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! Four Ironies of the Cross
/Text:/ Matthew 27:27-50
/Topic:/ How the Crucifixion was riddled with irony
/Big Idea:/* *In his weakness on the cross, Jesus Christ revealed his greatness.
/Keywords:/ Christ, Cross of; Easter; Jesus Christ; Mocking; Power; Powerlessness; Salvation; Suffering; Sin; Despair
/ /
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Introduction
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· Irony has the capacity to clarify an incident and express what is important about it.
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· There are four ironies of the crucifixion of Christ.
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The first irony of the Crucifixion is the one who is mocked as king is King.
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· Jesus is given a mock crown of thorns and mocked as king, but Matthew and his readers know that Jesus really is the King.
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· Jesus stood in the royal line of the Davidic king and told parables about kings in reference to himself.
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The second irony of the Crucifixion is the one who is utterly powerless is transcendently powerful.
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· Crucifixion was the worst means of execution, reserved for slaves and rebels.
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· Bystanders insulted Jesus as he hung there: “Come down from the cross if you are the son of God!”
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- /Matthew 27:39/
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· While Jesus was unimaginably weak, he was powerfully bringing about the destruction and resurrection of the temple.
* In an attempt to explain what he means and does, Jesus told his disciples they must take up their crosses and follow him.
- /Matthew 16:24/
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The third irony of the Crucifixion is the one who can’t save himself saves others.
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· /Illustration: /Carson’s son had a t-shirt that depicted Jesus making a save as a soccer goalie above the message “Jesus saves.”
Carson felt this was in bad taste, but it raised an interesting question: What does /to save/ mean in our culture?
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· Everything Jesus does is for the purpose of saving people from sin.
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· The reason Jesus could not save himself is that he came to do his Father’s will.
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The fourth irony of the Crucifixion is the one who cries out in despair trusts God.
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· Jesus’s cry reflected his deepest awareness of his abandonment and his judicial bearing of our sin.
* Jesus suffered like he did so we wouldn’t have to.
- /Illustration: At the end of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem “Cowper’s Grave” about the depressive William Cowper, she quotes Christ as saying, “My God, I am forsaken!”
Hereby she illustrates that Jesus died so Cowper wouldn’t have to./
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Four Ironies of the Cross
by Donald A. Carson
We all know what irony is.
Some of it is bitter.
Some of it is vicious.
Some of it is funny.
But at its best, irony has the capacity to clarify an incident and express what is important about it.
It always works at two or three levels, and it makes a story pregnant with meaning that you might otherwise miss.
In the New Testament the writers most given to irony are Matthew and John.
In Matthew 27:27-50, Matthew placards the cross before our eyes, but in terms rich with irony so we may see truly what the cross was about.
At this point Jesus has been in public ministry for two or three years.
For much of that time he was a popular figure, but now he has fallen afoul of the religious and political authorities in Jerusalem.
They resent his popularity, they fear his power, and they are also afraid that by his rabble rousing he will stir up the people to a rebellion against Rome, and there could be only one end to that.
Rome was the superpower, and little Israel wasn’t going to win.
So Jesus had to be crushed.
They arranged a kangaroo court and secured the sanction of the Roman governor to have Jesus executed by crucifixion.
So now we pick up the account.
The sentence has been passed, and in those days there was no long delay between sentence and execution.
So we follow the storyline and reflect on four profound ironies.
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The first irony of the Crucifixion is the one who is mocked as king is King.
It was customary in those days to beat people as part of interrogation.
It was thought they were more likely to tell the truth if they were bleeding, raw, and terrified.
So Jesus had faced that kind of beating.
Then it was customary to beat a person again before execution was actually worked out.
But this vignette in verses 27 and following is barrack-room humor.
This is not part of the normal protocol.
Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him.
They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him [as if he were some sort of king], and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head.
They put a staff in his right hand.
Elsewhere we’re told they took the staff and bashed him against the head again and again, mocking him.
Then they covered his eyes and hit him and said, “Go ahead—prophesy.
Who hit you this time?
Ha-ha-ha-ha.
Hail, your majesty.”
It’s barrack-room humor.
But Matthew knows and his readers know Jesus is the King.
The Israelites are part of a tradition that goes back to David.
The prophecies had accumulated across the Old Testament promising a Davidic king who would be in David’s line but would be called Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Seven centuries before Christ, Isaiah was speaking in those terms.
Matthew begins his book with the origins of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham, the son of David.
The point is that Jesus stands in the royal line of the Davidic king.
When Jesus begins to preach he announces, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”
As he tells parables about kings, it’s obvious he is referring to himself.
At the trial, this business of who the king is was central.
Verse 11: “Are you the king of the Jews?”
Of course from the perspective of Pilate the question is: Are you posing any political or military threat to Caesar?
Jesus says, “Yes, it is as you say.”
But it transpires that he’s not a military threat.
Pilate himself begins to see Jesus should be set free.
But Jesus is King in some sense.
Matthew knows he’s King.
Matthew’s readers know he’s King.
But this is an age and time when there is not constitutional monarchy.
Kings fight.
Kings are autocrats.
Surely /the/ King, God’s own Messiah wins.
How could this King not win, with all his miraculous power approved by God? “This is my Son, whom I love.
Listen to him,” God himself testified.
Indeed, for those of us who know the New Testament years after the event, we know Jesus is not only the king of the Jews, but he’s the King of kings.
He stands with the Almighty himself in creation.
According to Colossians 1, “All things were made by him and for him,” including this quaternion of soldiers that’s nailing him to a cross.
He’s the King, all right.
But what sort of a kingdom is this?
What sort of a King is this?
No wonder in the early church Christians spoke of Jesus reigning from the cross.
In a culture that knew only of autocratic kings, the very confession was steeped in irony.
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The second irony of the Crucifixion is the one who is utterly powerless is transcendently powerful.
So we come to the second irony in verses 32-40.
In those days it was customary for the place of crucifixion to be public.
It was right by a main square or a main thoroughfare.
Once a person was condemned to die by crucifixion and was properly beaten up, he would be stripped of his clothes and taken to the place of execution.
He was supposed to carry his own crossbeam.
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