A mother and her young daughter were driving to the zoo during Lent. On
their way, the little girl began counting out loud the crosses on
various church steeples.
"Mom," she asked, interrupting her counting, "how many times did Jesus
die?"
"One time, dear," her mother answered.
"Then why are there so many crosses?" the little girl asked.
"To help us remember how much Jesus loved us," her mother replied, "He
died on a cross for us."
"Well," the child responded, "how could we forget something like THAT?"
How COULD we forget something like that? And yet we do, don't we?
This is the Sunday we celebrate not only Christ's victorious entry into
Jerusalem but also His passion -- His crucifixion and death upon the
cross. Of course, it is not His suffering and death we celebrate, but
the atonement, the at-one-ment, Christ has made possible for us with God
by his suffering and death. Christ has broken down the wall between God
and humanity. He has built a bridge -- not just to the 21st century but
to eternity. How was it accomplished? Obviously there is much about
the atonement we don't understand, but there are a few things we can say
for certain.
FIRST OF ALL, CHRIST TOTALLY SUBMITTED HIMSELF TO THE WILL OF GOD.
In the garden he prayed, "If it is possible, take this cup from me."
But, even as he prayed, Jesus knew what he must do. And thus he closed
his prayer with these simple words, "Not my will, but thine be done." I
wonder if it was the physical pain he dreaded as he knelt in the garden
as much as it was the abject humiliation.
Philip Yancey in his book, THE JESUS I NEVER KNEW, tells a
heart-breaking story very much like Christ's humiliation. The story
comes from a memoir by Pierre Van Paassen about the years before World
War II. In this memoir Van Paassen tells of an act of humiliation by
Nazi storm troopers who had seized an elderly Jewish rabbi and dragged
him to headquarters. In the far end of the same room, 2 colleagues were
beating another Jew to death, but the captors of the rabbi decided to
have some fun with him. They stripped him naked and commanded that he
preach the sermon he had prepared for the coming Sabbath in the
synagogue.
The rabbi asked if he could wear his yarmulke, and the Nazis, grinning,
agreed. It added to the joke. The trembling rabbi proceeded to deliver
in a raspy voice his sermon on what it means to walk humbly before God,
all the while being poked and prodded by the hooting Nazis, and all the
while hearing the last cries of his neighbor at the end of the room.
"When I read the gospel accounts," says Yancey, "of the imprisonment,
torture, and execution of Jesus, I think of that naked rabbi standing
humiliated in a police station. Even after watching scores of movies on
the subject, and reading the Gospels over and over, I still cannot
fathom the indignity, the SHAME endured by God's Son on earth, stripped
naked, flogged, spat on, struck in the face, garlanded with thorns.
As the little girl said, "Who could forget something like that?" Jesus
totally submitted himself to God's will. I wonder what would happen if
you and I were to submit ourselves totally to God's will? Miracles
would take place, wouldn't they? Certainly all the hungry would be
fed. The homeless would all be housed. The sick and the imprisoned
would have a steady stream of visitors. What WOULD be accomplished if we
the people of God totally surrendered our lives as Christ surrendered
his life?
The pastor of a large Baptist church in Moscow said he had 5,600
members.
Someone asked, "How many attend?" and he said, "6,000." They had about
400 who were not ready yet to take the identity of Christian, he said,
but they did attend. And then he used a very interesting phrase. He
said, "In Russia we have no 4-wheel Christians" -- those who ride to
their baptism, ride to Easter service, ride to Christmas service, and
ride to their funeral.
Every church has its four-wheel members. But we do not have a 4-wheel
Lord. He totally surrendered himself even though he would suffer
inconceivable pain and humiliation. Why did he do it? How else could
he communicate the love of God to us?
The late Eddie Doherty, the veteran reporter for the CHICAGO SUN,
recalled that on his wedding day he had wanted to say "I love you" to
his bride. His hesitancy was that he had used the same words with s many
other former girlfriends. Thus, in his moment of total dedication to his
new bride, the words caught in his throat as his heart searched for
another way to declare the overwhelming devotion that was welling up
within him.
Jesus knew that words alone could never convey the depth of God's love
and so he humbled himself as a silent witness to that love. He
surrendered himself completely to God's will.
AND THEN HE SHED HIS BLOOD. In mainline churches we rarely talk about
the blood of Christ.
We sing about that blood in some of our older hymns but we are a bit
squeamish about dealing with the blood of Christ in a sermon. It has not
always been so. In older books of sermons you will find many references
to the blood of Christ. And certainly the Scriptures talk about his
blood. So, why shouldn't we? Besides, I found a fascinating bit of
information recently about this very subject.
There is a book written by a man by the name of Jeff Smith with the
unusual title, THE FRUGAL GOURMET KEEPS THE FEAST. This book contains a
most memorable discussion of how the shedding of Christ's blood
reconciles us to God. Smith says he learned it from a shepherd. It has
to so with what he calls "the blood of adoption."
"In the morning a shepherd awakes to find that a ewe has given birth to
a child . . . and the child has died. In another portion of his flock
the shepherd finds another ewe that gave birth during the night and the
mother died! So, the shepherd has a childless mother on the one hand,
and the mother will probably die of a broken heart. On the other hand
he has an orphan. All logic tells him to put the orphan with the
childless mother. Should work, shouldn't it? It will not work, not at
all, as the mother knows the child is not hers and the child [itself] is
confused and starving.
"The old prophets and the old shepherds," says Smith, "saw in this
regular event in their flock a perfect image of our relationship to
God. We are so alienated from one another that we are dying from
starvation and God is dying of a broken heart. But one thing can be
done, and only one. If the shepherd [takes] the dead lamb and drains
[its] blood, he can then wash the orphan in the blood of the [dead]
lamb, and the mother, smelling her own, immediately moves so that the
orphan may suckle. In other words, the orphan is brought to table and to
life by [its] adoption through the blood. The early Scriptures promised
that a Messiah would come and be the lamb by which we were brought to an
intimate relationship with God."
Adoption by blood. What a powerful concept. Christ's blood makes
possible an intimate relationship with God. Christ's blood is sign and
symbol of the union Christ has established between humanity and God.
Certainly, if nothing else, the shedding of Christ's precious blood
forces us to face the seriousness of human sin.
Sin is an almost meaningless word in today's world. Indiscretion is a
term we are more comfortable with. Or mistake. Or weakness. Because
we trivialize the breaking of God's Law we cannot experience the
richness and the depth of God's grace.
Book 4 of WAR AND PEACE contains a touching scene. Nicholas Rostov has
lost a huge sum at gambling. Now he must face his father.
Only the week before he has borrowed money from his father with a
promise that he would never borrow again. Nicholas is filled with grief
over this breach of honor. Yet his pride will not allow him to admit
it. He compounds his error by affecting a casual attitude. "It can't
be helped! It happens to everyone!" says Nicholas with a bold, free,
and easy tone. In his soul he regards himself as a worthless scoundrel
whose whole life could not atone for his crime. He longs to kiss his
father's hand and kneel to beg his forgiveness, but instead he says in a
careless and even rude voice, that it happens to everyone!
The old count casts down his eyes on hearing his son's words and begins
bustling about, searching for something. "Yes, yes," he mutters, "it
will be difficult, I fear, difficult to raise . . . happens to
everybody. Yes, who has not done it?" And with a furtive glance at his
son's face the count goes out of the room. Nicholas had been prepared
for resistance, but had not at all expected this.
"Papa! Papa!" he calls after his father, sobbing, "forgive me!" And
seizing his father's hand he presses it to his lips and bursts into
tears.
It is a modern dilemma, isn't? How can you experience God's forgiveness
when you don't really feel you have done anything wrong? That's where
many of us are. We don't really feel that our sins are all that bad.
The cross says to us that sin is serious business.
Sin brought about the shedding of Christ's blood. Sin drove nails into
his hands and feet. Sin drained the life out of him as sin always
drains out life. How can we forget something like that? Christ
surrendered himself to the will of God. Christ shed his blood. But
this is not the end of the story.
GOD USED CHRIST'S DEATH UPON THE CROSS TO RECONCILE US UNTO HIMSELF.
The 3rd-century church father Origen of Alexandria said that the devil
believed the cross would be his ultimate weapon; instead it turned out
to be Jesus' ultimate trophy. And that's true. God did what God always
does in the face of human tragedy; God used that tragedy to produce a
triumph. I wish I could remember that when life deals me a difficult
blow, don't you? That blow may not come from God, but God can use it to
bring about God's good purposes. God used the cross -- the symbol of
suffering and shame -- to bring about our salvation.
The Jewish writer Josephus witnessed hundreds of men dying on crosses
during the siege of Jerusalem. He called crucifixion "the most wretched
of deaths." Normally the ancient sources were reluctant to describe any
crucifixion in much detail. It was such a painful and utterly shameful
way of dying. The Romans used it regularly to preserve law and order
against troublesome criminals, slaves and rebels. In Palestine
crucifixion was a public reminder of Jewish servitude to a foreign
power.
St. Paul did not exaggerate when he called the crucified Jesus "a
stumbling block to the Jews" and "folly" to the gentiles (1 Cor 1:23).
Nothing in the Old Testament suggests that the messiah could suffer such
a fate. On the contrary, a crucified person, so far from being sent by
God to redeem us, was understood to be cursed by God (Gal 3:13). For
non-believers it seemed "sheer folly" (1 Cor 1:18) to proclaim that the
crucified Jesus was the Son of God and divine Lord of the world. The
extreme dishonor of his dying on a cross counted against any such
claims. And yet God used the folly of the cross for our
reconciliation. Christ's willingness to experience humiliation and to
give his shed blood became a means for divinity and humanity to be
joined once and for all.
Robert Schuller tells about a wealthy, powerful and popular man in
Tennessee who died. At his funeral were many prestigious people. As
these people drove up the road to the cemetery, they saw a huge throng
of people walking up the roadway. The sidewalks were so filled with
people that many had to walk off the curb and into the street.
A man in one of the limos wondered to himself, "Are all of these people
coming to the funeral of Mr. Jones?" All the people who were walking
were simple people and didn't look well-dressed. As they neared the
front of the cemetery, the crowd thickened to where a police escort had
to make way for the limousines.
Finally, the man's curiosity got the best of him.
He poked his head out of the window and asked the officer, "Who are all
of these people?"
"They are all here for the woman's funeral," the policeman told him.
The man in the limo was shocked. "What woman?" he asked. "Who could be
so important? Who is she?"
"Did you pass the school on the way here?" the policeman asked the man.
"Yes, we did," the man answered.
"She was the crossing guard for 29 years," the policeman answered.
"These are the families of all the children she took care of all those
years."
Here is what we dare not forget this Sunday before Easter. Jesus is our
crossing guard. It is he who makes it possible for us to reach the
Father thru His total surrender to God and thru His shed blood. Who
could possibly forget that?
