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Sermon
Summary Please press the play button below to hear the sermon (mp3 file).
SERMON TRANSCRIPT: Today’s scripture: Matthew 27: 32-55 48Immediately one of them ran and got a sponge. He filled it with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. 49The rest said, "Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to save him." 50And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. 51At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. 52The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. 53They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people. 54When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, "Surely he was the Son of God!" 55Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Pastor Dave Michel: Then we talked about Thursday night, the last supper and we had our own Messianic banquet here where Jesus was the host. Then Pastor Sherri preached on the betrayal and denial of Jesus and last weekend I preached on the trials of Jesus as he went from High Priest to Herod and Pilate. Today is the last 24 hours, the crucifixion of Jesus. This is a long passage of scripture. I am not going to touch part of it. Every year I come around and study it and I wonder what it was that was going on with the tombs opening and I say, I don’t know. I am thankful God led me to focus on another piece of the scripture. This is a central part of Christian faith. One of the reasons I wanted to focus on these 24 hours during lent was that I knew that holy week, when we come together and focus on these last things, is going on during spring break and a lot of people will be gone so because this is so important we need to take time to look at it. We are going to look at the central event that happened in the Christian faith and see what God has to say to us. Researching this past week I thought that the Romans had kind of claimed crucifixion as a fine art form. They developed it and perfected it, but they weren’t the ones who invented it. There was a group called the Phoenicians they were in power in a different part of the world. Back then things were pretty bloody and when it came time to execute someone to make an example of them they wanted it to be dramatic and they kept experimenting with ways to execute people, run them through with a sword, burn them at the stake, they would skin them alive. The drawback to all these methods is that they were over too fast. They wanted something that would last. They were the first people to develop crucifixion. Then the Romans developed rituals around it and developed it into an art form almost. The streets would be lined with people being crucified as you were going into towns they would be lined up there. One of the ways I wanted us to look at this idea was to look at it so
I searched different art works, pictures and representations of the crucifixion
that are common in the Christian faith. I wanted to choose some that are
a little different. This first one is something we might see frequently
as a representation of the elevation of the cross. This is called a high
cross. The Phoenicians and Rome would use a high cross to make an example
of a person so they could be seen from great distances. The picture below takes the high cross idea to a farther extent. The cross is over the heavens and all the earth. There is scripture
that says when I am lifted up I will draw all people to myself. There
are hymns that we sing that say on a hill far away, but Jesus was probably
crucified on a low cross because of where he was executed. Look at this
picture it is people right up against Jesus and able to touch him. He
was probably, they say, executed at the gate of the city, on a pathway
where everyone was coming and going so there would be no need for him
to be lifted up on a high cross and there was no hill there, it was a
flat area. He was probably crucified on a cross the size of the one on
our church altar. So his head would be here. They liked to use that kind
of cross because then people could slap the person and torment them and
people who wanted to help could give them a drink. Later after the person
died the bodies would be left there for the wild animals would come and
rip apart the body. Jesus was probably executed on a low cross where people
could get up close. Once you could get close you could feel the hurt.
It was a very painful process to go through. I tried to pick out things that might shock us a bit. The one on the left is a different pose than we normally see for crucifixion. It speaks to the agony. The one on the right shocked me, look how young he looks, like a kid. I recoiled a bit, thinking oh no, not a kid. You know what, Jesus on there should have that same feeling for us of “oh no, not him. ” We have almost domesticated it. That kind of shocked me into thinking that this was real, this was close, this was bloody.
These next pictures are different settings. No chance to push the legs up and take the pressure off. A person actually
asphyxiated to death, this other one shows the marking and thorns.
That is the part of scripture we are going to look at from the sixth hour until the ninth hour (from 12:00 to 3:00) darkness came over the land. This might have been an eclipse, or a storm. This week as I was getting ready to come in, the day became dark and the clouds rolled in, you could hear the thunder and lightening and feel the electricity. About the ninth hour (3:00, at the end of the crucifixion), Jesus cried out in a loud voice “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” Now, if you can imagine Jesus at the end of the crucifixion would be contorted in pain and his mouth might have been dehydrated and they gave him wine vinegar which was a pain killer. His mouth might have been numb. Some people said that he was calling for Elijah. That is because “Eloi, Eloi” means God, "Elijah" is praise to God, "Hallelujah" is praise to God. Eloi is God, this says my God, my God why have you forsaken me. If you have ever felt separated from God because you are going through a time of bearing a cross, through a valley that is trying your soul, you need to know that Jesus is going through this as well and he cried out because it seemed that God was so distant. I really do not like that bumper sticker: "If God seems distant, guess who moved." Well, thank you, very much as they cut me off in traffic. If God seems distant it may mean that it is your season of the cross. Jesus cried this out to God and we can too. There is something else happening here. There is a Jewish spiritual practice that says if you say the first line of a psalm it's like you recite the whole thing. So if you say the first line of the 23rd. Psalm you have said "The Lord is my shepherd," it is assumed that everything else follows. The Lord is my shepherd, I have all that I need, He lets me rest in green meadows, he leads me beside the still waters, he anoints my head, he sets a table for me, even enemies won’t harm me, I can walk through the valley of the shadow of death and your rod and staff are right there. Say "The Lord is my shepherd," and the rest of it quotes for you. This is out of another psalm, the first line of the 22nd psalm starts out as per Jewish prayer practice: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Why are you so far from saving me and so far from the words of my groaning, Oh God I cry out by day but you do not answer, by night I am not silent but it seems like God is silent. Then you see the twist that happens in the third verse: "Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One, you are the praise of Israel." The rest of the psalm flows back and forth between these two things, it says that those who mocks me, cast lots for my clothes, my bones are out of joint, my flesh is on fire and yet you are enthroned as the Holy One. You are the praise of Israel. It goes back and forth and then the psalm ends with “everyone will be drawn to you, for the Lord, God almighty has done it” it ends on a note of triumph! When you feel that God is distant and you are forsaken, the rest of the psalm comes along with it. Eventually God will bring us to that third verse. On the back of the sermon note sheet is scripture and prayer guide for the coming week and I would encourage you to take that and we will pray through that psalm together. The end of the psalm that ends on a note of triumph as we come closer and we know that Jesus felt distant from God and we can draw closer. Now, there is one other saying, this is not a scripture but I heard someone say this “ the ground is level at the foot of the cross”. It argues with our old hymns that say on a hill far away. I heard someone say, the ground is even at the foot of the cross. What I like about that has to do with this near and far thing. The cross isn’t elevated in such a way that it is an uphill battle to get there. For it is not high and lifted up so that only some people can draw close, those that are holy or spiritual and the rest of us its downhill. We can come to the cross. The idea of the low cross here is that we can come close. I was searching for a crucifixion where the ground is level at the foot
of the cross. This is one of the things that popped up: I can't look at this and say that Jesus died so we won't have to, because as a Pastor I have helped people walk through this. It is one of the awesome parts about being a pastor. You get to walk people through that preparation of getting ready for that final journey. It is an awesome experience to witness and be a part of, it is a privilege to be a part of that. I know some of those deaths have been pretty rough. In my own family, my mother was sick for about two years, the last six months; it took her half a year to die. It was an awful form of cancer; it was every bit as tough as a crucifixion, drawn out. My mom had a wise saying, she said "I am not afraid of death, I’m not too crazy about dying." I know what she meant. The thing with the ground being even at the cross means that we can all draw close, as we get ready for that journey. We can see what Jesus did for us and we can get close enough that you could smell the vinegar wine to deaden the pain. Maybe you can get close enough to be splattered with a bit of the blood that flowed from his wounds. The idea of it being level at the foot of the cross is that we can draw close to that and know that he is with us and he can be with us because he has gone through anything that we can ever go through, he has been there, he knows what it is like and because we can get close enough to see him, we know what God is like: mercy, grace and forgiveness. Drawing us to that. I would like for you to take that 22nd psalm and pray it and take that picture in your mind with you.
God, may you draw all the earth to yourself. And Jesus, would you draw us to yourself. And know that we can come. Those of us who stand far off can come. We can draw close. And we can see your faithfulness, your graciousness, your forgiveness, your mercy. And help us to draw close in confidence. That we know the end of the story. We know where the path leads. Now be confident to follow in his footsteps. In Jesus' name all God's
people said, "Amen." Go in peace.
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Scripture and Prayer Guide
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