Sermon Tone Analysis

Were You There?

April 9, 2006

*Matthew 27:32-55**; **Luke 23:26-56**; **John 19:16-37*

 

 

*/Focus:/*/ Every human being was represented on Calvary./

/ /

Please turn with me to Matthew 27:32 and we’ll read through to verse 55.

We won’t read the similar passages from Luke and John, but  you might want to read them on your own later.

/“As they were on the way, they came across a man named Simon, who was from Cyrene, and they forced him to carry Jesus' cross.

\\ Then they went out to a place called Golgotha (which means Skull Hill).

\\ The soldiers gave him wine mixed with bitter gall, but when he had tasted it, he refused to drink it.

\\ After they had nailed him to the cross, the soldiers gambled for his clothes by throwing dice.

\\ Then they sat around and kept guard as he hung there.

\\ A signboard was fastened to the cross above Jesus' head, announcing the charge against him.

It read: "This is Jesus, the King of the Jews."

\\ Two criminals were crucified with him, their crosses on either side of his.

\\ And the people passing by shouted abuse, shaking their heads in mockery.

\\ "So!

You can destroy the Temple and build it again in three days, can you?

Well then, if you are the Son of God, save yourself and come down from the cross!" \\ The leading priests, the teachers of religious law, and the other leaders also mocked Jesus.

\\ "He saved others," they scoffed, "but he can't save himself!

So he is the king of Israel, is he?

Let him come down from the cross, and we will believe in him!

\\ He trusted God—let God show his approval by delivering him!

For he said, `I am the Son of God.' " \\ And the criminals who were crucified with him also shouted the same insults at him.

\\ At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o'clock.

\\ At about three o'clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?"

which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" \\ Some of the bystanders misunderstood and thought he was calling for the prophet Elijah.

\\ One of them ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, holding it up to him on a stick so he could drink.

\\ But the rest said, "Leave him alone.

Let's see whether Elijah will come and save him."

\\ Then Jesus shouted out again, and he gave up his spirit.

\\ At that moment the curtain in the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.

The earth shook, rocks split apart, \\ and tombs opened.

The bodies of many godly men and women who had died were raised from the dead \\ after Jesus' resurrection.

They left the cemetery, went into the holy city of Jerusalem, and appeared to many people.

\\ The Roman officer and the other soldiers at the crucifixion were terrified by the earthquake and all that had happened.

They said, "Truly, this was the Son of God!" \\ And many women who had come from Galilee with Jesus to care for him were watching from a distance.”/

Good Friday is coming this week.

Please consider today’s message in that context.

/ /

 

*I.

I want you to picture the Scene*

The morning sun had been up for some hours over the city of David.

Already pilgrims and visitors were pouring in through the gates, mingling with merchants from the villages round about, with shepherds coming down from the hills, and the gnarled streets were crowded.

There were the aged, stooped with years, muttering to themselves as they pushed through the throngs, and there were children playing in the streets, calling to each other in shrill voices.

There were men and women too, carrying burdens, baskets of vegetables, casks of wine, water bags.

And there were tradesmen with their tools.

Here a donkey stood sleepily beneath his burden in the sunlight.

And there, under a narrow canopy, a merchant shouted his wares in a pavement stall.

It was not easy to make one’s way through the crowd.

But it was especially difficult for a procession that started out from the governor’s palace.

At its head rode a Roman centurion, disdainful and aloof, scorn for the like of child or cripple who might be in his way.

His lips curled in thin lines of contempt as he watched through half-shut eyes the shouting, jeering crowd.

Before him went two legionnaires, clearing the crowd aside as best they could with curses and careless blows.

The procession moved at a snail’s pace.

The soldiers tried to keep step, but it was evident that the centurion guards did not relish this routine task that came to them every now and then in the government of this troublesome province.

The sunlight glanced on the spears and helmets of the soldiers.

There was a rhythmic clanking of steel as their shields touched their belt buckles and the scabbards of their swords.

Between the two files of soldiers staggered three condemned men each carrying a heavy bar of wood with its crosspiece on which he was to be executed.

It was hard to keep step for the pace was slow and the soldiers were impatient to get it over: left, right, left, right.

“Come along, they said.

We don’t have all day to spend!”

The crosses were heavy, however, and the first of the victims was at the point of collapse.

He had been under severe strain for several days.

Moreover, he had been scourged, lashed with a leather whip in the thongs of which had been inserted rough pieces of lead.

The carpenter followed them with his ladder and his nails.

And they all moved forward out of the courtyard of Pilate’s palace and made for one of the gates leading out of the city.

The sun was hot.

The sweat poured down the face of Jesus, and he swayed now and then underneath the weight of the cross.

A depression had fallen on the soldiers, and they marched in silence as if reluctant.

*II.

Weeping Women and Healed Men*

A group of women went with the procession, their faces half-hidden by their veils, but their grief could not be hid.

Some of them were sobbing aloud.

Others were praying.

Others moaning in that deep grief that knows not what to say or what to do.

Some of them had little children by the hand and kept saving over and over again, “What harm has he done?

Why should they put him to death?

He healed my child.

A touch of his hand and this little one could see.”

Another mother would chime in, “He brought my child back to life.

She had all but died.

What harm could there be in that?

And so they wondered, and so they went.

And there were men too who followed as closely as they could—men who walked with the strange steps of men to whom walking was not yet familiar, and others who still carried sticks in their hands but who did not use them as once they had to tap their way through villages and towns and cities, men who had been blind and now through habit carried sticks and who strangely enough were blind again, but this time they were blinded by tears.

Their lips were moving in prayers, and their hearts were heavy.

But there was nothing that they could do.

Once when the procession halted for a moment, Jesus turned and spoke to them, but they could not hear him for the shouting of the rabble.

For most of the crowd hardly knew what was going on.

They did not understand.

They had caught the infection of mob spirit.

They shouted to the first of the three victims, the one with the ridiculous crown on his head, twisted from a branch of the long-thorned briar that had lacerated his scalp and caused blood to mingle with the sweat.

They shouted at him until they were roughly pushed aside by the soldiers, and in some cases, they began to shout at the soldiers.

Some of the children, encouraged by their elders, joined in the shouting as the procession went along the way that will forever be known as the Via Dolorosa.

*III.

Simon of Cyrene*

Meanwhile outside the city gate, all unsuspecting, Simon of Cyrene had almost reached the gate.

He had just arrived in Judea and was about to enter the Holy City as a pilgrim for the festival.

He had spent the night in a village nearby, and rising early this morning he had bathed and dressed himself carefully with a tingling excitement because soon he would be in Jerusalem, and all the sights that had been described to him by exiles far from home he would see with his own eyes.

And all the sounds of Jerusalem that seemed to be wafted across the miles to be murmured by the waves of the sea and to be sung by the wind as it moaned through the trees he would hear with his own ears.

And yet he tried to keep calm.

And as he set out on the short walk that lay between him and the city, he was very thoughtful.