March 25, 2012

Preface

Before we hear today’s scripture passage read from Mark, I want to explain to anyone who hasn’t been with us in worship for the last few weeks that our focus for these 6 Sundays of Lent leading up to Easter has been the last 24 hours of Jesus life on earth. We have been using as our guide an informative and provocative book written by Rev Adam Hamilton called 24 Hours That Changed the World.

All the props up here represent a scene from the story – a table for the Last Supper, a garden where Jesus prayed in agony, a ruling council of religious leaders called the Sanhedrin that found Jesus guilty of blasphemy and worthy of death, a rack with chains signifying the prisoner named BarAbbas who was released from captivity as the crowd demanded that Pilate crucify Jesus.

Today we pick up the story as Pilate has Jesus flogged then hands him over to the soldiers to be crucified. I should point out that each of the four Gospels has a different spin on what happens in this scene of the story. We’ll stick with Mark’s report. He says that the soldiers took Jesus in the courtyard of the governor’s headquarters, also known as the “praetorium,” and that they called together the whole cohort, which was no small number. Typically, a cohort of Roman soldiers consisted of 300 to 600 hundred soldiers. So the entire contingent, perhaps all those stationed at the Antonia Fortress, came out for some sport at the expense of this pathetic prisoner named Jesus. And to add humiliation to torture, they mocked this pretend king by wrapping a cloak around him. Matthew says it was scarlet… likely a cloak from one of the soldiers. But Mark emphasizes that the cloak is purple, because purple was a very expensive dye that had become the symbolic color for royalty since only the wealthy and rulers could afford it. And, as if to “punctuate their point,” they pressed upon his head a twisted crown that they had fashioned from some thorns.

What a joke he was! King of the Jews…. ha! Surrounded by hundreds of the Roman army, with their sharp swords and polished shields and armor, who was Jesus in comparison to the strength and might of Rome? Caesar was the king of the world. This pathetic nobody was nothing. What fun they must have had saluting this would-be king – kneeling before him, spitting on him, whacking his head with a stick.

When their fun was over, they took off the cloak, put his own clothes back on him, and took him on down the street to a rocky mound just outside the city walls at the time called Calvary. “Calvaria” is a Latin word meaning “skull.” Just like the Aramaic word for the same spot: “Golgotha.”

The traditional location of Calvary now has a huge church built over it, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. You can’t even see the rocky mound any more, but it’s there under all the stone work. Pilgrims, worshipers and tourists climb some stairs to enter a higher sanctuary where now there is an elaborate altar built over the top of Calvary, which is encased in glass so visitors can see the very place where Jesus was executed.

Calvary is about a third of a mile from where Pilate’s palace stood, and Jesus was forced to carry the upper beam of his cross on his shoulders. But having not eaten since the previous night and being severely flogged, he was weak and fell to his knees, unable to carry that heavy load any farther.

That was the moment life changed for a man who had just come in from the country and happened to be passing by. His name was Simon. Listen to how Mark tells the story…

Scripture: Mark 15:15b-23

Sermon: The Torture and Humiliation of the King

I.

  1. Mark 15:20 says that after the Roman soldiers had mocked Jesus, “they led him out to be crucified.” Still today you can walk down a narrow street in Jerusalem, crowded with the shops and customers and noises of a vibrant, living city. It’s called the Via Dolorosa, or “way of suffering,” and countless Christian pilgrims still today walk down those cold, hard stones recounting this story of Jesus bearing his cross to the place of his crucifixion.

By “bearing his cross” I mean that as someone sentenced to be crucified, Jesus had to carry the crossbeam of the cross to Calvary. Carrying the cross on which he would be crucified gave the Romans one more opportunity to inflict humiliation and emotional pain on him. And, according to Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus buckled under the weight of it all. Hungry, whipped to within an inch of death, Jesus simply could not carry the cross to the hill of execution outside the city. Somewhere along the way, as the bystanders looked on, Jesus collapsed.

  1. It was then, as Mark tells the story, that the soldiers grabbed a guy who just happened to be passing by and forced him to carry the crossbeam for Jesus. That guy was someone who eventually became well-known in the Christian community. His name was Simon and he was from the city of Cyrene. [I used to pronounce this sye reenbut after learning about the origins of the name, I am going to pronounce it kye rain a. But more on that in a moment.]
  1. Simon was likely a Jew that had come to Jerusalem for the Festival of Unleavened Bread. And he traveled some distance to do so. His home was Cyrene, a town in a lush valley in the Jebel Akhdar uplandsin what today is Libya. The Greeks had colonized it about 650 years before, who named the city after a spring there called“Kyre.” Back then Cyrene was the capital city of the north Africa district of Cyrenaica. Cyrene had a large population of Jews. 100,000 Jews fled there during a time of persecution around 300 BC. The Cyrenian Jews had a synagogue in Jerusalem where many would go for the annual festivals.
  1. So there was Simon, in Jerusalem as part of a religious pilgrimage, minding his own business, and just by coincidence was “passing by” as some poor unfortunate man was being led out to his crucifixion. And the soldiers compelled him to carry the cross of this suffering man named Jesus.
  1. Now here’s what is interesting. Mark is the only Gospel that adds one more bit of information about Simon. Mark said that Simon was the father of Alexander and Rufus. Now why would Mark mention this unless it had some significance to his readers? Obviously, the early Christians knew who Alexander and Rufus were.

The apostle Paul, who wrote his letter to the Christians in Rome a few years before Mark wrote his Gospel, says in 16:13, “Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; and greet his mother – a mother to me also.” Tradition has it that this Rufus that Paul sends a greeting to is the son of Simon, the man who was forced to carry the cross of Jesus and to witness his crucifixion.

Rufus had become a leader in the church, “chosen in the Lord,” and his mother had been especially close to Paul!

II.

  1. The implication behind all of this is that that something happened to Simon the Cyrene, the bystander who was just passing by that day, which caused him to become a follower of Jesus. What was it? Could it be that he saw something in Jesus’ suffering and death that captured his heart and led to the decision to follow him?

Does the story of Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross have this kind of power - the power to transform human beings into children of God… born anew by God’s Spirit, changed by Jesus’ sacrificial love?

The answer given by Christians over the centuries has been “yes, it does have that power!”

  1. Last week I introduced the doctrine of Atonement [or at-one-ment] and the ways in which Christians over the centuries have tried to make sense of Jesus’ death on the cross. The Cross continues to this day to be the primary symbol of Christianity and its message – that Jesus’ suffering and death somehow makes possible God’s forgiveness, humanity’s redemption and an at-one-ment with God. But how? That has been the question. How is Jesus’ suffering and his death on the cross the means of salvation for humanity?
  1. Last Sunday, Jesus was tried before Pilate who asked the crowd who they wanted to release – Jesus of Nazareth or a murderer and insurrectionist named BarAbbas. The crowd wanted BarAbbas released and Jessu crucified. In other words, Jesus died in the place of BarAbbas, and this gave us the opportunity to consider one theory of Atonement called the “substitutionary theory.” In this theory, which developed in Europe in the 1500’s, Jesus died in our place, taking upon himself the punishment we deserve for our sin and our violation of God’s will. As God’s son, only Jesus could pay the penalty of sin and remove the barrier that separates us from God.
  1. It’s a popular theory among Christians, but it is not the only theory of Atonement. Today, our attention shifts to different character, Simon the Cyrene, and to the effect Jesus’ suffering and death had upon him and his family. Simon’s story introduces us to another theory of Atonement, called the “moral influence” theory. This is actually the earliest understanding for how Jesus suffering and death brings humanity into at-one-ment with God.

In this view, Christianity is essentially about Jesus giving people the power to become the “children of God.” As the children of God, people love as God loves and through the Holy Spirit become good, as God is good. The purpose of everything Jesus did was to lead humans toward this moral change, which he accomplished through his teachings, through his example, through his founding of the Church, and through the inspiring power of his martyrdom and resurrection. This view was universally taught by the Church Fathers in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD and was made a popularteaching during the Middle Ages by the French theologian, named Peter Abelard. Personally, I find this theory of Atonement more compelling than the substitutionary theory.

  1. Unlike the substitutionary theory, the moral influence theory of Atonement maintains that our reconciliation with God brought about by Jesus’ suffering, death, resurrection is not about changing God or about satisfying some arrangement that makes it possible for a holy God to forgive us sinners. No. It’s about the power of sacrificial love to change you and me. Jesus’ Passion and resurrection express God’s message to humanity. They make crystal clear our need for redemption and forgiveness. They prove to us the full extent of God’s love and lead us to repentance.

The moral influence theory of Atonement begins with the view that Jesus is God’s Word in the flesh, and the “Word” God speaks through the suffering and death of Jesus communicates God’s character, God’s love, and God’s will for humanity.

  1. This is the message of salvation God is sending us through the suffering and death of Jesus…

1)First, as we look upon the last 24 hours of Jesus’ life on earth, we can see so clearly the brokenness of humanity.

Listen to how Adam Hamilton describes it in his book, 24 Hours That Changed the World:

The disciples fell asleep, then fled in fear as Jesus was arrested. Judas betrayed Jesus. Peter denied him. The Sanhedrin wished him dead. The crowds preferred a messiah preaching violence to a messiah preaching love. The governor wished to satisfy the crowd, and the soldiers took delight in torturing and dehumanizing an innocent man.

This story of what human beings did when God [in human form] walked among us is an indictment of humanity. We are meant to find ourselves in that story and to be moved by its tragic end. We are meant to realize there is something deeply wrong with us, that we are broken and in need of forgiveness.

The Gospels tell us that Jesus taught only in parables. In a very real way, the events of the last 24 hours of Jesus’ life tell us the greatest parable Jesus ever taught and like his other parables, we are meant to find ourselves in the middle of the story. Jesus’ suffering and death is a mirror that is held up to our souls, a reflection of the jealousy, the pettiness, the self-centeredness, the spiritual blindness, the darkness that lurks still in all of us. We enter the Gospel story of the torture, humiliation, and crucifixion of Christ and our hearts are meant to react saying, “Never again!” or “God, save us from ourselves. Lord have mercy upon us!” The story is meant to move us to repentance, and repentance is the front door step of our salvation.

2)But the brokenness of humanity is only part of the message of the story. We are also to see the love of the one who suffers because of us and for us. We are meant to see his divine determination to save us from our sin and ourselves. Jesus deliberately chose the path of his suffering and death. He faced the whip, he faced the crown, he faced the cross with resolve and silence and dignity, standing naked and bleeding as if to say: “Do you see how far God’s love goes? Do you understand that I have come so that you might finally hear of a love that is willing to suffer, even to die, in order to win your heart?”

Paul wrote in Romans 5:8, “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” And one of the most beloved passages of scripture, John 3:16, declares, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

Shining in the darkness of broken humanity, Jesus shows us a love that refuses to give in to vengeance or to give up. He is determined to love the enemy in order to win freedom for them and restore them to the rightful relationship of beloved child and friend. The cross shows us the full extent of God’s love.

3)And there is one more word in Jesus’ suffering and death the moral influence theory of Atonement helps us hear. It has to do with the nature of sacrificial love. Jesus sets an example for us of a kind of love that alone has the power to save humankind from our self-destructive ways. Sacrificial love has the power to transform enemies into friends, to humble the guilty into repentance, to melt hearts of stone.

The world has changed, the world is changed, and the world will always be changed for the good by true demonstrations of sacrificial love and by selfless acts of service.

Let me tell you a very personal story that I have, on occasion, shared with others in this season of the Cross. It was a nearly 30 years ago that two men – both private pilots who loved to fly more than anything else in this world – were taxing down a small airstrip in Arizona. It was a hot, late summer day. The two men were large men and the plane was a small plane. When you add all these things together, you can see why the plane was having a hard time getting off the ground. At the end of the runway was some power lines stretched overhead, and the pilot made a snap decision to try to clear those lines by going into a steep climb. Those of you who fly know that going into a steep climb can cause a plane to stall and start falling back to earth. That’s exactly what happened. The plane climbed too quickly, stalled, and took a nose dive into the ground.

Miraculously, the passenger was thrown clear of the burning wreckage, but the pilot was still strapped in his seat in the flames. Having suffered minor injuries, the passenger entered the burning airplane to free the pilot, searing his own flesh in the attempt. He had to back away. He went in again, burning himself some more, but he couldn’t get his friend lose. Burned over the majority of his body, he attempted it one more time, struggling with the seatbelt, hardly able to see, barely able to breath, suffering even greater injury. When the emergency crews arrived, all he could think of was getting that man out of the burning plane.

The pilot was dead and the passenger was swiftly transported to the hospital. I was with the family who kept vigil in the waiting room over the following days, praying and waiting and watching him slowly die. You see, I’m talking about my dad. His name was Jack and that is how he gave his life for another.

  1. Over the years that have since passed, I have pondered this more than once. I have found myself deeply moved and utterly amazed by my dad’s willingness to die in the attempt to save another man, and I have wondered, “Am I capable of a love like this...a love that’s this big? Who or what would I die for?”
  1. And I have wondered if I was that pilot trapped in the wreckage of my own making and had actually been saved by another who forfeited his life so that I might live, how would that sacrifice affect my life. Would I be a different person? Would I look at life differently? Would I ask myself how I could live a life worthy of that love? Would I vow to make the sacrifice mean something in the life that was given back to me?
  1. This, my friends, is the nature and the power of sacrificial love. This is exactly what the Cross of Jesus Christ is meant to inspire us to be and do. We are to look upon the Cross and say, “Thank you. Thanks you. I will strive to live my life in such a way as to be worthy of your sacrifice.” By looking upon the Cross this way, hearts change and we find ourselves at one with God’s heart. And in our at-one-ment with God, we find ourselves practicing sacrificial love towards others. And in our practice of sacrificial love as the followers of Jesus, the world is changed and humanity is transformed.
  1. Where do we find ourselves in this story of Jesus’ suffering and death? Perhaps we might just see ourselves in Simon of Cyrene, who saw in Jesus’ suffering and resurrection the promise and power of God’s love, and was so moved that he became a follower, along with his wife and sons who continued to serve the Lord with their lives.
  1. That is the kind of transformation we each might seek as we look at the suffering and death of Jesus and see there the depth and the breadth of God’s great love for the world.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”