Maundy Thursday
Notes
Transcript
As they went out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name. They compelled this man to carry his cross. And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it. And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots. Then they sat down and kept watch over him there. And over his head they put the charge against him, which read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’ ” And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him.” And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.
And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”
There were also many women there, looking on from a distance, who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.
When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen shroud and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut in the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.
Rather than doing a sermon over all 30 of these verses, I’ve broken it up into 3 sections, as you can see on the screen or on your order of worship, verses 32 through 50, 51 through 56, and 57 through 61. Part of the lens we’ll use to look at what happens here is the Heidelberg Catechism. Question 1 asks, “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” I invite you to say the beginning of the answer with me, “That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil…” Our belonging to our Savior and the comfort we cling to while in our mortal bodies and for all eternity hinges on what Jesus did on this day.
Our passages each capture a different part of what we confess when we say, “I believe in Jesus Christ [who] was crucified, died, and was buried.” As we proceed, I’ll be reading the section of Scripture, then I’ll read one or two questions and answers from the Heidelberg Catechism. If you’d like to read along with the answers at home. Then I’ll give a homily, a shortened message, we’ll pray and sing before going to the next section.
Part 1: Matthew 27:32-50—I believe in Jesus Christ who was crucified.
Question 39 of the Heidelberg Catechism asks, “Is it significant that he was “crucified” instead of dying some other way?” The answer is, “Yes. By this I am convinced that he shouldered the curse which lay on me, since death by crucifixion was cursed by God.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, there is so much we could try to unpack just in this passage. Another person was pulled in to shoulder the cross on the walk to Golgotha, which likely tells us how physically weak and broken Jesus was after all he had gone through. The Roman soldiers and the Jewish religious leaders—the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders—were relentless in their mocking of Jesus. We’re also introduced to the robbers—both of whom, according to Matthew, heaped insults on Jesus. They justly deserved to die while Jesus did not. We have a news or weather report of darkness coming over the land in the middle of the day.
I invite you to spend some time reflecting on those pieces on your own, but in skimming over them and the other details we’ve just read, we’re reminded that this process took some time. After being flogged in the Praetorium, Jesus wasn’t put up on the cross right then and there, and died shortly after. It wasn’t like having a nurse giving you a shot, telling you, “Hey, this will all be over in just a second,” and, “It’s not that bad!” No, Jesus went through prolonged agony, enduring it by choice, enduring it because it was part of an eternal decree. There was much that he could have said and done to get out of this, to heal himself, to inflict vengeance on those who were treating him so terribly. Yet Jesus chose to suffer, and he did so, not for himself, not to prove how much pain and abuse he could tolerate—no, he was crucified for you and for me.
We begin our journey in this passage by looking at how Jesus was able to do this for us because of his relationship with God the Father. About a month ago, we heard Jesus’ prayers while in the Garden of Gethsemane. Matthew 26 verses 39 and 42, he prayed, “…‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will,’” and, “…‘My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.’” Now we heard his cry from the cross in verse 46, “…‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”
If there’s any question, Jesus testified about himself that he is God’s Son, that is his identity in the Trinity. The Athanasian Creed sums up what Christians have believed throughout history, “…The divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is one, their glory equal, their majesty coeternal. Nothing in this trinity is before or after, nothing is greater or smaller; in their entirety the three persons are coeternal and coequal with each other…” Equal glory, equal majesty, one God, three persons. Yet Jesus put on flesh to be a servant, to be obedient, to what God required. In these moments, though, at least in his humanity, he felt forsaken by God—abandoned, deserted, neglected by God as he was doing God’s will.
This was the relationship that exists. God’s requirements weren’t just for his Son to experience excruciating pain, though. God’s requirements when it came to our sin required a full substitute, an innocent for the guilty. He required that someone take the curse, the condemnation, that was on us as sinners upon himself. The apostle Paul tells us that crucifixion was necessary in Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’” That’s a reference to Deuteronomy 21 verse 23. Jesus took God’s curse on himself throughout this whole process of being crucified.
Was God being cruel to his Son? Was he committing divine child abuse as some people have claimed? The answer is no. The Sanhedrin members were cruel, Pilate’s officials were cruel, the robbers and mockers were cruel. God had righteously cursed humanity when we fell; he punished us in the Garden of Eden with condemnation. God hates sin, because there is no sin in him. He hates how it has brought rebellion and destruction into his creation. His curse had to be satisfied. The only way was for Jesus to come, fully God, fully man, and take the curse. God showed love for those who he redeems by exercising our judgment on his Son.
Part 2: Matthew 27:51-56—I believe in Jesus Christ who died.
Question and Answer 40 of the Heidelberg Catechism bring us to the reality that all of this points to, “Why did Christ have to suffer death? Because God’s justice and truth require it: nothing else could pay for our sins except the death of the Son of God.”
As I said to the boys and girls, this is one of the most important things to have ever happened. Jesus dying on the cross is one of the most significant pieces in the story of our salvation. Perhaps the way we think of it is similar to a major event in our lifetimes. We think of it like a 9/11 moment when it seemed like everyone, everywhere, stopped everything. We might think the whole world shutdown and came to see Jesus die on the cross. If they had had them, everyone would have tuned in on their radios or their TVs or the livestream camera fixed on Calvary, right?
Yet time and the world didn’t stop. There were people gathered beneath the cross waiting to cheer the moment when Jesus would finally be declared deceased. There were also those, including these women, who hoped Jesus would come down or that something would stop this nightmare. A lot of people, though, were at work or in the marketplaces or maybe at the temple or at home just going about their lives when Jesus died. Most of the ancient world outside of Jerusalem had no idea who this Jesus was or that he had been sentenced to death by crucifixion just that morning. It was as the world continued to turn, that the Son of God died.
Again, this was all necessary to satisfy the justice and truth of God. God the Father did not intervene or change his will—Jesus drank the cup that he knew he had to drink. Jesus had come into this world largely for this purpose—dying on behalf of sinners who repent and who put their hope for redemption in God alone. He died whether people were paying attention and understood his sacrifice in that precise moment, likely some time around three in the afternoon, or not.
But let’s not overlook that at the time of Jesus’ death, God was alive and at work to draw people to himself, to bring sinners to his merciful truth. Jesus died and the temple curtain fencing the Most Holy Place, was opened. Despite all of our undeserved-ness, God tells us that we can approach him, on our own, in humility. Jesus dies and God’s creation is said to have quaked. Jesus died and other people are brought back to life, a foretaste of the future resurrection. Jesus died and those guarding Jesus on the cross had no other explanation, “Surely he was the Son of God!”
Going back to Jesus asking why his God had forsaken him, Daniel Doriani writes, “…The Father did not forsake him absolutely. He still loved his Son. He never forgot his plan to reconcile our lost race to himself.” Through every piece of the suffering and death of Jesus, God maintained his purpose to show himself and his plan of salvation to the world. It required a death to provide life. Yet God did not watch over these events just to check off the necessary requirements of saving lost sinners. No, in the process, he brought the truth of One atoning for lost sinners to lost sinners.
As you think about our world right now, there is a lot of death and fear of death. We like to do life on our terms, the idea of dying when we’re ready. We get mad at God or circumstances, when someone dies before we think they should, when they’re too young. Every one of us can probably think of someone who that fits or someone maybe who we’re worried about right now from the coronavirus, from cancer, from some other disease or trauma. But let us not forget or let us not ignore that the death of this life is not the end. If we believe in Jesus and only if we believe in Jesus is our debt paid so that we can experience even fuller life, a life without any sickness, loss, or death. In order to offer that and in order to guarantee that, God’s Son offered to die first.
Part 3: Matthew 27:57-61—I believe in Jesus Christ who was buried.
We have two final questions and answers from the Catechism. Question 41, “Why was he ‘buried’?” The answer, “His burial testifies that he really died.” Question and answer 43, “What further benefit do we receive from Christ’s sacrifice and death on the cross? By Christ’s power our old selves are crucified, put to death, and buried with him, so that the evil desires of the flesh may no longer rule us, but that instead we may offer ourselves as a sacrifice of gratitude to him.”
One of the precious times that I as a pastor sometimes get to be a part of is joining a family whose loved one has just passed away, often in a nursing home. There tends to be some time, maybe an hour, maybe a bit more, between the death and when a local funeral director comes to pick up the body. Once the nursing home staff have done everything they need to do, the family is usually given that time to be alone at their loved one’s bedside. If the person was sick or ready to go, there’s often a sense of relief, even happiness, but usually there’s some sadness, too.
Something I’ve learned, though, is there also tends to be a form of shock—shock because there’s nothing more to do or to think about with this loved one besides funeral preparations. It’s difficult to wrap our minds around finality. For those who go the route of cremation, whenever the body is released for that, that’s the end. There’s no more seeing that person’s face or body again. It’s over, and there’s a lot of shock that can come with that in days ahead. My experience has mostly involved families saying good-bye but planning to see their loved one’s body again when it’s been prepared for visitation and funeral services. Finality can more settle in over time.
Jesus’ body was placed in a tomb the same day as he had died on the cross. This wasn’t some kind of trick you see in movies where he was still barely alive, just under heavy sedation. No, Jesus really was dead. Once his body was acquired, it was prepared rather quickly as evening came on. Those closest to Jesus knew who had arranged for him to be placed in the tomb. Some of them watched it go in. The tomb was closed with a stone. As you think about the Easter account in some of the other Gospels, the women came back to do more burial procedures, but what we read here was enough for Jesus to be considered buried. By all appearances, this was the end.
I said it Sunday, Jesus told his followers before that he was going to rise. They had witnessed him miraculously raise people from the dead before. We know what the beginning of Matthew 28 holds. We know that Easter resurrection is coming, but let the weight of finality that comes with burial sink in. Let the weight that our sins required Jesus, the perfect and innocent Son of God, to die. The gravity of the sin that infects every one of us and the sins that we commit—we deserve an end, we deserve death, we deserve finality from which there is no hope. God’s over here. We’re over there. There’s no way that we come to him on our own. There’s no complete restart that we get to try and not fall like Adam and Eve did. No, we were dead in our sins.
Jesus the Christ was crucified, died, and was buried for you and for me. He died to provide us the grace needed to commune with God again. He died that our death at the end of this life, whenever that comes, is not the final glimpse of light, if we have believed. “He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.” We hold the promise that he transforms not only what we deserve for eternity, but he also transforms us while we’re in these bodies. It’s because he died that the old which is in each one of us has been killed, evil no longer rules or should be seen as ruling. You have been freed to live a life of thankfulness because Jesus died. So, in the sorrow, in the darkness, in the heaviness of Good Friday and the cross and the tomb—remember there is always hope. Hope now and hope to come. Amen.
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