MPC 9th April 2004.Mark 15:1-41; Ps 22 - "According to Jesus"
Maurie Cropper MPC 9th April 2004.
On release of the movie The Passion in the United Sates, the London Daily Telegraph's Californian correspondent wrote: "U.S. in awe..."
He reported that in the city of Irvine, California they were queueing around the block of the five-story cinema complex.
The fact that the movie has had its fair share of controversy hasn't stopped thousands from seeing it.
Even before its release many churches overseas and in Australia booked out cinemas and encouraged people to see the movie. Dubbo Presbyterian church in western NSW was one of them.
A church in California pre-booked 47 continuous sittings and 20,000 tickets were booked up in the first thirty hours.
In Texas a local business-man bought 6,000 tickets and gave them away to everyone in his church and his neighbourhood.
One person the Telegraph's reporter interviewed said: "I'm expecting a world-changing experience." In fact just about everyone he spoke to were hoping for... or expecting to have... and he quoted: "...an unprecedented spiritual experience."
Whether or not you see the movie, I do encourage you to read the book. To read the Bible for yourself. To read the Bible's account of 'Easter according to Jesus'.
And that's what we're going to do right now. We're going to listen to it being read to us. So as I pause, listen to the account from the book of Mark, chapter 15:1-41.
I don't know about you, but for me, those words that Jesus cried out are left ringing in my ears! "Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani? My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
Imagine what that was like for Jesus. With people pushing and shoving and yelling abuse. A crowd that's out for blood-letting.
Ten days ago four American civilian contractors in Iraq were, as one reporter puts it: "Butchered like sheep". Jubilant crowds hysterically out of control.
Jesus faced similar crowds. People who wanted him killed. People who shouted: "Crucify him." Even Pilate's words that Jesus was innocent were shouted down with more cries of "Crucify him, crucify him."
And imagine this.
Imagine that you're there with Jesus.
Weeks earlier he'd entered your town and you heard him saying some things that raised your curiosity. You heard his parables. Some you understood. Some you didn't ...but you wanted to know more so you began to follow him from place to place.
You heard him make references to his Father in heaven with statements like: "If you really knew me, you'd know my Father as well". You saw him heal people. You witnessed storms being calmed as he rebuked the wind and the rain. You were amazed that he was able to do those things, maybe even a little afraid.
What might have been going through your mind as you saw him being crucified?
As you listened to the abuse and the taunts of those who yelled out: "So, ...why don't you come down of the cross and save yourself!"
Could it have crossed your mind that maybe Jesus wasn't who he claimed to be? That he wasn't the long awaited Christ? The One the scriptures said would come to save his people.
Have those who are hurling insults and abuse at Jesus got it right with their taunting?
Why doesn't he save himself and come down from the cross?
If he was able to save others why doesn't he save himself?
Why doesn't he take-up their taunting challenges and come down of the cross so that everyone would believe? If you were watching, could there have been doubt creeping into your mind? Thoughts like: Can I trust in the things that he taught? Is Jesus really to be trusted?
Can God be trusted?
If Jesus cannot save himself, can he save me?
Can anyone save me?
Or does the crucifixion of Jesus mean that that God isn't in control? Or is it simply a matter of Jesus being in the wrong place at the wrong time? And therefore it's just some random chance that Jesus was crucified, and the true Messiah is still to come?
Well, those words of Jesus: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" are a clue to answering those questions.
Those words are from Psalm 22 written around a thousand years before the time of Jesus .
And as we turn to Psalm 22 we read not only those words in the opening line, but we're told that he was seen by those around him, not as God's man but, as something less than a man.
Someone to be ridiculed. Someone to be sneered at. Someone to be scorned, and mocked.
We're told in the psalm that this person was encircled by evil men, and his hands and feet were pierced. That people stared and gloated over him and that his clothing was divided up by the casting of lots.
Beginning at verse 1, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far away from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, and I cry out by night so I have no rest."
And from verse 6, "I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads saying: 'He trusts in the Lord; let the Lord rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him."
And from verse 16: "Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among themselves and cast lots for my clothing."
And check out the last line of the Psalm.
The Psalm which began with the cry: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?", ends with the words. "...for he has done it." ... an announcement not far removed from Jesus' cry, "It is finished!"
This is no random chance, no coincidence.
Jesus' death, even by crucifixion, was part of God's plan to save his people. It was accomplished down to the last detail, down to Jesus' final words when he said: "It is finished!"
And Psalm 22 is not just a prophecy about Jesus' death. It also tells us that the one who is scorned and pierced is rescued from death, and ultimately as it says in verse 27, "All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the Lord and he rules over the nations."
So Psalm 22 is a roller-coaster account of the one who would be humiliated and die a terrible cruel death, and yet would ultimately rule over the earth.
But while we can take comfort in knowing that Jesus' death wasn't just the result of some random chance, those words, those agonising words: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" cannot be simply skipped over.
Last year I visited Krakow in Poland. Not far from Krakow is Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp. While I was there I bought a book written by a guy who survived Auschwitz. It's a book that tears you apart as you read it. In it he tells of witnessing the upheaval of families as they arrived at the camp. Wives being separated from their husbands. Children being separated from their parents. There's one horrific account after another. Of loved ones being separated.
As I read those accounts, I couldn't help my mind wandering from the detail of the book to the suffering of Jesus. Suffering for crimes he didn't commit. Declared innocent even by Pilate. Yet alone on that cross.
And again those words: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", pierce the commotion surrounding Jesus. Pierce the jeering and scoffing of his on lookers. Piercing the hearts of those who loved and followed him. Piercing my heart even now.
And there's no denying that his cry was related to the incredible physical pain he was experiencing. A pain that's outside my experience, beyond my imagination. And over the years many a commentator have suggested that his cry is simply about the weight of the sin of mankind. And there's no doubt about him feeling the full force of the sin of the whole world.
But I want to suggest that those distressing words, those words of utter anguish weren't only to do with the physical pain that Jesus suffered, or the burden of sin.
Those words: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", were the words of someone subjected to being dragged away from their loved one.
Someone who was given up by the very person that had given them life.
You see, what Jesus feared most wasn't the cross with all its cruelty; it wasn't the weight of the world's sin; it was the thought of being separated from his father.
Listen to those words once more. "Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani? My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
They are the words of someone who knew that he was about to be torn from the one who sent him, from the one person that he had never been separated from - not simply since his birth as a human being - but for all of eternity.
That's an incredible thing for us to comprehend, with our finite, limited minds that can only understand time as having a beginning and an end.
But in the context of Jesus forever being with His Father... try and grasp the enormity of his last words. Words that expressed the wrenching apart of a relationship that had never been apart.
And the cause of that ripping apart of Jesus' relationship with his Father?
Man's rejection of God's Kingship. The rejection of God's rightful rule over us all. The total rebellion of mankind!
My rebellion. Your rebellion. The rebellion of everyone since the creation of the earth.
So severe, so serious was this rebellion that ironically it took the death of the Creator's perfect and only Son... to reconcile mankind's relationship with God.
I mean, did you think for a moment that Jesus couldn't have come down off that cross?
Of course he could have! He's God! It wasn't against his ability to get down off that cross as those taunting him thought. It simply was against his Father's will. In obedience to his Father Jesus stayed nailed to that cross for our sake. He chose to remain obedient, denying his own life, to save our lives! The answer to the question: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" To save us from being forever separated from his father.
What is our response to the one who was separated from his Father... so that ironically, we could be reconciled to God our Father?
Is it to throw insults, or to praise him? Does it matter to you that you played a part in separating Jesus from His Father in heaven?
If you've read those last words of Jesus so many times that your mind now simply glosses over them. Well, stop! Think! ...and praise God that he loved you enough to sacrifice he's Only Perfect Son so that you could be reconciled to Him.
And if those words of Jesus have impacted you today for the first time, and you no longer want to be separated from God, then stop, think, and accept God's crucified Only Perfect Son as your Saviour.
And proclaim Him now as your King. And know that you are reconciled to God for all eternity.
And if those words of Jesus don't interest you in the slightest, then stop... and think very carefully about this question: Do you want to remain separated from God... forever? My reckoning is, if you ignore Jesus in this life, those words of his "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" will be ringing in your ears forever.
It's truly ironic... that in Jesus' death he was separated from his heavenly Father, while it was in his death that we have the opportunity to be reconciled to His, to our heavenly Father!!!