The Story Chapter 26 - The Hour Of Darkness

We start, this Passion Sunday, at the end.

 

It is finished. Jesus is dead. You can test it any way you like. You can hold a mirror up to his nose to see if it mists over; try and find a pulse. Thrust a spear through his heart. It’s all the same. His struggle is over. And according to John the last words he said before he died were ‘It is finished’.

 

The pastor and writer Barbara Brown Taylor recalls that when she worked as a hospital chaplain, her supervisor taught her that the best way to get people to talk was to sit down beside them, settle back in her chair and say ‘So tell me about it’.

 

“Tell me about what?” she asked him. “That’s the point” he said. You don’t know what ‘it’ is, so don’t pretend that you do. Just kick things off with ‘tell me about it’ and the other person will soon let you know what ‘it’ is.

 

It is finished.

 

But what is ‘it’, exactly?

 

Well, the dying for one thing. There was no lethal injection in Jesus’ day. No mercifully quick guillotining or clinical firing squad. There was no attempt to make execution less painful at all, since execution was meant to be a deterrent and the uglier the death the better. The whole point was to make it hurt as much as possible, and everyone agreed that death by crucifixion was the worst kind.

Seneca, a Roman statesman who witnessed some first-century executions, wrote that he saw crucifixions of many different kinds. “Some have their victims with head down to the ground,” he said. “Some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet.”

 

Jesus was probably crucified the right way up as all four gospel writers agree that there was a sign above his head. That being the case, he probably died of suffocation as his arms gave out and his lungs collapsed under the weight of his sinking body. No need to break his legs when the soldiers came round to check. He was already dead.

 

The Eastern Orthodox church represents the cross in this way (IMAGE) to remind us of Jesus suffering. There are two extra horizontal slats. The one at the top is the sign saying ‘King of the Jews’ and the one at the bottom is the slat he would have had to push up on to keep breathing. It’s slanted to show the effort he would have had to expend for every single breath.

 

A horrible death. But a common one too, it has to be said. What made the suffering so much worse for Jesus was the spiritual dimension of what was going on. Paul says that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. On the cross, the Son became the representative of sinful humanity, and the Father, as he had to, turned away, leaving him stranded in the roaring silence of God’s absence. A man alone in the swell of an endless sea. Taking our punishment. Dying our death.

 

How do we put words to that agony? Can we speak reverently of some kind of sundering in God? A turning away of one divine person from another? God taking into himself the darkness of things he would never otherwise know – sin and death and weakness and pain? Small wonder the gospel writers tell us that creation itself convulsed as Jesus shuddered and died on that cross.

 

He’d suffered more than we will ever know, this side of eternity.

 

But now his suffering was finished.

 

And so were the exhaustions of that crucial week in his life. The acclamation of Palm Sunday, the scandal of the temple clearing, the growing enmity from the Pharisees, the rising temperature of their exchanges with him. The Last Supper; Gethsemane; Judas’s betrayal; the disciples’ cowardice; the interrogations before Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate. The flogging, the beatings, the crown of thorns and now the nails.

 

The climactic week of his life. And it too was finished.

 

And what of his life?

 

As time went on, all roads had led, ultimately, to Jerusalem and to his death. That became Jesus’ horizon. But his life had meaning too, not just his death. He’d revealed the Father to the world in so many ways. A word that affirmed, or provoked or inspired. A touch that healed or blessed. A miracle that transfigured ordinary life by the realisation that God is always and ever in our midst. He was always giving of himself, Jesus. Always praying. Always among them – as God wanted to be among them. That is why he came.

 

And further back still, the carpentry; the dutiful love of an oldest son, looking after his mother. And even now, looking down on her and John the disciple from the cross and commending them to one another. Woman, here is your son. John, here is your mother”.

 

Always human, since those first squalling cries in Bethlehem. But also, somehow, always divine. And now – at the end – beyond the horizon of death, there would be – he hoped and prayed – a restoration of who he was.

 

On the night before his death, Jesus prayed for his disciples and for himself in the Upper Room and among the many things he prayed that evening are these words:  “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”

 

He laid aside his majesty, in becoming incarnate. But now that time of limitation was at an end. The time when he was subject to hunger and thirst and unknowing. When lashes could tear his skin and nails pierce his flesh. That time was over. It also was finished.

 

And so too was the religious system he opposed. The temple system with its careful divisions between clean and unclean; the self-interest and self-aggrandisement of its leaders; the whole idea that a lamb or a goat or a calf was an acceptable substitute for a surrendered human heart.

 

For millennia, the peoples of the world had practiced sacrifice as a way of trying to win the favour of the gods. They offered the best they had in the hope that the gods might bless their crops, or heal their diseases, or win their battles for them.

 

Even Israel, who’d been given the sacrificial system from God as a blessing, found that in practice it could degenerate into mere ritual.

 

But the sacrificial death of Jesus turns that whole system on its head.

 

Our ancestors offered the lamb, or the goat or the calf.

At Calvary, God does the offering, of his own son. His own self.

 

Our ancestors tried to do the reconciling, to make peace with the gods through their own efforts.

At Calvary, God does the reconciling to make peace with us.

 

Our ancestors hoped that their offerings might earn the favour of the gods

At Calvary, God proved that we are already loved beyond reason or measure.

 

As Paul says in Romans – God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

 

Sometimes a picture says more than a thousand words. When I was reading up for today I picked up an old coursebook from my University days and in the margin I’d drawn a couple of doodles that helped me make sense of all this.

 

(IMAGE)

 

Do you remember, way back at the beginning of the Story, that Abraham was told to go and sacrifice his son Isaac? The son that he and Sarah had been waiting for for years.

 

With a heavy heart, he took the boy off into the desert, and as they made their way towards the place of sacrifice the boy said “we have the fire and the wood, Father, but where’s the lamb for the sacrifice.”

 

Do you remember what Abraham said? “God himself will provide the lamb for the offering, my son”.

 

And that’s exactly what happened. Isaac was spared because God provided a Lamb for Abraham. And here, on the cross, God provides the Lamb for us.  Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be led like a lamb to the slaughter, and bear the iniquity of us all. John the Baptist saw the Messiah with his own eyes and said “Behold – the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

 

Jesus’ death, his self-offering, does for us what the blood of bulls and goats could never do. If you read the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, you’ll find it all spelt out.

 

The same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, cannot make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshippers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

 

Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest – Jesus - had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect for ever those who are being made holy.

 

The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:

“This is the covenant I will make with them

after that time, says the Lord.

I will put my laws in their hearts,

and I will write them on their minds.”

 

Then he adds:

“Their sins and lawless acts

I will remember no more.”

 

And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin.

 

Do you see what he’s saying? The old system is finished. There’s no more need for sacrifice.

 

You are guilty, yes! You are a sinner, yes! But in Christ, the price for your wrongdoing has been paid.

 

It’s like a judge passing sentence, but then leaving the dock and taking your place so he can pay the price himself and acquit you.

 

Or a priest declaring that a sacrifice of atonement must be made, and then offering his own life on the altar to redeem you.

 

This is love, says John, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

 

Right at the beginning of the Story I said that the whole of Scripture could be boiled down to a simple narrative along these lines. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back.

 

The whole of the Story has been leading up to this point where on the cross, in Christ’s self-offering, God wins us back for no other reason than that he chooses to love us.

 

The author Frederich Buechner writes:

 

The love for equals is a human thing – of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.

 

The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing – the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.

The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing – to love those who succeed when we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, to be content with what you have when others have far more. The world is always bewildered by its saints.

 

And then there is the love for the enemy – love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens and inflicts pain. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.

 

It is finished, Jesus said. His suffering, the cataclysmic events of Holy Week, his days of human fragility and the sacrificial system that could never deal with our sin, or the guilt that it brings. It’s all finished.

 

All that remains is what we will make of his self-offering. Of God’s immense love. I believe that what Christ did, he did for all of us – but we must close with his sacrifice and receive it for ourselves.

We must realise that we put him on that cross, and that our freedom under God was bought at a price. We owe him.

 

Saving Private Ryan is one of the most respected War films of the past half century. It tells the story of Captain John Miller, played by Tom Hanks, who leads a small squad of men on a special mission after the D Day landings in Normandy. They’ve been ordered to locate Private James Francis Ryan and bring him back from the front because his three brothers have all been killed in action and he’s the only Ryan son still left.

 

 

As the mission progresses we grow to appreciate Miller for the man he is; smart, courageous and determined. Holding this sometimes fractious and doubtful unit together. Missing his wife and home like the rest of them, but determined to do his duty even though his men are questioning why they should be risking their lives to save Ryan’s.

 

Finding their man is like finding a needle in a haystack, & several of the squad die in skirmishes as they try to track Ryan down, but eventually they find him as part of a detail guarding a strategic bridge which is about to come under attack from German forces.

 

Miller’s unit join the defence of the bridge and manage to keep the Germans at bay, but many of the squad are killed in the battle and at the last, Miller too takes a bullet that will kill him.

 

In the closing scenes he pulls Ryan close, and with his dying breath, remembering everyone who’s died to save this one private, he says five words – “James, earn this. Earn it.”

 

Those are good words to finish with, as we stand before the cross on this Passion Sunday. We know that nothing we can do can ever earn the sacrifice Christ made for us. But we know too that we were bought at a price. He gave his all for our sake. We can do no less in return

(drawn in part from a sermon by BBT)