We are going to cover a lot of text today about the crucifixion of Jesus before we talk about the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.
So they took Jesus, carrying his own cross. As they led him away, the soldiers forced a passerby to carry his cross, Simon of Cyrene. (He was the father of Alexander and Rufus.) They placed the cross on his back and made him carry it behind Jesus.[1] Two other criminals[2] were also led away to be executed with him.A great number of the people followed him, among them women who were mourning and wailing for him. But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem,[3] do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.
For the coming destruction is certain[4]: The days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore children, and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us! ’
They came to a place called Golgotha (which means “Place of the Skull”) and offered Jesus wine mixed with gall (myrrh) to drink. But after tasting it, he would not drink it.[5]
At ‘the third hour,’ nine o’clock in the morning[6] they crucified him there, along with the two other criminals, one on his right and one on his left, with Jesus in the middle. And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.”
Pilate also had a notice of the charge against him written and fastened to the cross above his head, which read: “Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Jews.” Thus many of the Jewish residents of Jerusalem read this notice, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the notice was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek.
Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The king of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am king of the Jews.’ “Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.” Now when the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and made four shares, one for each soldier, and the tunic remained.
(Now the tunic was seamless, woven from top to bottom as a single piece.)[7] So the soldiers said to one another, “Let’s not tear it, but throw dice to see who will get it.” This took place to fulfill the scripture that says, “They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they threw dice.”[8] So the soldiers did these things and then sat down and kept guard over him there.
The people also stood there watching. Those who passed by defamed Jesus, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You who claimed to be able to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days,[9] save yourself! If you are God’s Son, come down from the cross!” In the same way even the chief priests – together with the experts in the law and elders – were mocking him among themselves.
“He saved others, but he cannot save himself! If he is the Christ of God, his chosen one, the king of Israel, let him come down from the cross now, that we may see and believe in him! He trusts in God – let God, if he wants to, deliver him now because he said, ‘I am God’s Son’!”
The soldiers also mocked Jesus, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself!” The robbers who were crucified with him also spoke abusively to him. One of the criminals who was hanging there railed at him, saying, “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!”
But the other rebuked him, saying, “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we rightly so, for we are getting what we deserve for what we did, but this man has done nothing wrong. ”Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” [10]
Now standing beside Jesus’ cross were his mother; his mother’s sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas; and Mary Magdalene. So when Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing there, he said to his mother, “Woman, look, here is your son!” He then said to his disciple, “Look, here is your mother!” From that very time the disciple took Jesus’ mother into his own home.
Now when it was about noon, darkness came over the whole land[11] until three in the afternoon, and the sun’s light failed.[12] Around three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”)[13]
When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “Listen, he is calling for Elijah!” [14]After this Jesus, realizing that by this time everything was completed, said (in order to fulfill the scripture)[15], “I am thirsty!”
A jar full of sour wine was there, so someone immediately ran, soaked a sponge with sour wine, put it on a hyssop stick[16], and lifted it to his mouth to drink. But the rest said, “Leave him alone! Let’s see if Elijah will come to take him down and save him.”
When he had received the sour wine,[17] Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, “It is completed!” Then Jesus bowed his head, and calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And after he said this, he breathed his last and gave up his spirit.
Now when the centurion, who stood in front of him, saw how he died, he praised God and said, “Certainly this man was innocent!” Just then the temple curtain was split from top to bottom.[18] The earth shook and the rocks were split apart.[19]
Now when the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and what took place, they were extremely terrified and said, “Truly this one was God’s Son!”[20] And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home in sorrow and repentance.
All those who knew Jesus stood watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses (Joseph), and Salome, the mother of the sons of Zebedee. When Jesus was in Galilee, they had followed him and given him support. Many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem were there too.
Then, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies should not stay on the crosses on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was an especially important one. the Jewish leaders asked Pilate to have the victims’ legs broken and the bodies taken down.[21]
So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the two men who had been crucified with Jesus, first the one and then the other. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and blood and water flowed out immediately.
The person who saw it has testified (and his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth), so that you also may believe. For these things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled, “Not a bone of his will be broken.”[22]And again, “They will look on the one whom they have pierced.”[23]
* * * * *
There are a number of things we could focus on.
Jesus’ deep care for other people even as he is going to the cross.
His incredible forgiveness.
The timing of his death as a Passover Lamb kicking off the Jewish celebration of deliverance from slavery.
I would like to focus on what is happening with all the citations of Psalm 22. Jesus quotes the first line; the gospel writers keep referencing it. Apparently, we are supposed to know this Psalm. Jesus invokes this psalm to refer to himself, but David probably didn’t realize he was pointing toward Jesus. At that point he was speaking about himself. So, not everything maps perfectly with Jesus. But think about how Jesus and the gospel writers hyperlinked to this passage as we read. (I left out a few paragraphs that weren’t as closely connected to my focus for the sake of time in my sermon).
Psalm 22
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest.Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises. In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. “He trusts in the Lord,” they say, “let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him….”
Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. Roaring lions that tear their prey open their mouths wide against me. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me.
My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death. Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.
But you, Lord, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen.
I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel! For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him, but has listened to his cry for help...
All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations. All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him -those who cannot keep themselves alive.
Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!
I want to land this morning on the unrelenting, self-sacrificing, overwhelming love of God for sinners as expressed by the crucifixion. Usually, this takes the approach of focusing on what Jesus suffered so that evil – sin, death, hades and the grave – could be defeated. That in itself is incredibly important and fantastically good news. But I want to look at it from a different angle this morning by looking at the interaction between God the Father and God the Son.[24]
Growing up, I was taught that God had forsaken Jesus on the cross because Jesus said, “Why have you forsaken me?” It seemed like the plain reading of the text. Why would God do this? All the sin. A key verse from which we get this idea is found in Habakkuk 1:13:
“Your eyes are too pure to even look at evil. You cannot turn Your face toward injustice.”
And the Christian claim is that, on the cross, Jesus in some sense took all of our sin into himself as a divine scapegoat[25] so that we could become righteous.
"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21)
If a holy God cannot apparently even look at sin, and Jesus had taken upon himself all that sin, God the Father had to look away. He really had forsaken God the Son. This already concerns me theologically: can the Trinity really be divided against itself? But it turns out we just need to read more of the text. Let’s just keep reading Habakkuk 1:13.
“Your eyes are too pure to even look at evil. You cannot turn Your face toward injustice.
So why do You stand by and watch those who act treacherously?”
It seems as if the first part reminds us of God’s holy and pure nature, and the second part assures us that God’s perfection does not mean he can’t be present and engaged with an imperfect world. Jesus is the fullest expression of that. If God couldn’t even look at evil and injustice, it would make no sense that God incarnated in Jesus into a world where he would be surrounded by evil and injustice. But God did that – and more. Paul reminded the church in Corinth that, on the cross,
“…God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them...” (2 Corinthians 5:19)
The Trinity was never divided. Yawheh was not the two-faced god Janus, with one face turned from us and another face turned toward us. Note where Psalm 22 leads us. After that opening cry about God forsaking him, David comes around.
“For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him, but has listened to his cry for help.”
What does God do when there is a world full of sin? He moves in closer. He makes himself more obvious. Jesus lovingly rubbed shoulders with sinful humanity on his way to saving them from the devastating wages of sin. He took our sin into himself and defeated it once and for all.
God is not a Father who turns his face away and leaves in the presence of sin. God is a Father whose love reaches through that mess of sin, grabs his image bearers by the hand, cleans them up, heals them, and sets them free from the bondage of sin and death,
“so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Ephesians 5:27)
I like that plan a lot. And God is not going to be stingy in His grace.
“And I, [Jesus] if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw (literally “drag”)[26] all mankind unto Myself.” (John 12:32)
Our sin doesn’t make Jesus push us away. Our sin causes Jesus to reach for us to draw us to himself.
I don’t know what your past record of sin or current struggle with sin is. I just know that the cross reminds us that the Father has not turned His face away from you. Jesus is drawing you, me, everyone in the world, in whatever state of sin we are in, to gather at the foot of the cross for salvation, healing, restoration, and communion with God and each other.
I don’t know what kind of evil is trying to or has seduced you and threatens to control you. I just know that Jesus is drawing you to himself, not pushing you away. God has not turned his face from you; God has always set his face toward you.[27]
There may be shame (because sin is never something to be proud of), and hurt (because sin always leaves a mark), and hiding so that we are not exposed (#gardenofeden).
But God is convicting you, not shaming you. God wants to heal you, not double down on the hurt. God wants us to move toward Him, not hide from Him.
God is the Perfect Father who runs with joy to embrace even his most prodigal children.[28] God is the Good Shepherd who will search for that lost sheep until He finds it.[29] God is the farmer who saw a treasure – you - in a field of the world, and He gave all that he had to rescue me and you.[30]
While we were yet sinners, Jesus finished the path of cruciform love: giving his life so that we could live.
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[1] Simon of Cyrene was perhaps from a Jewish community in Libya. Church history says He became a disciple of Jesus and a missionary. Some speculate that the Rufus in Mark 15:21 is also in Paul's letter to the Romans.
[2] Likely Zealots, as crucifixion was the penalty for insurrection.
[3] Some women in Jerusalem “were in the habit of soothing the last hours of these condemned ones with narcotics and anodynes. These kindly offices were apparently not forbidden by the Roman authorities.” (Pulpit Commentary)
[4] A prophecy about the fall of the Temple and the death of a million Jews at Roman hands in A.D. 70.
[5] Most commentators believe this was so that he did not avoid the full cup of pain and suffering.
[6] it aligns with the timing of the Jewish morning sacrifice in the Temple of a sacrificial lamb.
[7] “Although the Old Testament does not tell us the high priest’s robe was seamless, Josephus does: “Now this vesture was not composed of two pieces, nor was it sewed together upon the shoulders and the sides, but it was one long vestment so woven as to have an aperture for the neck.” John 19:24 tells us that the soldiers did not tear Jesus’ robe. Exodus 28:32 forbade the tearing of the high priest’s robe. John points out another quality of Jesus’ tunic in 19:23: it was woven from top to bottom, anōthen (ἄνωθεν)… Surely it is not by chance that John 19:23 tells us Jesus’ chitōn was woven from top to bottom (anōthen). It must mean something. This garment is not just any garment, but is drawing attention to some divine connection. (“Jesus as High Priest: the Significance of the Seamless Robe.” Thomas Lane, stpaulcenter.com
[8] Psalm 22
[9] John 2:19
[10] There was no punctuation in the original manuscript. It could also read, “I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise. Church tradition, repeated by the likes of John Chrysostom and Augustine, claims that the two thieves were part of a band of robbers led by Gestas (the mocker) and Dismas (the believer) who held up Jesus’ family on their way to Egypt. The robbers were astonished to find expensive gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. In the legend Dismas was deeply affected by the infant, and stopped the robbery by offering a bribe to Gestas. Upon departing, the young Dismas was reported to have said: “0 most blessed of children, if ever a time should come when I should crave thy mercy, remember me and forget not what has passed this day.” (https://beyondthesestonewalls.com/posts/dismas-crucified-to-the-right-paradise-lost-and-found)
[11] Most scholars connect this darkness with Amos 8:9-10: “And in that day, declares the Lord GOD, I will make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the daytime. I will turn your feasts into mourning (think the Passover festival) and all your songs into lamentation. I will cause everyone to wear sackcloth and every head to be shaved. I will make it like a time of mourning for an only son, and its outcome like a bitter day.”
[12] “An account of it is given by Phlegon of Tralles, a second century historian… who says that, in the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad, there was” a great and remarkable eclipse of the sun, above any that had happened before. At the sixth hour the day was turned into the darkness of night, so that stars were seen in the heaven; and there was a great earthquake in Bithynia, which overthrew many houses in the city of Nicaea.” Phlegon also mentions an earthquake…. Dionysius says that he saw this phenomenon at Heliopolis, in Egypt, and he is reported to have exclaimed, "Either the God of nature, the Creator, is suffering, or the universe dissolving." (Pulpit Commentary)
[13] The opening line from Psalm 22.
[14] There was a Jewish expectation that Elijah would return before the Messiah.
[15] Psalm 22 again.
[16] The hyssop may symbolize the cleansing and purification that Jesus' sacrifice provides.
[17] Sour wine fulfills the prophecy in Psalm 69:21, which states, "They gave me vinegar to drink instead of wine."
[18] No longer were only a few allowed into the ‘presence of God.’ Now everyone could access it.
[19] “And tombs were opened and, like Lazarus, many saints who had very recently died were raised out of their tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city, Jerusalem, and appeared to many people.” It is probable that they were persons who had recently died, and they appear to have been known in Jerusalem.” (Barnes’ Notes On The Bible). In this sense, this was probably similar to Lazarus: they had recently died, but had not yet been properly interred.
[20] “Tradition affirms that the centurion's name was Longinus, that he became a devoted follower of Christ, preached the faith, and died a martyr's death. “(Pulpit Commentary)
[21] It was the Sabbath beginning the Feast of Unleavened Bread, in which the Israelites celebrated their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Because of the need to act quickly.
[22] Psalm 34:20
[23] Zechariah 12:10
[24] Trinitarian language can be really confusing. Generally, a Trinitarian God is described as One essence in Three persons. The three Persons are inseparable and live in one another, completely encompassing each other, meaning they are never separated, divided, or found apart. As God has one nature, every action of the Trinity is one, originating with the Father, through the Son, and realized in the Holy Spirit. Thus the Three are one not only because what they are is one and the same, but because their divine union allows of no separation or duality or division whatsoever. (I got some of this language from “The Trinity,” at oca.org.
[25] A live goat chosen by lot on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) to symbolically carry the sins of the Israelites into the wilderness, effectively removing them. See Leviticus 16.
[26] The image is that of a fisherman casting out a net and “drawing” all the fish back in.
[27] And if we want to be like Jesus, we will never turn our face away from those toward whom God has set his face.
[28] Luke 15
[29] Luke 15; Matthew 18
[30] One way of reading the parable in Matthew 13.