Were you there...

If a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few thousand words for this Good Friday.

Christ on the Cross, Michelangelo

     Paschal Cycle-Alexy Pismenny

Crucifixion-Boris Vallejo

                             Crucifixion-Emil Nolde

Christ of St. John of the Cross

Salvador Dali            Cruxifixion Corpus Hypercubus

 

 

 

 



 

                   Christ Crucified-Diego Velazquez

 

The Iseneheim Altarpiece-Matthas Grunewald

This last image is particularly moving to me.  As you can see, Christ in this image has sores on his skin resembling severe skin diseases.  The piece was originally painted for a monastary where the monks were known for treating plague and skin diseases.  The image of Christ on the cross in great pain also suffering from similar infirmities to the patients was a reminder of the words of Isaiah "He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases.”

In Good Hands

“Father, Into your hands I commit my spirit”-Luke 23:46

For six hours Jesus had been hanging on the Cross, and now we get a last look at His suffering face. His whole body is drooping and shivering with the last chill. His breath is growing feebler and feebler – until He gives one long, deep, last sigh – “Father into your hands I commit my spirit.”

Jesus was always submitting Himself to God, and when He died, He died just as He had lived. We too are told to “Commit our way unto the Lord; trust also in Him and He shall bring it to pass.” The Christian may (like Stephen in Acts 7) cry with his last breath, “Lord Jesus receive my spirit.”

During the last year of the Civil War, a man paid a visit to the battlefield of Chickamauga, where on the 20th of September, 1863, the Union army was almost destroyed. The battlefield was not then, as now, a beautiful place with stately monuments rising among the trees. It still bore the scars of battle. Over one of the newly made graves, the visitor saw a man on his knees planting flowers. The visitor said to the man, “Is it a son who is buried there?” And the man said “No it’s not a son” – and he went on to explain why he was there to decorate the grave.

He said that he had been drafted into the Confederate army, but just before he was ready to say “good-bye” to his wife and family and report to the training camp, a young man came to see him and said, “You have a wife and family, and when you are gone, you’ll be unable to support them, whereas I am unmarried and have no one depending on me. Let me go in your place.” The offer was accepted and the young man went off in his place to the training camp. At the Battle of Chickamauga he was mortally wounded. The news of his death had drifted back to the southern home of the man whose place he had taken. And as soon as he had saved enough money, he made the journey to Chickamauga, and there he found the grave of his friend with its crude marker.

 

The visitor was deeply touched by the narrative, and then went on his way over the grim Battlefield. But on the way back, he passed this same grave again. It was now well covered with flowers and on a rough board, at the head of the grave, were carved these four words, “He died for me.”

 

It is these four words that express the great truth centered in the death of Jesus Christ on Calvary.  He died for you.  Scripture says "...all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God."  Then we to can commit our spirit into His hands, and what good hands they are.

How Complete is Complete?

“It is finished”--John 19:30

“It is finished.”  Everything foretold about, and necessary for our salvation is complete! With reference to the attainment of the promised eternal salvation, no works, no penance, no blood, no money, nothing!- is necessary unless one does not believe what “finished” means. As comforting as it is to believe that Jesus has paid the full price for our salvation when He died upon the cross, how sad is it when people remain comfortless and burdened because they believe that they have to complete what Jesus already called complete.

Our Savior Jesus Christ said to His disciples, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled.”  “It is finished” tells us that Jesus is true to His Word. We, the redeemed who believe the Word of Christ, and trust in His once-for- all completed atonement are numbered among those to whom Psalm 22 makes reference.  “Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn— for he has done it.”

Wilhelm Besser wrote in The Passion Story,  “They who waste their energy in labor designed to add to or complete the work of Christ, they who, instead of accepting in faith the work of God that justifies the ungodly, they create a Savior according to their own fancy who is to make the virtuous more righteous, or to make penitent sinners gradually purer. They destroy for themselves the blessed message: 'It is finished!'" 

 

The faith that saves is not built upon personal effort, however sincere.  To pridefully try to complete what Christ called complete, as if Christ actually did not complete what He said He did, is calling Jesus a liar. Being people of flesh and blood who “daily sin much” the penitent sinner relieves an accusing conscience, not by trying harder to do what he can never do or even has to do, but by simply believing  “It is finished!” In believing Christ's words, the child of God respects the Word, and gives Christ and His cross due honor.

In this context Luther said, “ My penitent tears do not justify me. Christ alone has taken my sins away. He cast them into the sea of forgetfulness. This is my defense, a defense which rests upon: ‘It is finished.’”

People who appreciate art do not add another brush-stroke to the painting of a master. It is unthinkable. Why then should the sinner for whom Jesus died, and in whose behalf He declared, “It is finished,” even entertain the idea that the accomplishment of His salvation calls for an addition to what the Master has declared complete?

“For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.  Thanks be to God!  It is finished.

All Who Are Thirsty

"I  thirst"--John 19:28

 

“I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched. My eyes fail, looking for my God. Do not hide your face from your servant; answer me quickly, for I am in trouble. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.”

If we want to know the enormity of our sin, we need only to sit at the foot of the cross and recognize that these words from Psalm 22 are a reflection of what our Savior suffered.  When originally offered the drink of myrrh and gall that would have alleviated His suffering and hastened His death, Jesus refused to receive it.  He had to be in full control of His senses and drink deeply from the cup of suffering.  For only by doing so could He satisfy the demands of the Law which prounounced death upon the sinner.  to have done less would have left fallen man still under condemnation of eternal death with all its indescribable horror and suffering.  But when He had endured it all, and had fully paid the price, the Son of God desired to see His Father.  He was ready to die.  It was His time, the time selected by Him.  Unto the end Jesus remained in control of all things in order that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.  "The put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst."

Now He says, “I THIRST.”  The thirst that He felt was not uncommon for someone in His circumstance. A parched throat often accompanies death. But His thirst was more than a dry throat. He thirsts for those for whom He died to come to Him and drink of the refreshing water of salvation. By prophecy, Isaiah 53 says, “After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied;” After the toil of His soul, the Savior finds satisfaction in every soul that has been redeemed, and who has by faith grasped salvation in Him. Each time that we hear this word, “I thirst” we should appreciate what it is that He suffered, and at the same time daily bring Him satisfaction through our word and action, as well as our living faith and hope. In that manner we declare that Jesus did not thirst in vain. May we satisfy the thirst of the Savior by saying with David, “I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land.”

Humanity's Cry

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"--Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34 

I am struck by the anguished tone of this expression compared to the first three words of Jesus. This cry is from the painful heart of the very human Jesus who must feel deserted by His Father and the Holy Spirit, not to mention his earthly companions and family.  As if to emphasize his loneliness, Mark even has his loved ones "looking from afar," not close to him as in the Gospel of John. Jesus feels separated from everyone, but especially his Father. He is now all alone, and he must face death by himself. Jesus lives the maximum of human experience and the ultimate pain in death, and by doing so, frees humanity from the clutches of sin.

His fourth word is the opening line of Psalm 22, and thus his cry from the Cross recalls the cry of Israel and of all innocent persons who suffer. Psalm 22 of David makes a striking prophecy of the crucifixion of the Messiah at a time when crucifixion did not exist: "They have pierced my hands and my feet, I can count all my bones.” The Psalm continues: "they divide my garments among them, and cast lots for my clothing."

There cannot be a more dreadful moment in the history of humanity as this. Jesus, who came to save us, is crucified.  He realizes the horror of what is happening and feels the full measure of what He is now enduring. He is being engulfed in the raging, unrelenting, unrepentant sea of sin.  Evil triumphs, as Jesus admits to the pharisees and scribes as they arrested Him: "...this is your hour—when darkness reigns."  

But it is only for a moment. The burden of all the sin of humanity for a moment overwhelms the humanity of Jesus.

But doesn't this have to happen?  Doesn't this have to occur if Jesus is to save us?  It is in His death that the Divine plan of His Father and Himself will come to fruition.  Evil is defeated by an evil act.  the foolishness of God is His ultimate triumph, the very "power of God" as Paul writes to the Corinthians.  For it is by His death that the unimaginable, unbridgeable chasm between God and humanity is bridged, not by our deeds or our power, but by His.  "For there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all men."

That is how much He loves us.

Taking Care of His Own

“Woman, behold your son…Behold your mother.”--John 19:26, 27

While the crowd mocked and jeered, it is good to know that there were those present who really cared.  Jesus looked down and saw His mother standing near the cross.  By her side was the disciple John.  This little group of sympathetic and bereaved souls furnished a striking contrast to the rest of the mocking crowd.  Jesus lifted his voice and said to his mother, “woman, look at John, from now on he will be your son.”  And then to John He said, “from now on, she will be your mother.

In these words, we learn that our welfare is an abiding concern of our Savior.  He knows our pain and sorrow, even in the midst of his own.  He also demonstrated that he helps, strengthens and encourages us through one another.  At the cross we learn to appreciate the mutual love and care that exists within a community of believers as well as the responsibility that members of the body of Christ have to one another.  If in his deepest suffering He loved his own so much that he would provide for their mutual welfare, how we should also care for and love one another.

I can't help but turn back to to what Mary was experiencing.  Try to hear the thoughts and emotions of Jesus' mother's heart.  His disciples had deserted Him, His friends had forsaken Him, His nation had rejected Him and His enemies cried out for His blood.  But His mother stood sorrowing at the foot of the cross.  Surely she remembered the words of the righteous man Simeon who spoke these prophetic words to her when Jesus was presented at the temple as an infant.  "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.  And a sword will pierce your own soul too."  As she saw her beloved firstborn son in such agony, surely the nails pierced her heart as much as they pierced His flesh.

               

               

Is This Fair?

“I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.”--Luke 23:43

We don’t know much about the men crucified with Jesus, one on his right and one on his left.  Matthew and Mark call them robbers, Luke and John:  criminals.  But whatever their crimes, they were guilty of them and they were heinous enough to merit the most notorious form of execution devised by man.

As the gospel recounts:  “One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him:  ‘Aren’t you the Christ?  Save yourself and us!’  But the other criminal rebuked him.  ‘Don’t you fear God’ he said, ‘since you are under the same sentence?  We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve.  But this man has done nothing wrong.’  Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’  Jesus answered him, ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.’”

 

"But that isn't fair!" some may say.  "Where is the justice in that?"  After all, this guy is no good, right.  He is a bad person, undeserving of heaven, just look at what he has done. 

 

But, wait a second.  What had Jesus just said to all the "good" people just before all this?  You know the ones.  The religious authority who very carefully observed the law and did everything "right."  The soldiers who were just doing their job.  Pilate, who handed Him over to the crowd just to get Him off his back.  The crowd of righteous people who shouted "crucify him!"  Jesus pleaded that they be forgiven:  "Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing."  If his grace extends to the "righteous" who have placed him on this cross between these two men, why would we think for a second that it wouldn't extend to the "sinner" who pleads for mercy?

Jesus response should be a comfort to us.  This man did not plead his works or any righteousness of his own.  How could he?  He had wasted away his life in crime and was now receiving the just reward of his deeds.  If ever there was a testament to the fact that salvation is by grace through faith and not by works, this is it!  Salvation is not earned, but given—the debt paid in full by Jesus on the cross!  Instead of wondering how this criminal could be shown such grace, let us marvel in the fact that God’s grace is so rich to include him—and even to include us, whose souls are also stained with sin and crying out for a savior.  As one church father observed, “I do not ask for the measure of Paul’s grace.  I ask not for Peter’s portion, but I fervently beg to receive what on the cross you gave to the thief.”

Let us hold to this truth that there is nothing we can do to save ourselves.  Let us realize what good news that is!  We cling to the cross, we hold on to Jesus in repentance and humility and say, ‘remember me, Lord!’ and in response he says ‘you will be with me in paradise.’