God's Spectacular Glory
Sermon
CALLED TO JERUSALEM: SENT TO THE WORLD
Sermons For Lent And Easter
There's no doubt about it. The crucifixion was a major scandal for the followers of Jesus, the preacher from Nazareth whom first-century Christians proclaimed to be the Christ. That is to say, "God's anointed one," the "Messiah."
The historicity of the crucifixion cannot be doubted. The early Christian community, targeting all nations - religious and secular audiences alike - would hardly have created the story of the crucifixion out of whole cloth. It is better to bury scandals than to invent them. It is the kind of news that is best blunted, removed or domesticated into respectability. There is no apparent glory here. If there is anything spectacular, in first-century terms, it is the shame.
I. An Utterly Offensive Affair1
Over the past two Sundays we have listened as Jesus prepared his disciples for this confrontation and his crucifixion. Each of the gospels, written in the mid to late first century C.E., gives us insights into the trauma the crucifixion caused for those early followers and believers. John's famous passage is one of those texts: "Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me (John 14:1)." When explanations are more complex than calming, one can say little other than, "Trust me!"
We have heard the traditional Palm Sunday reading of the Passion Story - this year from Matthew. We have listened another time as Jesus, with two criminals, is led away "to undergo the death by torture that some ancient writers regarded as the most terrible, after burning alive. Others, Cicero among them, said that it was "unfit for free men,"2 and "it was the most brutal and dreadful of the punishments that could be given to a slave."3
Crucifixion was for slaves, criminals and outcasts. It was used only in the provinces of Rome, never Italy and never for one who was a Roman citizen. It is believed to have begun in Persia as a means to avoid contamination of the ground with the bodies of such despicable outcasts. There the bodies were left on the crosses to be eaten by the vultures and other wild animals until there was nothing left.4 By the first century, such persons simply were cast on the ground for the animals. In Palestine, because of sensitivity to the Jews, burial became the practice.
Even so, the Roman world was virtually unanimous in believing that crucifixion was a "horrific, disgusting business"5 practiced on dangerous criminals and members of the lowest classes of society who, along with slaves, had few rights.
No wonder then, that the crucifixion of Jesus was a stumbling block for the Jews. How could the anointed one of God ever suffer such a disgraceful death? It was not alone Jesus' conviction. It was, as well, the crucifixion that caused the problem for the Hebrew faithful who might have otherwise been moved by the preaching of the early church. "If a man has committed a crime punishable by death ... and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God (Deuteronomy 21:22-23a)." How can an accursed man at the same time be the Lord's anointed? Paul was right. It's a stumbling block.
Moreover, the whole idea was folly to the Greeks and the rest of the Gentile world. Sheer foolishness! Or perhaps, madness! Justin Martyr, writing at the close of the first century,
describes the offensiveness of the crucifixion of Jesus for his contemporaries: "They say that our madness consists in the fact that we put a crucified man in second place after the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of the world."6
Pliny the Younger, writing to the Emperor Trajan in 112 C.E., calls the Christian faith a madness. He observes that after the examination of two deaconesses by torture he "found nothing but a depraved and extravagant superstition."7 It must have been particularly difficult for a Roman governor to believe that his government had nailed to the cross as a common criminal the Son of God and the partner with God in the work of creation. Such an idea could not possibly be anything else but an extravagant superstition.
In our day, the tables are somewhat turned. We have heard the story since childhood. It is familiar; therefore it sounds right. It is not at all easy for us to comprehend the first century's offense at the cross as a part of the good news about God. To the ancient world and its popular mythologies, there was no familiar tradition of a God who emptied himself. To believe that a God could be treated like a common criminal, an outcast, was unthinkable. It was obscene in the original and best sense of that word.
If we are to understand the Passion Story of the gospels as the liturgies of Holy Week unfold, we must regain an appreciation of the huge impact the cross had on all thinking about God, then and now. The shame of the crucifixion in the ancient world was the issue that "pulled out the beard (Isaiah 50:6)" of the church's witness, bringing a humiliation to the message.
II. The Witness Of An Early Hymn
Nonetheless, the first-century Christians undertook the great commission of carrying the gospel into the world by preaching "right into the teeth" of the scandal. The early preaching of the church, as Luke records it in the Book of Acts, often comes to the point forcefully: "This Christ whom you (or your leaders) crucified, God has raised up from the dead."8
Again, Paul shouts the affirmation: "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:23)."
The early church, even before Paul's letters to Christians at Corinth or Philippi, preached and sang the message of the crucified Savior. Most scholars believe that today's Second Lesson from Philippians (Philippians 2:5-11) is an early Christological hymn, already known to Paul's readers.
We must pause here to remind ourselves that the early Christians had been worshiping together for more than two decades when Paul began writing his letters. In his letters to Corinth (c. 55 C.E.) there already were established liturgical formats, as Paul clearly sets forth in the matter of the Eucharist. There appear to be in place by this time approved "verba," the very words that continue to appear in our eucharistic liturgies to this day (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).
There were also hymns, to be sure. As Paul writes to Philippians in today's lesson (c. 60 C.E.), he quotes this pre-Pauline Christological hymn. It encompasses the humiliation and glorification of the Christ, specifically because of his death on the cross. Scholars believe that Paul quotes the familiar hymn, adding only the phrase "even death on a cross," lest the important point of the humiliation of the cross be overlooked. It becomes the fulcrum of the "therefore" which follows: "Being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name ... (Philippians 2:8-9)."
For all the humiliation and scandal the cross would bring to the preaching of the early church, the church never sought to blunt or bury it. Instead, the church preached into the teeth of the scandal. Slowly to those who would hear, the humiliation of Christ became a spectacular new insight into the incarnation of God in Christ. The death of Christ in the shame of the cross made all the more awesome the statement: "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19)."
III. Even Death On A Cross
Without a doubt, the Palm Sunday procession was an intentional demonstration on Jesus' part. Given the preparation of the disciples reported by the evangelists, and the manner in which the disciples were sent into Jerusalem to secure the donkey (and later in the week, the upper room), Jesus was under no illusion about the outcome of his arrival. Like the preaching of the early church, Jesus rode squarely into the midst of the opposition, intentionally proclaiming the coming of the Messiah as the prophet had promised: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass (Zechariah 9:9)."
The meaning of Jesus' arrival was not lost upon the people. "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest.... This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee (Matthew 21:9-11)."
The significance of the moment was equally clear to the Pharisees: "And some of the Pharisees in the multitude said to him, 'Teacher, rebuke your disciples.' He answered, 'I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out' (Luke 19:39-40)."
Matthew's record of the Passion Story read today follows closely the account of Mark, except for significant alterations that emphasize two important themes:
1. In Matthew's gospel events unfold because Jesus allows them to happen.
2. Jesus is willing to be humiliated in obedience to God's will.
Only in Matthew's gospel do we find the counsel to the disciple who drew his sword: "Do you not think that I could appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than 12 legions of angels? But then, how would the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so (Matthew 26:53-54)?"9
Clearly the New Testament reveals that Jesus accepted the prophetic role of the suffering servant, the sentence of death, and even death on a cross. He rode into the city not unaware of the probable consequences. He allowed the events to unfold, a matter forcefully reported by Matthew, implied by all the evangelists, and preached by the early church: "Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered (Hebrews 5:8)." Therefore we have the gospel report and the early first-century Christological hymn: "Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8)."
Just as the early church preached right into the teeth of the "scandal," perceiving it to be the heart of God's spectacular glory and love, so Jesus rode squarely into the crisis of the cross and its shame. It was as Isaiah had written: "I was not rebellious, I turned not backward. I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I hid not my face from shame and spitting ... I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame (Isaiah 50:5-7)."
IV. "The Scriptures Fulfilled - It Must Be So"
Clearly Jesus was aware of the suffering servant of Deutero Isaiah,10 the second of the writers of the prophetic work of Isaiah. Our Old Testament text is the third of these four "servant songs," as they have been called by scholars. The trust and obedience undergirding these songs were learned early in Jesus' ministry. In the temptations of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, it would appear that the issue in each of the three temptations centered upon either the trust of God's word (as with the serpent in the Garden of Eden) or upon a style of ministry for the one who had just heard the heavenly voice: "This is my beloved Son." In each temptation, Jesus addresses the issue of trusting obedience with an Old Testament reference: "Man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord (Deuteronomy 8:3)." "You shall not tempt the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 6:16a)." "You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve (Deuteronomy 6:13-14)."
This experience and trust mark the faithfulness of the "suffering servant" in Deutero Isaiah. The servant is commissioned by God: "The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught ... Morning by morning he wakens, he wakens my ear to hear." Despite despicable treatment, the servant remains faithful: "I turned not backward ... I set my face like a flint (Isaiah 50:5, 7)." The servant expresses conviction that the experience of rejection and suffering is not a sign of God's rejection, but rather of his approval. "I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near (Isaiah 50:8)."
From the outset Jesus understood himself to be fulfilling the long-standing plan revealed by the prophets, trusting God to reveal himself through the faithfulness of his commissioned servant, the anointed one of the Lord. "Do you not think that I could appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than 12 legions of angels? But then, how would the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so (Matthew 26:54)."
Jesus, in the spirit of Isaiah's servant, remains constant and convinced of the faithfulness of the Lord who is best revealed through the faithfulness and obedience of his people.
V. God With Us!
Six centuries before the cross became the reality of the first-century Messianic experience, the significance of the suffering servant of God had been held up by Isaiah. Quickly the prophet gave a vision to the early church, transforming what might have been the rationalization of the cross to the proclamation of the cross as a message of God's spectacular glory.
The early church understood the servant songs as pictures of the Lord's passion. Jesus willingly, obediently and confidently delivered God's message in the face of rejection. Confidently and intentionally we see him ride into Jerusalem today. Quietly and purposefully he stands before Pilate later this week. Obediently, in Gethsemane's huge "nevertheless" he mounts the cross. Both Jesus and the servant reveal God's glory through suffering.
But hold on, friends. We live in a self-centered, sensate, secular culture driven by the pursuit of happiness and spoiled by instant gratification. Sacrifice and postponed fulfillment receive little good press these days. How can we hear this talk of the cross as anything different from those of the first century ... foolishness, madness and a stumbling block? How can we hear it as a proclamation of good news rather than a helpless rationalization?
To answer our question we must go back to the good news of Bethlehem. The babe of the manger - about whom angels sang and shepherds wondered, for whom stars shone forth brightly and kings came searching - was named Jesus. He was perceived and has since been proclaimed to be Emmanuel - that is to say, "God with us."
Theologians and the scriptures frequently speak of the wholly otherness of God, speaking correctly of the distance and transcendence of God. We are distanced both by our nature and our alienating sin. Isaiah 6:1-6 is profound in this regard.
In another sense, God has always been near to us. To Moses he says, "I have heard the cries of my people ... I shall deliver them." In the exodus God led the children of Israel by a pillar of fire during the night and a cloud by day. He built a covenant relationship of mutual faithfulness with his people as intimate as a human marriage, as the prophet Hosea learned and taught. Still, God was God and we were alienated in our sin.
In Bethlehem, "God with us" assumed new and exciting meaning. John says: "The Word became flesh and dwelt with us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father (John 1:14)." Paul quotes the hymn: He "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." God has become like us, one of us. God truly "empties himself" to become like us, touching all of life and all of our lives with his transforming presence. There is no dark corner into which the shining light of God's love and his hunger for reconciliation do not shine.
Rather than a message to be buried or blunted in its scandal, the cross becomes for Paul and the early church the very spearhead of the good news. The horror of the cross is not too far for God to go. He sinks down with us into the meanest, bloodiest and cruelest places of our lives, associating with criminals and outcasts on every side. The fullest meaning of the Incarnation - God with us - caused even the earth to quake and the sun to hide its face. "My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" The God of the heavens had stepped into the depths of our human loneliness and fear. The Word had indeed become flesh and dwelt among us!
During those three hours, there must have been laughter in the hallways of hell. This time the tempter was sure to win. The love of God and the faithfulness of the servant could be broken this time. After all, did not the story of the temptations tell us that Satan had departed "until an opportune time (Luke 4:13)?" This was surely that time. God's love must have limits. The cross would be the fuller measure of the carpenter's faithfulness, son of God or not!
It was not to be so. From the shame and torment of the cross, in the very traumatic moments of the pain of death itself, still he prays for those who inflict this shameful and unjust death. "Father, forgive them ...!" Still he holds open the door of Paradise! "Today you will be with me ..." Neither the will of God nor the faithfulness of our God's Christ can be broken, even by the cross. It is a spectacular display of God's power, God's love and God's presence in his Son.
It is written: "I turned not backward ... I have set my face like a flint (Isaiah 50:5, 7)."
And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:8-11)."
God's spectacular glory, indeed!
A Postscript
As we meditate upon the Passion of our Lord during this Holy Week, it needs to be said: Jesus did not have to die.
He died because of decisions made by mostly responsible and respectable people. The authorities in Jerusalem could have seen the raising of Lazarus as a new and exciting sign of the presence of God. Caiphas might have worried more about the truth of that miracle than the potential repression of the Roman government should the crowd become boisterous.
Judas could have relented in his zeal to preempt the political choices of the Christ. The Sanhedrin might have recognized the false witnesses for what they were. The crowd might have continued its chants of "Hosanna," believing itself to have been right the first time. Pilate could have made the decision for the justice he clearly recognized. And, so it went.
Everyone of these people and groups had free choices!
Jesus died because of decisions responsible people made. God never foreordains his people to injustice, untruth or simple political expediency.
So it goes in our day, too. Often, truth comes in second to a whole host of personal goals and desires. When that happens, good things - and sometimes good people - die. Isn't it so!
End Notes
1. Martin Hengel, Crucifixion In the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, (Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1982), p. 22.
2. John Wilkinson, Jerusalem as Jesus Knew It, (London, Thames and Hudson, 1978), p. 151.
3. Ibid.
4. William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Vol. 2, Second Edition, (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1956), p. 291.
5. Hengel, op. cit., p. 37.
6. Ibid., p. 1.
7. Documents of the Christian Church, Selected and Edited by Henry Bettenson, (London, Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 6-7.
8. This is a paraphrase of the concept as it appears in much of the preaching of the early church as Luke records it for us. An example is Acts 5:29-30.
9. A word of explanation: There appears a similar passage in John's account at John 19:10-11. Here Jesus denies Pilate's power: "You have no power over me except that it was delivered to you from above." The difference is that he neither claims nor hints at influencing that "power from above."
10. As noted in Chapter 6, End note 11, "Deutero Isaiah" is the name given by biblical scholars to the second writer in the book of Isaiah. Some agree that there are really three "Isaiah's" though everyone agrees upon at least two. The problem: The first 39 chapters of Isaiah are written between the reigns of Uzziah, who died in 740 B.C.E. and Hezekiah, during the time of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib, who writes of this siege: "I sat on my golden throne on the Mount of Olives and I shut up the Jew Hezekiah like a bird in a cage." Because of Hezekiah's secret water tunnel - and perhaps the hand of God against the Assyrians - Jerusalem was not conquered. Chapter 39 closes at this point. Chapter 40 begins a period of writings coming from the time of the Babylonian exile, at least 185 years later. Chapter 50 is a part of the section called "Deutero Isaiah."
The historicity of the crucifixion cannot be doubted. The early Christian community, targeting all nations - religious and secular audiences alike - would hardly have created the story of the crucifixion out of whole cloth. It is better to bury scandals than to invent them. It is the kind of news that is best blunted, removed or domesticated into respectability. There is no apparent glory here. If there is anything spectacular, in first-century terms, it is the shame.
I. An Utterly Offensive Affair1
Over the past two Sundays we have listened as Jesus prepared his disciples for this confrontation and his crucifixion. Each of the gospels, written in the mid to late first century C.E., gives us insights into the trauma the crucifixion caused for those early followers and believers. John's famous passage is one of those texts: "Let not your hearts be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me (John 14:1)." When explanations are more complex than calming, one can say little other than, "Trust me!"
We have heard the traditional Palm Sunday reading of the Passion Story - this year from Matthew. We have listened another time as Jesus, with two criminals, is led away "to undergo the death by torture that some ancient writers regarded as the most terrible, after burning alive. Others, Cicero among them, said that it was "unfit for free men,"2 and "it was the most brutal and dreadful of the punishments that could be given to a slave."3
Crucifixion was for slaves, criminals and outcasts. It was used only in the provinces of Rome, never Italy and never for one who was a Roman citizen. It is believed to have begun in Persia as a means to avoid contamination of the ground with the bodies of such despicable outcasts. There the bodies were left on the crosses to be eaten by the vultures and other wild animals until there was nothing left.4 By the first century, such persons simply were cast on the ground for the animals. In Palestine, because of sensitivity to the Jews, burial became the practice.
Even so, the Roman world was virtually unanimous in believing that crucifixion was a "horrific, disgusting business"5 practiced on dangerous criminals and members of the lowest classes of society who, along with slaves, had few rights.
No wonder then, that the crucifixion of Jesus was a stumbling block for the Jews. How could the anointed one of God ever suffer such a disgraceful death? It was not alone Jesus' conviction. It was, as well, the crucifixion that caused the problem for the Hebrew faithful who might have otherwise been moved by the preaching of the early church. "If a man has committed a crime punishable by death ... and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is accursed by God (Deuteronomy 21:22-23a)." How can an accursed man at the same time be the Lord's anointed? Paul was right. It's a stumbling block.
Moreover, the whole idea was folly to the Greeks and the rest of the Gentile world. Sheer foolishness! Or perhaps, madness! Justin Martyr, writing at the close of the first century,
describes the offensiveness of the crucifixion of Jesus for his contemporaries: "They say that our madness consists in the fact that we put a crucified man in second place after the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of the world."6
Pliny the Younger, writing to the Emperor Trajan in 112 C.E., calls the Christian faith a madness. He observes that after the examination of two deaconesses by torture he "found nothing but a depraved and extravagant superstition."7 It must have been particularly difficult for a Roman governor to believe that his government had nailed to the cross as a common criminal the Son of God and the partner with God in the work of creation. Such an idea could not possibly be anything else but an extravagant superstition.
In our day, the tables are somewhat turned. We have heard the story since childhood. It is familiar; therefore it sounds right. It is not at all easy for us to comprehend the first century's offense at the cross as a part of the good news about God. To the ancient world and its popular mythologies, there was no familiar tradition of a God who emptied himself. To believe that a God could be treated like a common criminal, an outcast, was unthinkable. It was obscene in the original and best sense of that word.
If we are to understand the Passion Story of the gospels as the liturgies of Holy Week unfold, we must regain an appreciation of the huge impact the cross had on all thinking about God, then and now. The shame of the crucifixion in the ancient world was the issue that "pulled out the beard (Isaiah 50:6)" of the church's witness, bringing a humiliation to the message.
II. The Witness Of An Early Hymn
Nonetheless, the first-century Christians undertook the great commission of carrying the gospel into the world by preaching "right into the teeth" of the scandal. The early preaching of the church, as Luke records it in the Book of Acts, often comes to the point forcefully: "This Christ whom you (or your leaders) crucified, God has raised up from the dead."8
Again, Paul shouts the affirmation: "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:23)."
The early church, even before Paul's letters to Christians at Corinth or Philippi, preached and sang the message of the crucified Savior. Most scholars believe that today's Second Lesson from Philippians (Philippians 2:5-11) is an early Christological hymn, already known to Paul's readers.
We must pause here to remind ourselves that the early Christians had been worshiping together for more than two decades when Paul began writing his letters. In his letters to Corinth (c. 55 C.E.) there already were established liturgical formats, as Paul clearly sets forth in the matter of the Eucharist. There appear to be in place by this time approved "verba," the very words that continue to appear in our eucharistic liturgies to this day (1 Corinthians 11:23-26).
There were also hymns, to be sure. As Paul writes to Philippians in today's lesson (c. 60 C.E.), he quotes this pre-Pauline Christological hymn. It encompasses the humiliation and glorification of the Christ, specifically because of his death on the cross. Scholars believe that Paul quotes the familiar hymn, adding only the phrase "even death on a cross," lest the important point of the humiliation of the cross be overlooked. It becomes the fulcrum of the "therefore" which follows: "Being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name ... (Philippians 2:8-9)."
For all the humiliation and scandal the cross would bring to the preaching of the early church, the church never sought to blunt or bury it. Instead, the church preached into the teeth of the scandal. Slowly to those who would hear, the humiliation of Christ became a spectacular new insight into the incarnation of God in Christ. The death of Christ in the shame of the cross made all the more awesome the statement: "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19)."
III. Even Death On A Cross
Without a doubt, the Palm Sunday procession was an intentional demonstration on Jesus' part. Given the preparation of the disciples reported by the evangelists, and the manner in which the disciples were sent into Jerusalem to secure the donkey (and later in the week, the upper room), Jesus was under no illusion about the outcome of his arrival. Like the preaching of the early church, Jesus rode squarely into the midst of the opposition, intentionally proclaiming the coming of the Messiah as the prophet had promised: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass (Zechariah 9:9)."
The meaning of Jesus' arrival was not lost upon the people. "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest.... This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee (Matthew 21:9-11)."
The significance of the moment was equally clear to the Pharisees: "And some of the Pharisees in the multitude said to him, 'Teacher, rebuke your disciples.' He answered, 'I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out' (Luke 19:39-40)."
Matthew's record of the Passion Story read today follows closely the account of Mark, except for significant alterations that emphasize two important themes:
1. In Matthew's gospel events unfold because Jesus allows them to happen.
2. Jesus is willing to be humiliated in obedience to God's will.
Only in Matthew's gospel do we find the counsel to the disciple who drew his sword: "Do you not think that I could appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than 12 legions of angels? But then, how would the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so (Matthew 26:53-54)?"9
Clearly the New Testament reveals that Jesus accepted the prophetic role of the suffering servant, the sentence of death, and even death on a cross. He rode into the city not unaware of the probable consequences. He allowed the events to unfold, a matter forcefully reported by Matthew, implied by all the evangelists, and preached by the early church: "Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered (Hebrews 5:8)." Therefore we have the gospel report and the early first-century Christological hymn: "Though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8)."
Just as the early church preached right into the teeth of the "scandal," perceiving it to be the heart of God's spectacular glory and love, so Jesus rode squarely into the crisis of the cross and its shame. It was as Isaiah had written: "I was not rebellious, I turned not backward. I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I hid not my face from shame and spitting ... I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame (Isaiah 50:5-7)."
IV. "The Scriptures Fulfilled - It Must Be So"
Clearly Jesus was aware of the suffering servant of Deutero Isaiah,10 the second of the writers of the prophetic work of Isaiah. Our Old Testament text is the third of these four "servant songs," as they have been called by scholars. The trust and obedience undergirding these songs were learned early in Jesus' ministry. In the temptations of Jesus at the beginning of his ministry, it would appear that the issue in each of the three temptations centered upon either the trust of God's word (as with the serpent in the Garden of Eden) or upon a style of ministry for the one who had just heard the heavenly voice: "This is my beloved Son." In each temptation, Jesus addresses the issue of trusting obedience with an Old Testament reference: "Man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord (Deuteronomy 8:3)." "You shall not tempt the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 6:16a)." "You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve (Deuteronomy 6:13-14)."
This experience and trust mark the faithfulness of the "suffering servant" in Deutero Isaiah. The servant is commissioned by God: "The Lord God has given me the tongue of those who are taught ... Morning by morning he wakens, he wakens my ear to hear." Despite despicable treatment, the servant remains faithful: "I turned not backward ... I set my face like a flint (Isaiah 50:5, 7)." The servant expresses conviction that the experience of rejection and suffering is not a sign of God's rejection, but rather of his approval. "I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near (Isaiah 50:8)."
From the outset Jesus understood himself to be fulfilling the long-standing plan revealed by the prophets, trusting God to reveal himself through the faithfulness of his commissioned servant, the anointed one of the Lord. "Do you not think that I could appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than 12 legions of angels? But then, how would the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so (Matthew 26:54)."
Jesus, in the spirit of Isaiah's servant, remains constant and convinced of the faithfulness of the Lord who is best revealed through the faithfulness and obedience of his people.
V. God With Us!
Six centuries before the cross became the reality of the first-century Messianic experience, the significance of the suffering servant of God had been held up by Isaiah. Quickly the prophet gave a vision to the early church, transforming what might have been the rationalization of the cross to the proclamation of the cross as a message of God's spectacular glory.
The early church understood the servant songs as pictures of the Lord's passion. Jesus willingly, obediently and confidently delivered God's message in the face of rejection. Confidently and intentionally we see him ride into Jerusalem today. Quietly and purposefully he stands before Pilate later this week. Obediently, in Gethsemane's huge "nevertheless" he mounts the cross. Both Jesus and the servant reveal God's glory through suffering.
But hold on, friends. We live in a self-centered, sensate, secular culture driven by the pursuit of happiness and spoiled by instant gratification. Sacrifice and postponed fulfillment receive little good press these days. How can we hear this talk of the cross as anything different from those of the first century ... foolishness, madness and a stumbling block? How can we hear it as a proclamation of good news rather than a helpless rationalization?
To answer our question we must go back to the good news of Bethlehem. The babe of the manger - about whom angels sang and shepherds wondered, for whom stars shone forth brightly and kings came searching - was named Jesus. He was perceived and has since been proclaimed to be Emmanuel - that is to say, "God with us."
Theologians and the scriptures frequently speak of the wholly otherness of God, speaking correctly of the distance and transcendence of God. We are distanced both by our nature and our alienating sin. Isaiah 6:1-6 is profound in this regard.
In another sense, God has always been near to us. To Moses he says, "I have heard the cries of my people ... I shall deliver them." In the exodus God led the children of Israel by a pillar of fire during the night and a cloud by day. He built a covenant relationship of mutual faithfulness with his people as intimate as a human marriage, as the prophet Hosea learned and taught. Still, God was God and we were alienated in our sin.
In Bethlehem, "God with us" assumed new and exciting meaning. John says: "The Word became flesh and dwelt with us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father (John 1:14)." Paul quotes the hymn: He "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men." God has become like us, one of us. God truly "empties himself" to become like us, touching all of life and all of our lives with his transforming presence. There is no dark corner into which the shining light of God's love and his hunger for reconciliation do not shine.
Rather than a message to be buried or blunted in its scandal, the cross becomes for Paul and the early church the very spearhead of the good news. The horror of the cross is not too far for God to go. He sinks down with us into the meanest, bloodiest and cruelest places of our lives, associating with criminals and outcasts on every side. The fullest meaning of the Incarnation - God with us - caused even the earth to quake and the sun to hide its face. "My God! My God! Why hast thou forsaken me?" The God of the heavens had stepped into the depths of our human loneliness and fear. The Word had indeed become flesh and dwelt among us!
During those three hours, there must have been laughter in the hallways of hell. This time the tempter was sure to win. The love of God and the faithfulness of the servant could be broken this time. After all, did not the story of the temptations tell us that Satan had departed "until an opportune time (Luke 4:13)?" This was surely that time. God's love must have limits. The cross would be the fuller measure of the carpenter's faithfulness, son of God or not!
It was not to be so. From the shame and torment of the cross, in the very traumatic moments of the pain of death itself, still he prays for those who inflict this shameful and unjust death. "Father, forgive them ...!" Still he holds open the door of Paradise! "Today you will be with me ..." Neither the will of God nor the faithfulness of our God's Christ can be broken, even by the cross. It is a spectacular display of God's power, God's love and God's presence in his Son.
It is written: "I turned not backward ... I have set my face like a flint (Isaiah 50:5, 7)."
And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:8-11)."
God's spectacular glory, indeed!
A Postscript
As we meditate upon the Passion of our Lord during this Holy Week, it needs to be said: Jesus did not have to die.
He died because of decisions made by mostly responsible and respectable people. The authorities in Jerusalem could have seen the raising of Lazarus as a new and exciting sign of the presence of God. Caiphas might have worried more about the truth of that miracle than the potential repression of the Roman government should the crowd become boisterous.
Judas could have relented in his zeal to preempt the political choices of the Christ. The Sanhedrin might have recognized the false witnesses for what they were. The crowd might have continued its chants of "Hosanna," believing itself to have been right the first time. Pilate could have made the decision for the justice he clearly recognized. And, so it went.
Everyone of these people and groups had free choices!
Jesus died because of decisions responsible people made. God never foreordains his people to injustice, untruth or simple political expediency.
So it goes in our day, too. Often, truth comes in second to a whole host of personal goals and desires. When that happens, good things - and sometimes good people - die. Isn't it so!
End Notes
1. Martin Hengel, Crucifixion In the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, (Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1982), p. 22.
2. John Wilkinson, Jerusalem as Jesus Knew It, (London, Thames and Hudson, 1978), p. 151.
3. Ibid.
4. William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Vol. 2, Second Edition, (Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1956), p. 291.
5. Hengel, op. cit., p. 37.
6. Ibid., p. 1.
7. Documents of the Christian Church, Selected and Edited by Henry Bettenson, (London, Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 6-7.
8. This is a paraphrase of the concept as it appears in much of the preaching of the early church as Luke records it for us. An example is Acts 5:29-30.
9. A word of explanation: There appears a similar passage in John's account at John 19:10-11. Here Jesus denies Pilate's power: "You have no power over me except that it was delivered to you from above." The difference is that he neither claims nor hints at influencing that "power from above."
10. As noted in Chapter 6, End note 11, "Deutero Isaiah" is the name given by biblical scholars to the second writer in the book of Isaiah. Some agree that there are really three "Isaiah's" though everyone agrees upon at least two. The problem: The first 39 chapters of Isaiah are written between the reigns of Uzziah, who died in 740 B.C.E. and Hezekiah, during the time of the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib, who writes of this siege: "I sat on my golden throne on the Mount of Olives and I shut up the Jew Hezekiah like a bird in a cage." Because of Hezekiah's secret water tunnel - and perhaps the hand of God against the Assyrians - Jerusalem was not conquered. Chapter 39 closes at this point. Chapter 40 begins a period of writings coming from the time of the Babylonian exile, at least 185 years later. Chapter 50 is a part of the section called "Deutero Isaiah."
