"Meditation on the Passion According to St. Matthew" Holy Monday April 18, 2011 Matthew 27:32-50
Jesus expected to be there. He didn’t deserve to be there but He willingly walked that path. He was being led up the hill of Calvary to be crucified but He was also laying down His own life of His own accord. Simon didn’t expect to be there. He too was innocent as far as crucifixion goes. He had done nothing deserving of it. But there he was, being compelled by soldiers to carry the cross of Jesus. Jesus was being shoved and jeered, but not compelled. He was there for us. Matthew gives us the name of the place that we often refer to as Calvary, which is the Latin name for it. The Hebrew name is the Place of the Skull. If nothing else, this casts an ominous tone to the whole ordeal. Can you imagine what Simon of Cyrene was feeling as he was being compelled to move toward a place that was called the Skull? Some have ventured that it was called that because that’s what it looked like. Simon was probably not feeling all that well at this point. But they had compelled him to carry the cross. Now he was free. Jesus would be going on and bear the cross for the world. In this was Simon’s, and ours, true freedom. Here is a little twist. Everything done to Jesus is done in vindictiveness. He is there as a criminal and is treated as one. Jesus is the one who is there knowing that He is there of His own accord and offering Himself as the sacrifice for the world. But here is one moment where He is offered something. But wine mixed with gall isn’t pleasant. The only thing that is pleasant about it is that it offers a small amount of relief, alcohol offered to deaden some of the pain. But Jesus refused this offer. He would be the one offering Himself not as a sedative but as rescue from sin. The soldiers hoped to score on the clothes that Jesus wore. He wouldn’t need them of course. To them He was another criminal. The New Testament talks of Baptism as being clothed with Christ. They were seeking to gain His garments. But again we are met with the ironic truth that Jesus was offering Himself as the covering for sin. They then attended to their duty, keeping watch over Him and the others crucified with Him. There wasn’t much to see but nevertheless they had to keep watch. We see later that one of them ended up seeing much more than a criminal being crucified. Unwittingly, these soldiers teach us something about Christ. It is good for us to have some to sit and keep watch over Christ and Him crucified. It sounds a little strange to hear the words placed above Jesus “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews” as the charge against Him. To us, that is exactly who He is. We know what it means that He is the King of the Jews. He had said to the Samaritan woman that salvation is of the Jews. Jesus is the King in the line of David. He is the Messiah, the Savior of the world, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But it is for this very reason He was crucified. It was the charge against Him. The way He is the Messiah is by being charged for the being the Messiah. Paul says that he was made to be sin for us. That is how He is the Savior. By being charged by His Heavenly Father as the Sinner. We, like Simon, are free. We are not compelled to go all the way to the cross. Jesus, the King of the Jews, the King of Kings, went to the cross in humility and even joy. It is in fact in God, specifically God in Christ at the cross, that we understand what joy is. We are told that two robbers were crucified with Him. They deserved to be there. But we all deserved to be where Jesus was. We rightfully belong in the place where the wrath of God is poured out. We deserve to be forsaken by God, indeed, we are the ones who have removed ourselves from eternal communion with Him by our sin. The robbers were placed at His right and His left, which should give us pause if we ever desire as James and John did to sit at His right and left hand. Because Jesus died for their and the robbers’ and our sins we are welcomed into eternal mansions. A guy named Simon was there, perhaps standing there in awe at the one whose cross he had carried. Soldiers were there of course. The others who were being crucified. And there’s always the passersby. Why does Matthew say that they were deriding Him? Why not all of those stinking criminals on the cross? But no, he says they derided Him. Here is where we see again our complicity. We not only deserve the eternal punishment placed on Christ, we brought Him to this punishment by our very sin. Instead of honoring God and worshiping Him we deride Him. Those who passed by ought to have knelt before Him. What do we see when we consider that Christ hung on a cross? Do we see our Savior? We do, and that means that we also ought to kneel in humility and awe and thanksgiving. He is our Lord and He is so by suffering and dying in such a way. Surely there were those who got their kicks out of mocking the criminals that were put on as a spectacle by the Romans. But Matthew tells us why specifically this one in the middle was derided. It was because He had spoken in such temerity of the temple being destroyed and then rebuilding it in three days. It is sometimes from the mouths of unbelievers that the greatest truth is spoken. What He had said, and what they were deriding Him for now, was what was occurring. In fact, Jesus had said, If you destroy this temple I will rebuild it in three days. The temple He was speaking of was Himself. And here before the passersbys’ eyes, the temple was being destroyed. In three days He would indeed rebuild it by rising from His grave. And if it’s not enough that common people were deriding Him, the religious leaders mocked Him. “He saved others; He cannot save Himself… let Him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in Him.” You can never know what would have happened if things had gone differently, but what actually did occur tells us that even had Jesus hopped off of that cross those religious leaders would not have recanted and repented and believed. Even if they had, what would they have been believing in? Not the Savior. There would be no Savior in whom to believe. Jesus is God and the Savior, but it was by staying on the cross. It was by suffering for the sins of the world on the cross. It was by dying on the cross. It was by denying death its power by stepping out of His grave three days later. Their demand that He should come down now betrayed their unbelief. They didn’t want a Savior. They wanted their own religion, in which they themselves were their own gods. May we look to the cross and see God and the way He loves us and comes to us. Their mockery continued in a similar way to those who had quoted Jesus. The religious leaders recalled some of Jesus’ other words: “I am the Son of God.” The irony is so rich that sometimes it’s hard to look at the Passion account inspired by the Holy Spirit and simply be in awe. They mean to mock Him but their words actually speak the highest truth. Being on the cross shows He is who He said He is, the Son of God. God in the flesh, begotten of the Father, born of the Virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, died, and buried. He is God, He is Lord, He is Savior. Mockery or no, the words are true and purest Gospel. He is derided and mocked and more, reviled also by the robbers being crucified with Him. It may be a generality and therefore not applicable to all criminals, but you would expect this sort of behavior from criminals. Though Matthew doesn’t tell us, we see from another Gospel account that one of the robbers came to repentance sometime in the six hours Jesus hung on the cross. For this we give thanks, even as we marvel at the power of the Gospel to turn the heart of one who only a short time before was reviling Him. God is indeed gracious and merciful. As if to give evidence of the disgrace that is being done, creation gives forth its assessment: there is darkness over the land for three hours. It is a disgrace, we should never forget that. Nevertheless, what is a disgrace God works for good. What is done at the hands of sinful men, including us, as our sin and the sin of everyone brought Christ to the cross, is used by God for His glory. In the midst of that darkness was light. Light shining in a world that was already dark because of sin. Jesus is the Light of world, and never more so when darkness covered the land while He hung on the cross. Toward the end of His suffering He cried out. This cry should cause us to see the far reaches of God’s love for us. It moved Him to strike down His only-begotten Son. My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Jesus was forsaken of God, we are welcomed into His loving arms. It is because He was forsaken of God that we can say of God, My God, my God! He is our God because of Christ. He is our God because Christ was forsaken of God. We chose not to cry out to God in confession of faith as our God and yet we have been restored to Him because Jesus was forsaken. This is a profound mystery. It’s maybe the most profound. And yet, it’s followed by an almost comical reaction. This man is calling Elijah. Perhaps this shows that grasping mysteries isn’t what is called for but simply embracing them. Thank God Jesus wasn’t calling for Elijah but in a profound mystery crying out to the Father in being forsaken by Him. John is the one who tells us that Jesus had said, I thirst. Matthew simply tells us that someone got some wine to give it to Him. It wasn’t a lot. It wouldn’t really do much. John says, in fact, that Jesus said, I thirst, in order to fulfill Scripture. But notice again how simply this story is told. In the midst of the greatest of mysteries we see here a simple act. A little bit of liquid for a man who was dying. But what was really going on was that His thirst was a small reflection of His suffering on behalf of the world. He was forsaken of God and that is juxtaposed with a simple act of giving some wine. Someone apparently thought this simple act would impede Elijah coming. But at that point there was no one to save Jesus. He was saving the world. And with that Matthew tells us that He cried out and yielded up His spirit. Salvation had been accomplished. God in the flesh was forsaken of God the Father. Salvation was accomplished. Jesus was still the Son of God. He was still the beloved only-begotten Son of the Father. So He yielded up His spirit. When we die we too will yield up our spirit and be welcomed into eternal glory as God the Father’s beloved sons and daughters. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. [Henry Hamann, On Being a Christian] ___________________________________________________________________ 'CAT 41 Sermons & Devotions' consists of works that are, unless otherwise noted, the copyrighted property of the various authors; posting of such gives members of this list implied consent for redistribution _with_attribution_ unless otherwise specified by the author (as long as no charge is made for the work and it is not made part of a compilation), as well as for quoting or use in a congregational setting _with_or_without_attribution_. 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