My study and preparation for my sermon on the death of Jesus felt like a feast. I read Matthew 27 in Greek and consulted commentaries. Psalm 22 is quoted, so I read that and read a couple commentaries on it. I even checked on the Hebrew, with some help from my co-pastor. As a seminary student his Hebrew is much fresher than mine. Preaching the sermon, and now writing it, feels like a chef trying to cram a whole feast onto one small plate.
It’s a strange feast. The death of Jesus is not the kind of food you would go looking for. Or is it? German theologian Jurgen Moltmann returned to the classroom after the horrors of World War II. Millions of people had been murdered for being Jews, or being handicapped. Many churches were swept right along with Nazism, leaving survivors like Moltmann feeling empty. When Moltmann stepped back in the classroom with theology students, it was their study of the Crucifixion that began to heal their souls. Meditating on the death of Jesus is food for a suffering world.
The coronavirus has brought suffering close, though it’s nothing like the horrible evils of WWII. I know people personally who are infected. I know of people who have died of the disease. Something like half the world is under lockdown. New York is working overtime to dig mass graves. The poorest of the world, as usual, will suffer the worst; if there’s no work there’s no food, and social distancing is impossible in a slum. A deep look at the death of Jesus may be just the food we need.
The Gospels race through the life of Jesus. They crawl through his death. After a brief introduction, the Gospels explode into Jesus’ ministry as an adult. We see Jesus heal, drive out demons, teach, and call disciples to follow him. A few pages covers about three years of his life. Then in the last days of Jesus’ life, time slows down. Matthew 26 and 27 covers about 24 hours. Instead of healings, deliverances, and teachings, we are forced to reflect on some uncomfortable things. Just like we are forced to reflect on uncomfortable things on a lockdown during a pandemic.
Slow down and eat this. Digest it. Jesus went before us into darkness. Jesus went before us into death.
I wrote and posted yesterday some reflections on Jesus drinking the cup in the Garden of Gethsemane. He accepted his mission of drinking the cup of judgment, suffering, and death. Jesus handed over his will and his life to God the Father.
Then he was handed over to the mob, betrayed by a one of his own.
Then he was handed over to the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high court. There he was spit upon, punched, slapped, and mocked. Peter, meanwhile, denied that he knew Jesus.
He was handed over to the Roman governor, who allowed a grievous injustice to take place because of the crowds shouting “Crucify!”
He was handed over to the soldiers, who whipped him. They also spit on him, beat him, and mocked him. They stripped him and dressed him in a fake robe and crown of thorns. Then they put his own clothes back on him and marched him out to the place of execution. Then they removed his clothes again and gambled to see who would get to keep them.
He was handed over to the cross, attached by hands and feet, and raised up for the whole world to mock him once again. The people passing by, the religious leaders, even the criminals crucified alongside him all taunted him. “He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God’” (Matthew 27:43).
We are forced to reflect on betrayal, injustice, abuse of power, the corruption of religion, the corruption of the human heart, senseless evil, the thirst for violence, cruelty, pain, death. The cross is a spectacle of cruelty, injustice, terror, and pain. “Darkness came over all the land,” Matthew says (27:45).
But before being handed over to the mob, the Sanhedrin, the governor, the soldiers, and the cross, Jesus has handed his life over to the Father. So now from the cross he looked to the Father. And found only more darkness. The external and the internal mirrored each other.
From the cross Jesus cried out in Aramaic, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The Aramaic sounds like the name Elijah, so people thought maybe he was calling the ancient prophet to come rescue him. But Elihah didn’t save him. And neither did God.
Did God really abandon Jesus? My understanding is that Jesus descended into absolute darkness, where God was absent to him. He had no conscious awareness of the Father. I think it is impossible for us to understand how this felt. Jesus has always been aware of the Father’s kind and loving presence. Now in his hour of death that presence was withdrawn.
People who have entered this darkness, the feeling that God is absent, often find great comfort in this. This is spiritual food for desperate souls. No matter how deep you go into anxiety, terror, depression, trauma, loneliness, betrayal, insults, pain…Jesus has already been there. He went before us into the darkness alone. We do not have to go alone.
In the book To End All Wars, Ernest Gordon tells of his experience as a prisoner of war. After an initial rush of religiosity, he says most people fell deep into selfishness and despair. Prisoners would fight like animals for a scrap of garbage to eat. The brutality of their guards is hard to imagine. Gordon was not a believer, but a group of soldiers asked him to teach them the Bible. They came from Christian backgrounds, but just weren’t sure about it in such dark circumstances. They thought that since Gordon had a college degree he was more qualified to teach than any of them were. Gordon told these few dozen young men that he didn’t know what he believed himself, but he was willing to explore with them.
Gordon writes about a “miracle on the River Kwai.” As Gordon met with the soldiers to read the Bible together each night, they discovered that the death of Jesus was their spiritual food. He writes, “The Crucifixion was…completely relevant to our situation. A God who remained indifferent to the suffering of His creatures was not a God whom we could accept. The Crucifixion, however, told us that God was in our midst, suffering with us. We did not know the full answer to the mystery of suffering…But we could see that God was not indifferent to such pain.”
They discovered that Jesus Christ the Son of God was with them in their suffering. The miracle that occurred on the River Kwai was the transformation of the entire camp. They began to love and serve one another, following the example of their Lord.
When Jesus himself descended into the darkness, he still prayed. Many people turn away from God in times of darkness, often deciding that God does not exist. Jesus cried out to the God who felt so far away, to the God who abandoned him. He found the words to pray in the Psalms. Psalm 22 to be exact, which begins not with a polite address to God, but the very words Jesus spoke from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
That same Psalm goes on to describe the writer’s situation in terms that should sound familiar after reading the account of Jesus’ crucifixion.
“I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
All who see me mock me; they hurl insults.”
“He trusts in the Lord,” they say, “let the Lord deliver him.”
He describes himself as surrounded by wild dogs, bulls, and lions with gaping mouths. Then without explanation everything changes. Suddenly, in verse 22, he opens his mouth – which had been dried up like a shard of fired pottery: “I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you. You who fear the Lord, praise him!”
What happened between verse 21, when he felt forsaken by God – forsaken unto death – and verse 22, when he proclaims the praises of God? If we turn back to Matthew 27:50-52, we have a clue. The Father abandoned the Son to death. He let him die. Jesus cried out again and breathed his last breath. “At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people
who had died were raised to life.”
Finally, God acts! It is Good Friday, when we focus on the death of Jesus. But of course we know that on Easter Sunday Jesus rose from the dead. What happened between those two verses in Psalm 22? The earthquake, the tearing of the temple curtain, and the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. But hold on for that last part. It’s coming on Sunday.
The curtain of the temple was torn. That’s enough for now. The temple was the place to meet with God, the place of God’s presence. But only the high priest could enter the most holy place, and only once a year, bringing a sacrifice for sin. Now at the death of Jesus the curtain is torn open.
Jesus Christ is THE high priest, who has entered the presence of God. And Jesus is also the sacrifice for sins. All your own self-generated darkness, your evil thoughts, your selfish deeds. Everything is paid for. Atonement has been made. As a pastor I have heard so many sins. So much guilt. So much darkness. People who appear happy, healthy, and successful spill out stories of dark deeds.
Jesus pays for our sins. He also became the wounded, the abused, the victim of mockery and injustice. He meets them now in their need.
Jesus went before us into darkness and death. He also goes before us in the presence of God, taking us with him. Our sins are forgiven, our wounds are cared for and healed, our very hearts are transformed.
Psalm 22, after its sudden turn to praise, says that God “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.” It looked like and felt like God had forsaken Jesus. He was forsaken to die, but he was not forsaken to death itself. Psalm 16 uses the same word “forsake.” (Thanks to my co-pastor for his help with the Hebrew). There it says “You will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your holy one see decay.” Jesus was not left in the realm of the dead.
As a result of the death (and resurrection) of Jesus, Psalm 22 tells us “The poor will eat and be satisfied” (verse 26) and “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” (verse 29) The event of Psalm 22 will lead to a feast. The poor, the rich, even those who have died and those who have not yet been born will take part.
I started by saying that I was trying to cram a feast onto one small plate. There really will be a feast! And we will not just eat the spiritual food of Jesus’ death, because his death led to resurrection, to victory.
There is a testimony from a man in Ireland being passed around. A man named Lee McClelland was in the hospital with COVID 19. He had some nights of terrible darkness, including one “night of hell.” During that darkness, he cried out to God. But no family could visit, no pastor, no friend. No one. But a cleaner in the hospital came to clean his room. The cleaner spoke with him, encouraged him, and prayed for him. He prayed for Lee, who started to recover. A couple days later, Lee was feeling better. He told God, “I would really like some prawn cocktail crisps and a Coke.” Prawn cocktail potato chips sounds like a joke, but apparently it’s quite the thing in the UK.
The next morning the cleaner returned. He couldn’t enter the room, but he passed in a bag. “This is a gift from the Lord,” he said. In the bag Lee McClelland found two oranges, a Coke, and a bag of prawn cocktail crisps. Lee had never been alone, even in his nights of hell on the verge of death. God provided a little feast. I do hope that the feast in heaven has better food than prawn cocktail potato chips.
In my times of darkness, and I have had some deep ones, I have sometimes suddenly felt, Oh, there you are Jesus. He has gone ahead of into darkness and death, so that we never suffer alone. He has gone ahead of us into the presence of God, where he will take us when we die.
Ernest Gordon, summed up his experiences after the war. “The experiences we had passed through had deepened our understanding of life and of each other. We had looked into the heart of the Eternal and found Him to be wonderfully kind.” What words to say after such horrific experiences!
Let us look into the heart of the eternal one and find his wonderful kindness.
