Introduction
The kings and queens of the United Kingdom are presented at their coronation with a golden sphere, called the orb. Adorned with 375 pearls, 365 diamonds, 18 rubies, 9 emeralds, 9 sapphires, 1 amethyst and a piece of polished glass, it is a serious bit of bling!
It represents our planet Earth and set at the top of it is a cross. When it is placed in the monarch’s right hand, the Archbishop of Canterbury says these words: “Receive this orb, set under the cross, and remember that the whole world is subject to the power and empire of Christ our Redeemer.”
What a thing! Death by crucifixion – long dreaded as the grimmest, cruellest, most terrifying, most distressing and most painful form of capital punishment ever devised, unequalled for public disgrace and humiliation – now depicted on top of the world, majestically bejewelled.
Nations, empires, kingdoms, thrones, political alliances, dominions, superpowers - the cross towers over them all.
What is it about the cross of Christ? It’s the shocking miscarriage of justice of an innocent man. It’s the most tragic and criminally unjust judicial murder in history. But it’s much deeper than that.
How do you explain that the fierce opposition the cross still attracts all over the world? When ISIS spread over Iraq and Syria the first thing they did in every town was to smash crosses on church buildings to bits. Satan hates the cross.
Even in the UK, we have all heard of Christians who’ve been bullied, demoted and sacked for wearing crosses at work. There’s a case going through the courts at the moment contesting that very issue. People want to censor the cross.
A few years ago, the supermarket chain Lidl airbrushed out a cross on the roof of a Greek church that featured on its yoghurt packaging. People are uncomfortable with the cross.
As we draw towards a conclusion in this series of highlights in Luke’s Gospel, today, we find ourselves at the cross; this instrument of death – abolished centuries ago – but which still inspires so much uneasiness, so much fear, so much hostility and, for us, so much worship.
There are over 40 different verses in the New Testament that specifically point out that the death of Jesus is “for us”, in our place. Here are just 5 of them:
Luke 22.20: This is my body, this is my blood given for you. 1 Peter 3.18: Christ suffered for us. 2 Corinthians 5.21: God made him who had no sin to become sin for us. Galatians 3.13: Christ became a curse for us. Romans 5.8: While we were yet sinners Christ died for us
But it won’t be the focus of what I say today because Luke’s Gospel, surprisingly perhaps, says nothing at all about what the crucifixion means – none of the Gospels do.
I once went into a DVD rental store (in the days when such things existed and was struck by noticing Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was in the horror section. It is a harrowing film, difficult to watch in places.
But neither Matthew, Mark, Luke or John sensationalise the passion; there’s no gruesome detail at all. There’s no appeal to the emotions. All four simply report, in an almost matter-of-fact sort of way, the minimum facts and in particular how the different people who witnessed it interacted with what happened.
Let’s read it then; Luke 23.26-49.
26 As the soldiers led [Jesus] away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. 27 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.”
44 It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, 45 for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.
47 The centurion, seeing what had
happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” 48 When all
the people who had gathered to witness this sight saw what took place, they
beat their breasts and went away. 49 But all those who knew him, including the
women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these
things.
Prayer…
How Did We Get Here?
How did we get here? How did it come to pass that the loveliest life the world has ever seen was terminated in the ghastliest fashion mankind has yet devised?
Jesus, remember, challenged his enemies saying, “which of you can find a fault in me?” No one could utter a word. Silence. And that was his enemies.
As we saw last Sunday, all the charges against him during his trial were false. He was manifestly innocent. His judge said again and again that he found the case against him without merit and dismissed it.
And still they crucified him. Not even the most powerful man in the region, Pontius Pilate, could stop it. Jesus didn’t try and get out of it. He accepted the cross. He had predicted it on several occasions. Indeed, he planned it.
Sometimes people ask, “why do bad things happen to good people?” But, as R.C. Sproul said, “that only ever happened once - and he volunteered.”
Before they finally succeeded in killing Jesus, there were no less than five failed assassination attempts on his life.
In Matthew 2.16, Herod tried to kill him in Bethlehem with the sword. In Matthew 4.5-6 Satan tried to kill him at the temple by talking him into jumping off a high roof. In Luke 4.28-30, locals in Nazareth tried to kill him by throwing him off a cliff. In John 8.59, the Pharisees in Jerusalem tried to kill him by picking up rocks to stone him alive. In John 10.31 and 39 the Judeans in Jerusalem attempt the same thing.
But each time they failed because Jesus alone decided when he would die, where he would die, and how he would die. Jesus had already said, “No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord.”
Even beaten up and pinned with iron spikes to his cross, looking utterly crushed and defeated, for Jesus it was all going exactly as planned.
Luke’s narrative mentions a large cast of characters; there’s a crowd of women, Simon of Cyrene, there are low-ranking soldiers who have the gruesome job of driving these nails through his wrists and ankles, there are two condemned men either side of him, some religious rulers, a Roman centurion and various other passers-by who stop to watch.
If you had been there, what would you have made of it all? What would you have said or done? Of all the characters around the cross, which one would you have been?
1. Simon - Resentment
In v26 the soldiers grab a man from the crowd called Simon from Cyrene and they make him carry the crossbar behind Jesus whose strength is failing after being deprived of sleep and food, and subjected to a Roman flogging.
In Roman-occupied Judea, any citizen at any time could be pressed into service of a Roman official and have to walk 1,000 paces or 1 mile. You get a tap on the shoulder with a Roman spear and you do what they say.
Everyone resented it and only complied grudgingly. But Jesus said, “If they make you walk one mile, walk two.”
Cyrene is in modern-day Libya; that’s over 1,000 miles away. Simon is more than likely visiting Jerusalem at that time to celebrate Passover. Maybe he’s saved up for years to fulfil his ambition of attending a great festival like this one in the City of David.
After his long journey from North Africa, he finds himself ordered at knifepoint to carry a 50 kilo, blood-stained plank of wood that’s got the smell of death all over it. I’d understand it if Simon of Cyrene had a bit of a chip on his shoulder about that.
Do some of us feel like a bit like he might have felt? Do you ever wonder to yourself, “What am I doing here?” Has following Jesus become an inconvenience, a weary chore for you? Have you become less willing to count the cost, take up your cross and follow Jesus than you used to be?
2. The Women – Sympathy
Or maybe you identify more with one of the women. In v27-31 some women meet Jesus on his way to execution, and their hearts break with compassion and pity for him.
They see this poor man getting beaten up and they can’t help but feel for him. They begin to sob.
Maybe you’re a bit like one of these women when you think about the cross. You see the unfairness and the injustice of it and you feel sorry for that nice man who suffered so badly.
But Jesus doesn’t want pity or sympathy. “Don’t cry for me,” he says. “Cry for yourselves…” He is saying, “this is more than a very bad day for one man; this is the entire nation of Israel rejecting its Messiah.”
Jesus knows that, forty years later, the Romans will besiege Jerusalem for two years and then pound the entire city to rubble. Days of terror and carnage will follow.
Jesus says here that the consequences of rejecting the Messiah will make women wish they had never brought children into the world to witness it.
“If people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” Jesus says this in Aramaic, but it will be recorded in Greek and then much later put into English, so it loses a bit in translation. It means, “If this is how the Roman military treats the innocent, how do you think they will punish the guilty?”
Jesus is not looking for sympathy – he wants you to see the bigger picture; not just what happened to him but what it means for you.
Ask God to open your eyes today to see that the cross is about you. If you had been the only spiritually lost person on earth, he would have still gone through the whole ordeal just for you, because he loves you that much.
3. The Leaders and Soldiers - Ridicule
Some resent him. Some pity him. Others mock him. In v35, the unbelieving religious leaders show their contempt. “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”
The soldiers in v36-38 just find it funny. “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”
There are people today, I see them every time I browse my social media, who love an opportunity to ridicule Christianity and sneer at Christians.
Sadly, we sometimes deserve to be the butt of jokes. But at times there’s just hatred and contempt behind it. These are the kind of people surely who would have taunted Jesus as he made his way to the cross.
Probably none of us here today can relate to those who laugh and jeer at Jesus as he hangs there dying. But maybe there is just one here this morning; this might be the first time you’ve ever been in a church and it all seems like a bit of a joke...
Or perhaps someone one day will overhear a recording of this talk, someone who just dismisses Jesus as a laughingstock, who uses his name as an expletive…
Listen! Jesus leads the greatest and numerically strongest movement in world history. The church world-wide is still growing. He has no peer, no rival and no equal.
He laughs off every failed attempt to side-line him. Many more millions will leave everything they have to follow him long after you’re dead and forgotten.
Don’t risk an eternity of darkness and unquenchable thirst and bitter regret separated forever from God. Turn to Christ today. Come humbly to Jesus in repentance and faith.
4. The Cynical Thief – Disrespect
It was prophesied in Isaiah 53, 750 years before Jesus was born, that he would be put to death with the wicked. All four gospels affirm that Jesus was crucified between two thugs. But only Luke tells us what they said.
In v39 it says that one of them hurled insults at him. “If you were really any kind of Messiah you’d get yourself out of this predicament and if you were worth the time of day you’d get us out of it as well!”
This is, in fact, a very commonplace way of talking to Jesus. Some messiah! Where were you when I was overlooked for that promotion and pay rise? What kind of Saviour were you when I fell and ended up in A&E? If you were really the King of kings and Lord of lords, how come you can’t even make the bus come on time?
Is that how you talk to God sometimes? But Jesus is not your domestic servant. Or mine!
He is worthy of praise precisely because he calms a thunderstorm with one word of authority, and yet he refuses to use his breathtaking power to come down from the cross.
5. The Repentant Thief - Faith
In v39-43 there is one of the most amazing conversations in the entire Bible. Both Matthew and Mark agree that both rebels begin by heaping insults on Jesus.
But at some point during the six hours of crucifixion, one of them changes. Was it when he hears Jesus pray, “Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing”? It doesn’t say.
But I think there is a moment when he looks up at the signs above their heads which informed onlookers of the crimes for which they were being punished. Above his own head; “thief”. Above the other rebel’s head; “thief.”
And he confesses the sin in his life. “We are getting what our deeds deserve” he says.
“I’m a sinner; a thief. I did it. I admit it. It wasn’t the bad crowd I got into or some genetic predisposition to get into crime. It wasn’t my parents’ fault or the rough neighbourhood I grew up in. There are no excuses. I plead guilty. I deserve this. I have broken God’s laws.”
And then he looks at the sign above Jesus’ head; “This is the King of the Jews.” His head is crowned with thorns, his hair matted in blood – but in a moment of grace and faith he sees it - this is a real King!
Jesus is the only flawless, perfect life ever lived and in a flash of insight this thief sees it. “This man has done nothing wrong” he says.
He looks at this exhausted, blood-stained, dying man and – unbelievably – he can see the big picture: this is not the end of Jesus. “Remember me when you come in your kingdom” he says. He’s going to have a kingdom in which he will yet reign and rule. What amazing faith.
Jesus answers him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Listen! No matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done, and how many times you’ve done it, no matter how big the mess you’ve made is, it’s not so beyond the pale that Jesus can’t clean it up.
And this dying thief is all the proof you need that it’s never too late to admit your sin and ask Jesus to remember you.
In the New Testament, Hell is described as a dark place, a lonely place, a thirsty place and a Godless place. On the cross, Jesus endured darkness, abandonment, thirst and separation from God. He literally went through Hell as he took on himself your guilt and mine.
But because he died for the sins of the whole world, no one needs to end up in hell. You, like that repentant thief, can be with the King in paradise.
6. The Centurion – Enlightenment
Finally, the Centurion. In v47, it says, “The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, “Surely this was a righteous man.” Mark’s Gospel quotes him in full. “Surely, this was the Son of God.”
What happened to make this man say that?
Luke says, “It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two at 3pm, the exact moment the Passover lamb was slain to atone for sin…
The sky at midnight was bright with angelic glory when Jesus was born and it was dark at midday when he died.
For three whole hours, in fact, it went eerily dark until Jesus bowed his head and died at 3 o’clock. And then, as soon as he died, it brightened up again.
That’s what the Centurion saw. And in a moment of grace and faith he literally saw the light.
Ending
Who are you in this story? A bit annoyed to be associated with it against your will? Feeling sorry for Jesus but not really getting that his death is for you? Laughing at it all? Seeing your sin and thanking Jesus for forgiveness?
We’re going to share Communion in a moment as we remember the Lord’s sufferings for us and renew our allegiance to him as our King and our love for one another as his beloved bride. We are on holy ground.
The musicians are going to lead us in worship but as they get ready to do that, let me end with this true story.
His wife had to raise their six children (aged from six to seventeen) alone and also care for an elderly mother.
Yuan was in jail for 21 years and throughout that whole time he never once saw his family, or had any Christian fellowship, or even saw a Bible.
Conditions were harsh. He suffered terrible isolation. At times, the temperature in his cell dropped to -29°C but he was never ill.
All that time people urged his wife to remarry, saying Yuan must have died. She had several proposals. But she refused each time, saying she would never remarry until she had concrete proof her husband was dead.
He was finally released when in his mid-sixties. He had missed all his children growing up to adulthood. He had missed his wife. Life was hard for her too obviously.
But whenever people would speak to him about the high price he had paid for following Jesus, he would smile with joy and simply say, “Nothing compared to the cross.”
Sermon preached at King's Church Darlington, 31 October 2021
