Grace to you and peace from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The text for our meditation is written in the 23rd Chapter of
the Gospel according to St Luke: Verses 27 – 43:
A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and
wailed for him. 28 Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters
of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For
the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the
wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ 30 Then
“‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills,
“Cover us!”’
31 For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen
when it is dry?”
32 Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be
executed. 33 When they came to the place called the
Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the
other on his left. 34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive them,
for they do not know what they are doing. ”And they divided up his clothes by casting
lots.
35 The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They
said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen
One.”
36 The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar 37 and
said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”
38 There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of
the Jews.
39 One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you
the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
40 But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said,
“since you are under the same sentence? 41 We are
punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has
done nothing wrong.”
42 Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
43 Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in
paradise.”
Pain tends to bring incredible attention to things we often ignore. I don’t often give a lot of thought to my
toes, but that changes when I stub one of them.
Suddenly, every effort of my entire body is bent toward relieving the
pain in that toe. I take a sharp
breath. I grit my teeth. Tears start to well up in my eyes. A little bit of pain can get a whole lot of
attention.
That tendency to focus on pain is one of the many things that causes me
to marvel at our Saviour as He endured the cross for my sake. In spite of the unimaginable pain, Jesus
focused on the people around Him. The
crowds who followed Jesus were weeping over Him and He thought of them as He
warned them of tragedy in their future.
The soldiers pierced His body with nails and He prayed for their
forgiveness. One of the criminals confessed
his sin and Jesus absolved him of his sins.
Jesus was thinking about the people around Him while He Himself was
suffering the pain of flogging and crucifixion.
How different Jesus is from our culture today. We live in a culture of narcissism. We are in love with ourselves. If it makes me feel good, then it is
right. If it makes me feel bad, then it
is wrong. Instead of searching for
truth, we search for pleasure. We don’t
care if something is right or wrong. We
just care if it is fun or boring.
Ask someone why they are
opposed to something. The reply is
often, “I don’t like it,” or “It
bothers me,” or “I disagree with it.” We have become so self-centred that we don’t
even realise that such statements are not reasons. They don’t answer the question, “Why!” All these statements do is restate the
opposition. They do nothing to make a
case.
Sadly, each of us is guilty of relying on our own opinions, feelings,
and desires instead of looking to the Word of God. When we go with our own thoughts and desires
instead of studying the word of God, we are saying, “I am the ultimate authority in this universe. Therefore, if I disagree with it, it is wrong just because I say so.” If we insist
something is wrong for the simple reason that “I don’t like it,” or “It bothers me,” or “I disagree with
it,” then we are bullies and we are making ourselves into God.
Jesus said, [Matthew 15:19]
“For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality,
theft, false witness, slander.” Never
the less we trust the thoughts and feelings that come out of that evil heart
more than we trust the Word of God. If
it makes me sad or angry, it is wrong.
If it makes me happy … If it gives me pleasure, then it is right. This is nothing other than worshipping our
wants, our desires, our thoughts, our opinions.
This is nothing other than the “Playboy philosophy” of Hugh Heffner
saying, “If it feels good, do it.”
What kind of arrogance does it take to place our feelings over the Word
of God? What kind of arrogance does it
take to complain that we don’t feel heard, when we ourselves refuse to listen
to God’s Word? It is the arrogance that
the serpent suggested to Eve in the garden. [Genesis
3:4–5] But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For
God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be
like God, knowing good and evil.”
You will be like God. That is the
temptation. That is the sin when we
place our wants, our desires, our opinions, our feelings above the needs of
others … especially when we place them above God’s will for us. We want to be God.
[Matthew 20:25–28] Jesus … said, “You know that
the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise
authority over them. 26 It shall not be so among you.
But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, 27 and
whoever would be first among you must be your slave, 28 even
as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a
ransom for many.”
How sad it is that we decide to follow the example of the Gentiles and
lord it over the people who disagree with our feelings, our wants, and our
desires. How often do we even disagree
with God and try to boss Him around.
That is not just sad, it is destructive.
Jesus Himself gives us a different example as the Holy Spirit inspired
the Apostle Paul to write, [Philippians
2:5–8] “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who,
though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be
grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a
servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being
found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of
death, even death on a cross.” Jesus
actually is God and yet He did not grasp for the equality with God that was
rightly His. Instead, He emptied Himself
and humbled Himself in order to die for you on a cross.
This is what we see in today’s Gospel.
Here is Jesus, flogged to the point of death, staggering toward the
place that is called the Skull in order to be crucified for the sins of the
entire world. Is He thinking about
Himself? No! He noticed the mourners following Him and He
cared enough for them to warn them of their future troubles. In His extremity of pain and sorrow, He
continued to serve others. He continued
to place others above Himself. He
offered Himself up for them.
The same is true of the soldiers.
No doubt the two criminals cursed these soldiers for inflicting such
pain on them. Jesus, on the other hand,
prayed for the soldiers. When the
soldiers pierced Jesus, He asked the Father to forgive them. Here they were crucifying the very Son of God
and Son of God served them with prayer.
He offered Himself up for them.
Then there was the criminal. This
criminal had no reason to expect anything from the Son of God. He knew that he had earned the death sentence
with his crimes. He knew that he
deserved eternal punishment for the life that he had led. His only prayer was that the innocent Son of
God would remember him. Jesus served him
with absolution. Jesus assured him that
they would meet again … in paradise.
Jesus served you as well on that day as the Holy Spirit inspired the
Apostle Paul to write, [Romans 5:8]
“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for
us.” While we were still curved in
ourselves … while we were still trying to satisfy our feelings … while we were
still busy trying to impose our will on others … while we were even trying to
impose our will on God, Christ died for us.
Christ, the true God, died for us while we were busy trying to become
god in His place.
When Jesus died on the cross, He was thinking of us … not us-all as a
group, but us, each and every one of us … personally … as an individual. He was thinking of each and every way that we
personally sinned and earned eternity in hell and He paid for each and every
sin. In a way that we cannot understand,
He took on the eternity of hell that we deserved and suffered it for us. He served us in a way that we can never
repay.
Because Jesus’ service was perfect in every way, it was impossible for
death to hold Him. It is as the Apostle
Peter said in his Pentecost sermon, [Acts
2:24] “God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not
possible for him to be held by it.” After
His resurrection, He ascended and poured the Holy Spirit out on us that the
Holy Spirit might work faith in us so that we receive the forgiveness He earned
for us on the cross.
The Son of God died to serve us, and He lives again to serve us
forever. He serves us through the proclaimed
and written Word of the Holy Scriptures divinely provided for us in the Holy
Bible; and through the sacred Sacraments of Holy Baptism and Christ’s body and
blood in Holy Communion. Jesus invites us
to join the criminal on the cross and confess our sin so that we too may be
served with the promise of paradise as we receive His holy absolution in the
name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
On this day we, as Christians, celebrate ‘Christ the King’. In a time
when sovereign titles can have political, ceremonial and / or dictatorial
connotations, this can detract from the real purpose of our Lord. In the Old
Testament there were more than one hundred prophesies of a coming Messiah; a
man anointed by God for the specific purpose of restoring the birth right of
God’s chosen people. Today Jesus has come to be known
by Christians as that Messiah of the Hebrew prophecies and the Saviour of
humankind; but the Jesus we know is not just and man, but is in fact God
Incarnate – that is both God and Man. God taking on the form of mankind that he
may experience all that we experience and suffer as we suffer.
Today we celebrate our Saviour, our Messiah, because
in His love for us He took upon the suffering that we could not bear as
punishment for our sins. Jesus died that we may live, and because of His Godly
nature he defeated Satan and overcame death that we also may have eternal life.
By the grace of God, we are forgiven! We can go forward with optimism and joy, regardless
of the circumstances, knowing that we have our eternal home in paradise. Amen
The love and peace of our Great Triune God that is
beyond all human understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen
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