Tonight we are remembering the darkest day in human history. It was a day of stark contrast between the hatred that men are capable of, and the love that God is capable of. It is a day near the end of the last week of Jesus’ life as one of us human beings. Let’s take a look at that week, because what a week it was! For a little while tonight, let’s stand with Jesus and His disciples and as we saw in our Gospel reading tonight, we will experience a week of incredible highs and deep, dark lows.
The week began with Jesus riding into Jerusalem as a king on the back of a donkey. The people were cheering and shouting “Hosanna!” (a word that means “saved”) and crowding into synagogues and onto hillsides just to hear Jesus speak. When the religious leaders and authorities told Jesus to quiet the throngs of people, He responded by telling them that “If these people should remain silent, even the rocks would proclaim my glory.” The disciples, although they didn’t realize it at that time, were experiencing a taste of the world as it will one day be, i.e., when Jesus takes control forever. They were, and every time I read these passages I too find myself feeling quite elated and victorious at that moment. But they would see that feeling begin to fade as they travel through the rest of that week.
As we stand with them, we go from that “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem to the emotionally charged scene at what is called the “Last Supper”. (Actually, we are told in the book of Revelation that there will be one more “supper” with Jesus, but more on that later.) Here at this table we find Jesus demonstrating the true characteristics of the Messiah, as He breaks bread and drinks wine with His followers. He has even given the “seat of honor” to the one person that He knows will betray Him and deliver Him into the hands of His enemies in but a few short hours.
Jesus goes even farther to demonstrate the kind of love that He wants us to have for each other as He stoops to wash the feet of His disciples. Jesus leans over to His betrayer and tells Judas Iscariot to “Go and do what must be done, quickly.” Judas then gets up and leaves on his mission of betrayal and the fulfillment of several Messianic prophecies begins.
From the supper in the Upper Room, we travel with Jesus and the disciples to the Garden of Gethsemene. There we find Jesus, in His humanity, literally sweating blood as He asks the Father to take away the cup of suffering that Jesus is about to drink, if it is at all possible. Jesus is, of course, talking about His very soon to be crucifixion. Jesus knows the terrible suffering that awaits Him, not for anything that He has done, but for our sake, for our sins, mine and yours. Jesus still, in utter obedience to the Father, says, “Not my will, Father, but your will be done.”
Next, we hear the approach of the mob that has come to seize Jesus. We see the torches and the angry faces. We see Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ own intimate band of 12 apostles, one who has been with Jesus from the beginning and has seen the healings, heard the teachings, and personally witnessed the many, many miracles that Jesus performed. We see this same Judas walk over to Jesus and betray Him with the kiss of a friend. We watch as Peter draws his sword and cuts off the ear of one of the attackers’ slaves. We try to understand as we hear Jesus tell Peter that, as individuals, we are not to take the law into our own hands, and Jesus then tenderly replaces the slave’s ear, and miraculously heals the man’s wound. Yet, even after this final display of His healing power, a power that even His enemies recognize as coming from God, Jesus is still taken, bound, and hauled before His false accusers and phony judges.
We move now to the courtyard and we stand by the fire with Peter, the same Peter who just hours before had brashly told Jesus that he would, “die with you if necessary….” Now, rather than stand up for Jesus, yet in fulfillment of Jesus’ own words spoken to him, Peter denies even knowing his Lord Jesus, not once, not twice, but three times. You know, we often come down pretty hard on Peter for his actions. But think for a moment about how many times in our own lives we too deny knowing Jesus Christ. Oh, I know we usually don’t go around saying that we don’t know Him. Yet how many times do our actions speak louder than words in this matter? How many times do we do things we should not do, or don’t do things we know we should do; or we say things we know we should not say, or we do not say things we know we should say? When we commit any of these actions, and any time we go against the teachings of Jesus, we are denying Him. We all do it from time to time and when we do, we should do as Peter does next.
After the third denial, Jesus “looks” at Peter. The word translated as “looks” in this passage does not mean a casual glance. Rather, it is a word than means to “gaze deeply and intently”. So Jesus looks at Peter and he is filled with remorse. Peter then moves off in solitude, to cry out to God in anguished tears of repentance, not knowing at that time that his forgiveness (and ours) is assured when we repent and place our trust in Christ. Peter does indeed repent and Jesus will use him for great things in the days and years to come.
From there we move into the darkest time of mankind’s history as we watch the fake trials and the torture of the only One who can save us from our sin. Listen as we hear the crowds, who just a few days before were hailing Jesus as a king, now cry out to Pilate, “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”
We stand with the disciples and we see our Lord beaten about His face until He is no longer recognizable. We see the crown shoved on His head that is made of thick, six-inch long thorns. We see His blood run down His already battered face. We stare at the deep stripes that crisscross His back, caused by the whip made of rope with bits of jagged stones and metal interspersed throughout its end, a whip that can tear a man’s back to pieces and wrap itself around a person’s body with each stroke and thereby expose a man’s internal organs. Oh, the Roman’s knew how to inflict pain on their victims.
And now we watch as Pontius Pilate, knowing fully that Jesus is an innocent man, but terrified to stand up against the Jewish religious leaders and the angry mob for fear of a riot, attempts to wash his hands of the whole thing. Finally he condemns Jesus by releasing Him to the crowd for crucifixion.
After all of this, we stand with the crowd and watch as Jesus staggers under the weight of the crossbar that He carries to the place called Golgatha, “the Skull”. Jesus falls several times and He is whipped and dragged to His feet by the Roman guards and told to “move on, move on.” He again falls to the ground, unable to continue to bear its ponderous weight of over 100 pounds because of the horrible beatings He has already undergone. A man named Simon the Cyrene is pulled from the crowd and made to carry it the final distance for Him. We see this and are reminded that we too are commanded to “…carry one another’s burdens.”
We stand horrified and repulsed as the ring of metal on metal followed by dull thuds reaches our ears, as the Roman executioner drives the six-inch nails into our Lord’s hands. Jesus is then dragged up the upright section of the cross, the splintered and ragged wood digging into His whipped and bleeding bare back every inch of the way. The crossbar falls into the notch on the upright with a jolt and Jesus is lifted up for all to see. One time more the hammer rings out, as the final nail is then driven into His crossed and out-turned ankles, and the deed is complete. There hangs our Savior beaten and bloody, hardly even resembling a man. And it was you and I who put Him there!
Yes, I know. We blame the religious leaders; we blame Judas Iscariot; we point our fingers at Pontius Pilate and shake our fists at the Roman soldiers. But the reality is that none of them, individually or collectively, are fully responsible. See, none of them really had any power at all over Jesus to do what they did, other than the power that He gave them by allowing the crucifixion to take place. So who was really to blame? Who shares the burden of guilt? All of us are to blame. Me, you, and every human being ever born or to be born share the responsibility for creating the need for Jesus to do what He did! It is because of our need of a Sacrifice, our need of a Savior, that Jesus Christ, the Son of God and God the Son, allowed Himself to be taken and suffer the most excruciating death imaginable. Those people did not take His life. He willingly gave it up. He sacrificed His earthly life for each one of us personally!
There are many in this world who question whether this Jesus really is the only way to heaven. They question that the only path to God is through the blood of Jesus shed on that cross. They say, “Surely there must be a myriad of ways to enter through Heaven’s Gate. Isn’t there?” If you are someone who is unsure of that truth, I ask you to deeply consider these questions. Would God the Father have allowed His only begotten Son to go through the unimaginable pain and suffering of the cross; and would Jesus have allowed Himself to be beaten, tortured, and nailed to that cross, if there was any other way for us to obtain salvation and eternal life?
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus Himself, asks God the Father to, “take this cup away…” if there is any other possible way to realize the goal of paying our sin-debt and provide salvation for us. Jesus did not happily look forward to the crucifixion and He asked His Father, God Almighty, to keep Him from going through it, if there was any other way for us, you and me or anyone, to receive salvation and everlasting life. The answer was, and is, like it or not, believe it or not, in Jesus’ own words, recorded in John 14:6, “I AM the Way, the Truth and the Life and no one comes to the Father except through me.” There is no other path to Heaven. There is no other name by which we can be saved.
So there He was hung in all of the humiliation and shame of a criminal’s cross, between two thieves, because of us. Jesus was hung on the center cross. But praise the Lord, the story does not end there. On Sunday morning, we will hear the rest of the story. Amen!