’re weighed down with guilt.  You might need courage because you’re facing great obstacles or threats in your life.  I don’t know what you need, but God does.  Look to the cross.  Be honest with God.  And come and receive from Him. 

Studying 1 Corinthians 1 & 2 this week, I became aware of just how important it is that we begin by looking at the cross.  Paul, writes in 1 Corinthians 2:2 “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”  In this letter, he touched on marriage, spiritual gifts, the proper way to observe the Lord’s Supper, sexual immorality, the supreme value of love, and the resurrection.  In fact 1 Corinthians is the core scripture text for many of our most cherished Christians beliefs. 

With much to say on so many topics, why does Paul write, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified”?  His Corinthians ministry takes place in a city that’s awash in competing ideas.  The Corinthian contenders jockeying to dictate the spirit of age includes Greek philosophers whose ideas determined the history of ideological development into our present age. 

However, Greek intellectuals weren’t the only ones trying to dictate the way people thought about the world.  Jewish theologians were as committed to monotheism as Greeks were to philosophy.  Jewish scriptures, more historically durable than any other writings in history, and their approach to wrestling with their scriptures – the idea of Midrash – continue to influence human thought today, nearly 2000 years after the writing of 1 Corinthians.  

One more contestant fought on this battlefield of ideas and ideals: the Romans with their power and organization.  They could not match Greek intellectualism or Jewish theology, but they held the power.  Whatever practice of living that would come out of Greek philosophy or Hebrew religion would have had to exist within a Roman system. 

Then Paul comes along and says, “I am not going to try to be smarter than the Greeks or better at religion than my fellow Jews or stronger than the Romans.”  In different ways – intellectual, religious and faithful, and political and militarily – the Greeks, Jews, and Romans, all vied for power.  Paul refuses to play this power game because He knew where real power was found.

Today we live in a swirling torrent of ideas where forces from all sides try to tell us what to think, how to think, what to believe, and how to practice our beliefs.  We have the American concept of freedom.  We are so indoctrinated into the American notion of liberty we believe it is the only way one can be free.

But hold your horses because along with American notions of freedom, we are lured to material wealth.  Capitalistic forces convince us the key to happiness and a life of meaning is found in stuff that we buy or experiences that we buy.  When we consider how relentlessly advertisers bombard us in the attempt to get us to buy what they’re selling, how could we deny that materialism is a force that’s attempting to define the spirit of the age in America, 2019?

Besides American Liberty and Western Materialism, on this spiritual/intellectual battlefield, Personal autonomy wants its say.  You are your own master and your own moral standard.  Do what’s right for you.  In the Marvel Avengers movie Infinity War, the character Star Lord is asked, “What master do you serve?”  Angrily he responds, “What do you expect me to say, ‘Jesus?’”  He goes on to vehemently declare that he serves no master except himself.  Of course, his name is Star Lord. 

Paul’s response to Greek wisdom, Jewish Theology, and Roman power is our response to the attempts made to dominate our souls by American Liberty, Capitalistic Materialism, and Personal Autonomy.  Paul said, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing”; those without Christ.  “But to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”  He doesn’t claim to have earned it.  Paul does not save.  He counts himself among those being saved. 

We are in that number.  We also need to be saved.  The good news is on the cross, Jesus began the work of our salvation.  How, the wise Greek asks, can this one who died so shamefully save the world?  It’s scandalous, the faithful Hebrew declares, to glorify one who dies as a common criminal.  It’s weakness, the mighty Roman roars, to hang there, defeated.  But Paul writes, “God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.  For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1:21-24).

Note, even as Paul refutes the different ways we humans define power, he invites all of us into the salvation of Jesus Christ.  In his day, there were Jews who accepted that Jesus was the Messiah and the fulfillment of all their religious hopes.  There were Greeks who came to see that Jesus was the epitome of superior knowledge.  There were Romans who left behind their notions of might and power as they, born again in Christ, surrendered – think about a Roman surrendering – to the power of God.  Paul himself was a child of a Roman-Jewish union, and his right hand man Timothy, the child of a Jewish-Greek union. 

Ethnicity doesn’t matter.  Mixed-race families are fine.  All are saved when we give up our hold on power and surrender our hearts fully to God, confess faith in Jesus and receive the Holy Spirit.  This hodgepodge of people was the New Testament church, and it is the church today.

American Liberty says our country’s story is the definition of freedom for all people.  In Christ, we claim that our greatest freedom is found when we give our hearts to God and become God’s possessions.  As jolting as it is to say it this way, we believe we discover our greatest freedom when we are enslaved to God. 

Capitalistic Materialism has completely bought into the idea that whatever we hope for in life can be purchased.  If I just get that house …; when I have enough for that car I really want; I just need to be able to retire in luxury and ease.  In Christ, we find joy in being extravagantly generous, giving away as much as we can to help others flourish.  In Christ, we claim that our money, possessions, relationships, time, and our very selves – belong to God.  Our greatest happiness is found when we are used by God for His purposes. 

Personal Autonomy insists that we are each endowed with inalienable rights that include the right to determine our own personal destinies.  It doesn’t say anything about inalienable rights in the Bible.  In Christ, we don’t determine who we are.  God tells us who we are.  We come with a story, tell that story to God, and then He is takes our story and invites us into His.  We don’t write our own stories.  We step into the story God is writing. 

Paul “decided to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified” because that’s the foundation.  Life is built when we die on the cross and are raised by God to new life in Christ.  Standing on that foundation, Paul can talk about current issues, theology, households and relationships, worship practices, and creation care.  Paul’s worldview develops after he sets the foundation, his encounter with Jesus at the cross. 

The 21^st century has already seen explosive growth in communication, technology, and scientific understanding.  We engage this complicated world after we have met Jesus at the cross.  Whatever new modes of relationships, sexuality, and our understanding of human gender arise in our time, our engagement with the world as it is happens after we meet Jesus at the cross. 

Whatever changes come to the world in the next 100 years – it does not matter.  We meet every new idea or new way of living as followers of Jesus – the crucified, resurrected one.  On the foundation of the cross, disciples are built.  I earlier mentioned the swirling torrent of ideas and change in which we live. The way to stand in swirling winds is to be anchored to a firm foundation and we are when we are anchored to Christ.  

So, look to the cross.  Open yourself completely to God’s love and forgiveness.  In honesty, come, tell God your story and then give it to Him and receive the new story He has for you.  In Christ, you are His beloved child.  Come to Him.

AMEN  

Follow Jesus ... a Lenten Path

            “Jesus went out and he saw a tax collector named Levi, and he said to him, “Follow me” (Luke 5:27).  Christians make it their life’s work to follow Jesus.  Christian pastors preach that following Jesus is the business of the church.  The church exists to help people be devoted followers of Jesus Christ.  The calling of Levi in Luke 5 is one of many passages that lead Christians to insist growing as disciples of Jesus is the purpose of life.

            Why?  Why did Jesus call specific individuals to follow him?  Why do Bible readers interpret the call to discipleship experienced by James, John, Peter, and the rest as a prelude to the calling of all humanity to discipleship?  Christians believe all people are invited by God to follow Jesus.  But why is following Jesus so important?

            “When the days drew near for him to be taken up,” says Luke 9:51, “Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  “Taken up” means the crucifixion.  Where it says Jesus “set face,” it means he was determined from that point onward to journey to Jerusalem.  Nothing would stop him.  Everything in Luke’s gospel from 9:51 to chapter 23 is built upon Jesus’ journey to the cross.  He was determined to go to the place where he knew a brutal death by crucifixion awaited him.  Why?

                Why is Jesus so intent that all people become his followers?  Why was he set on going to his death?     The key to answering both questions is Luke 19:41-44:

⁴¹ As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "If you even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.  Indeed, the days will come upon you when your enemies will set up ramparts around you, and hem you in on every side.  They will crush you to the ground, you and your children with you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God."  

Jesus wept over the city because they were lost in sin.  Of that city, he said,

³⁷ “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37)!

Jerusalem reject God’s prophets, thus rejecting God’s word.  When we sin, we reject God’s way for us to live and choose our own way.  Jesus desperately wants to rescue us from our sin, but at least in the case of Jerusalem, the week before the crucifixion, the people rejected God’s offer of salvation.  That’s why the cross was necessary.  Sin brings death and eternal separation from God.  Jesus took on himself both our death and our alienation from God when he died on the cross in our place.  That’s why the cross is so important; it’s why he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

            The only way Jesus’ death on the cross become affective in our lives is when we put our trust in him and give our lives to him, acknowledging him as our Lord.  Why is crucial that we follow Jesus?  God wants a relationship with us in which we are His sons and daughters and he is our Father and Lord.  That relationship comes when we follow Jesus.  When we confess our sins, repent, and acknowledge Jesus as Lord, we are baptized in the Holy Spirit and adopted as sons and daughters of God. 

We are called to follow because God loves us.  But we cannot accomplish discipleship by our own spiritual will power.  We sin, we hurt God, we hurt others, and we hurt ourselves.  So Jesus came to cover our sins and effect transformation in us.  Jesus died on the cross because God loves us. 

These are the basic elements of the God-human story.  During Lent, we rehearse this story, retell it, walk in it, and discover it anew.  I have been a Christian for 38 years and am diving to greater depths as I go through the story this year, in some ways as this were my first time in Lent.  I hope you are learning what it means to follow Jesus and as you do, I hope you see the cross.  As you see the cross, I pray you will see your life, covered by Christ. 

Because God loves us, we follow and learn continuously learn new, richer ways to love Him and each other. 

Good Friday - 2018

The Dispassionate Dismissal of Jesus’ Life (Mark 14:55; 15:12)

Good Friday Worship – March 30, 2018

            Recently, I heard someone say, ‘we don’t think about death and that’s the only reason we can live.’  It’s nagging at me that I can’t remember the source of this statement.  I find it fascinating.  The only reason I can live and not be constantly, obsessively worried about death is I just don’t think about it.  The idea of my own death doesn’t frequently cross my mind.

Is that right?  Maybe. 

Many years ago, I was swimming and could not get into the shore.  In my frustration at swimming against the rip tide, I uselessly swam against it, and thus magnified my frustration.  And fear.  I had a moment where I thought, “This is it.”  I started telling God, I don’t want this to be it.   A surfer saw my struggles and calmly towed me in. 

I don’t think about my death.  However, in moments when I do contemplate it, I feel ominous, horrifying fear creeping around the edges of my consciousness.  It’s not the only feeling.  I know I am a new creation in Christ.  I know that he gives life everlasting.  Imagining being in the physical presence of Jesus rapturously swims through my brain when I contemplate my death; not just any death, or death in theory, but my death.  Depending on the day, such thoughts bring horror or bliss. 

But, it is never casual.  All thoughts of death are serious.  All talk of death stops me in my tracks and commands my attention. 

Mark 14:55 says, “The chief priests and the whole council were looking for testimony against Jesus to put him to death.”  These religious leaders, spiritual guides, were charged with teaching the word of God and the way of God to the chosen people of God.  God, as Jesus teaches in John’s Gospel, is God of the living.  Yet these temple leaders, Israel’s pastors, easily talk of killing Jesus.  Without regard for the weight of what they were saying, they spoke of ending his life. 

Then, in Mark 15:12, Pontius Pilate says, “What do you wish me to do with the man you call King of the Jews?”  Do with?  In the kitchen, I wipe down the wet counter and then hold the rag up and say to my wife, “What do I do with this?  Hang it up or throw it in the dirty clothes hamper?  Do with?  Mechanically impaired as I am, when a handyman like my brother-in-law John is fixing something at our house, I fish a strange looking piece of metal out of his tool box and ask, “What do you do with this?”

Do with?  Pilate asks, “What do you wish me to do with [this man called Jesus]?”  Is Jesus a used up rag?  Is Jesus a tool?  Pilate seemed to see him that way.  The temple council seemed to value his life about like the animals they ritually killed in worship.  How did men come to the place where they could so devalue a life? 

Do we still do that?  Do men and women in our day and time still show a callous disregard for the lives of people they deem unworthy of their respect or esteem?  Every person shot in a violent encounter with police is a human being made in the image of God?  That includes the guilty criminal.  That includes the police officers who often get shot.  That includes the unarmed civilians shot by mistake, or by callous disregard.

Do we devalue life the way the Roman Pilate and the Pharisee Caiaphas disregarded Jesus?  Every school child or church goer or night club reveler or high schooler killed in a mass shooting in this country are human beings created uniquely by God; God’s image bearers.  That includes the shooters. 

“The chief priests and the whole council were looking for testimony against Jesus to put him to death.”  “What do you wish me to do with the man you call King of the Jews?”

These first century leaders acted with inhuman callousness.  The Pharisees and council members intentionally stacked the evidence, framed the testimony, and vetted the witnesses.  They manipulated the illegitimate trial to get the verdict they planned ahead of time – a death sentence.  Then they manipulated a man they hated – Pilate – to get that sentence carried out in the cruelest of ways.  It seems they never stopped to ask, “What are we doing?”

A few of the leaders did; Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and others saw the kangaroo court for what it was and called their colleagues on it, this miscarriage of justice.  These minority voices were summarily dismissed.

For his part, Pilate was only vaguely aware of Jesus.  He did not think Jesus committed a crime at all, and he was certain Jesus had not done anything worthy of death.  However, his motivation was not justice, but appeasement.  If killing Jesus would keep the right Israelites calm and quiet, he would kill Jesus.  And that’s what he did. 

Besides the dispassionate dismissal of Jesus’ life displayed by the Council of priests and by Pilate, both groups also exhibited an appalling presumptuousness.  Both assumed life – Jesus’ life – was theirs to take or give.  They would not grant Jesus autonomy over his own life; both assumed the authority to determine whether Jesus would live or die. 

This is authority is God’s and God alone.  Only God creates life; only God should take life.  Anytime human beings take the life of other human beings, they are wresting away from God what is His right.  To kill another person is the ultimate usurping of God’s authority.  The Council and Pontius Pilate both did this without a thought.  And we do it today.  The slate of violence in America is one example.  The treatment of entire groups of people as political tools in places like Russia, Syria, and North Korea is another.  The assumption affluent people have that they deserve to hoard a disproportionate number of the world’s resources for their own comfort knowing that people in the world are starving is yet another example. 

That last one is really uncomfortable because it lumps a lot of us in with Caiaphas and Pilate and Hitler and Putin and Kim Jung Un.  But in terms of sin, we are no better.  And our sins are not vague spiritual abstractions.  Our sins are real, tangible ways we add to the dying brokenness that’s swallowing God’s good creation.  If you or I sat in Pilate’s seat, I can’t say that we would crucify Jesus as he did.  But I know we are just as sinful, and if we didn’t do it the way he did, then we’d injure and reject our beloved Lord in some other way. 

Our callous disregard of death is the clearest sign that sin has made a disastrous mess of Eden.  God created the world and we’re doing all we can to destroy it.  I don’t know if we willfully mean to, but I know I sin.  We all do it.  So it’s all a stinking, oozing mess and we’re in it up to our waists and the slop is rising. 

How do we know the one who existed before the creation of the world came as a human, a real person, 100% human man?  Jesus’ willingness to come and embrace death.  He saw the mess we are in and he stepped right into it.  Jesus had prescient, prophetic vision.  He knew death was coming before he ever came to Jerusalem.  But he came.  Jesus had supreme communication with God.  If he had called on a legion of heavenly warriors, angels, they would have come and the crucifixion would have never happened.  He never made that call.  When he knew the crucifixion was inevitable and God wasn’t going to change the plan, he literally took it like a man. 

I don’t mean that in the macho way was use that phrase.  I mean, like any human would, he wept.  He cried out to God in agony.  He bled when the whip ripped up chunks of his flesh.  He joined us in our humanity.  He took the worst we have to offer.  He suffered mightily leading up to the cross and then hanging on it.  He feared death as much as you or I would. 

Jesus did it because he knew that God would accept his death as an acceptable conclusion.  The death of Jesus was the endpoint for all sins committed by all people.  Jesus knew God would receive his death in this way.  He knew he was dying for the sins of the world.  His death showed his humanity; it also showed his love. 

How far did Jesus’ love go?  The cross is the answer.  On Good Friday, weep.  Death should drive us to frustrated, scared, defeated tears.  Death is the antithesis of God’s design for us.  Jesus’ death is the great sorrow of history, the nadir of all time, the lowest of low points.  Weep.

And, receive.  I’ve spoken of sin, because that’s the story.  My sin leads to Jesus’ death and creation’s degradation.  However, before the story, behind the story, over the story, and in the story, God is working to carry us beyond sin and into His good graces.  Receive the gift of righteousness.  Grieve your sins but then receive forgiveness and rejoice.  Even on this day, quietly rejoice because in Christ, you are a new creation.  We rehearse and re-tell the Good Friday story knowing Jesus’ gambit paid off.  In his act of love and sacrifice, sin is defeated and you and I are rescued.  John reports that Jesus said at the end, “It is finished.” 

This mess we’ve made, it’s done.  Finished. The grief that exhausts us, the guilt that tortures us, it is done.  God’s love is accomplished in Jesus’ death.  We walk in the story knowing who we are now, now that Jesus has done all he set out to do.  We are the sons and daughters of God, his beloved possessions. As you lived your life and walk through the Lent-Easter season, know this about yourself.  You are God’s beloved child.

AMEN