This was written by my pastor and sent via email to all of us. I thought it was amazing and wanted to share it with you all.
The crowds are pressing in now. Shouts and shoves pummel Him from every side. He hears a new sound, and a fresh wetness smacks his cheek. Someone is spitting. He takes another step towards the reason He’s come.
His eyes are nearly swollen shut, but it doesn’t stop the sweat and blood that try to blind Him. Still, His bleary vision makes out the way before Him and He knows it. It is Isaac’s path, He sees, the way up Moriah. “Behold the fire and the wood, my Father,” the child had said to Abraham, “but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 2,000 years later, He is here— climbing the same mountain, willingly caught in the thicket of mankind’s curse.
His knees buckle suddenly and He stumbles under the weight of the cross He bears on a back flayed raw by lashes from a hateful whip. He tries to stand but can’t.
With a jerk the cross is lifted from Him. The sudden motion tears again at His open wounds and he cries out in pain. A soldier laughs. Somewhere, a woman weeps. ‘Do not weep for me,’ he says— ‘weep for yourselves, weep for your children!’ He’s shoved aside and dragged along now, free for a moment of His burden. A stranger named Simon carries His cross the rest of the way. In a tangle of pain and confusion they finally reach the summit. It’s nine o’ clock on a Friday morning.
He is stripped. His wounds again flow freely. The sun is harsh and blinding. The flies begin to find him. A hard shove and the world tilts violently. He falls backwards, back onto the crossbeam Simon has dropped there at the top, back against the wooden wall of justice. He lands with a sickening thud that knocks His breath from Him. Rough hands grasp His own as he gasps for breath.
Four soldiers are assigned to Him and four each to two other men, their tasks overseen by a centurion. Each team of four works together with efficient precision to nail the hands of their man now to the horizontal beam. Roosters can still be heard in the distance, crowing from the city, but their cries are now mixed with those of three men on a hill called ‘The Skull.’
Two of them struggle and curse between screams and the ringing blows of the hammer. The soldiers who hold them down laugh, hearts hardened by the repetition of the task, humanity dulled by the cheap wine provided to keep them working without complaint. But the team with the third man finds Him different. When offered wine mixed with gall to dull the pain, He refuses. He too cries out as His arms are stretched wide and the nails are driven deep into his flesh. But He doesn’t resist them. He doesn’t struggle or spit or curse.
How far is the east from the west? This far.
How great is the joy set before Him? This great.
How wide is the way through the sea of judgment? This wide.
The soldiers laugh at Him, too, but it’s forced. This one is strange. They take another swig of wine and put it out of their minds. He’s just another criminal. It’s just another Friday.
Ropes are attached now to the horizontal beams, and the three men are first dragged, then hoisted up the face of the vertical posts of their crosses, already fixed and waiting in the ground. The middle man is raised up with the others, lifted just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness and hangs there, suspended between heaven and earth— an emblem upon which men might fix their eyes and be saved.
When they’re high enough, the beams are fixed to the posts with nails and ropes by the soldiers, and for a moment, the three men sag down beneath the weight of their own bodies, supported for the first time by nothing but the nails in their arms or wrists.
The downward pull begins to dislocate their arms, spots swim before their eyes, the pain threatens to rob them of consciousness. Their feet scramble against the rough-hewn wood of the beams behind them, they try to push up, try to relieve the pain and pressure. But their diaphragms are unable to rise to exhale and gather more air, and their movements are becoming more feeble— They’re starting to suffocate.
Quickly, the soldiers add a small block beneath the feet of each man, something to help them push their bodies up to catch their breath. But it’s not an act of mercy. Instead, these doomed men, who would otherwise be dead in minutes, will now prolong their own torture for hours and even days on end. Their feet are tied or nailed to the platforms, and the soldiers stand back to admire their work. The religious leaders also look on from a distance at Him whom they have pierced. Jews and Gentiles stand united in contempt and satisfaction.
Three crosses, three men. The two on the outside are thieves we’re told, believed by most to be the companions of the murderer Barabbas. He too was meant to die here with them, hung between his companions. But his cross is now occupied by another. His place, like yours, has been taken by a substitute, so that he can go free. And on this middle cross between thieves, where you, and I, and Barabbas should have hung, a placard is placed above the gasping stand-in, a hand-written sign with words penned by Pilate himself, a sign declaring the man’s name, and His claim, and His crime: “This is Jesus the king of the Jews,” it declares in three languages.
The man who hangs between thieves is Jesus.
The Seed promised to the Patriarchs and foretold by the prophets.
The baby born in a manger.
The Lord announced by angels.
The Child visited by shepherds and wise men.
The King feared by tyrants and imposters.
The man who hangs between thieves is Jesus.
The boy called out of Egypt by His Father.
The boy who stayed behind in the temple to be about His Father’s business.
The boy who went back to Nazareth and was submissive to His earthly parents.
The boy who grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and men.
The man who hangs between thieves is Jesus.
The son of Mary who saved a wedding and a groom’s reputation.
The Son of God who pleased His Father in the waters of baptism.
The Son of Man who has the authority on earth to heal blind men and lepers, control nature and cast out demons, call sinners to repentance, the outcast to His side and the dead to life through the forgiveness of sins. Three crosses, three men. But one is not like the others. “This is Jesus,” the sign says— “the king of the Jews.”
“He saved others, he cannot save himself,” the chief priests and scribes sneer, and in their words we can almost hear the serpent’s hiss. But He will not bite that apple. Jesus will not take that bait. He’ll not save Himself. He won’t do what the first Adam did and take the forbidden fruit. Because it hasn’t been given to Him. No, what’s been given to Him is to save others, not Himself. And so His own life, He entrusts to His Father’s care.
“He is the King of Israel?” they say with mockery— “Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him.” He could call 10,000 angels with a whisper, but He’s quiet. No doubt in heaven, at this very moment, they strain against His silence, swords quivering with rage, desperate for the signal, desperate to rain down wrath and dash to pieces every trace of these wretched men who dare to even gaze with contempt upon their Lord.
But instead of a prayer for vengeance, He prays for their forgiveness. Samson, arms outstretched in the temple of Dagon, asked God that death might find his foes. Jesus, arms outstretched on Golgotha, asks God that forgiveness might find them instead.
Three hours later, “it is finished.” Jesus cries out loudly from the cross, lowers His head to His chest, and at the very moment thousands of Passover lambs are being slaughtered at the temple, He breathes His last. The earth convulses, the ground shakes, rocks split and tremble in sudden violence, and the temple curtain that separates the throne of God from His people is ripped from top to bottom. In the temple of His own broken body, Jesus has accomplished for humanity all that the temple of stone never could. It now stands obsolete. The old has gone, the new has come.
Jesus is the only way to God’s throne.
