 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| The Passion: Jesus
Allowed It Jesus said,
This is the ethic that Jesus preached, and it is no easy ethic to live by. Have you tried it? If you’re like me and your car gets sideswiped on the street, you have no desire to “turn the other fender.” If you’re in school and another student steals your homework, copies your answers, then turns it in for credit, you probably don’t pray for the misguided classmate. If you’re approached on the sidewalk after dark by a foreboding stranger, if you feel fear, you’re probably thinking of all the ways you can possibly resist him – run, scream, pick up a stick. The thought of not resisting him at all never crosses your mind. Truly this is an ethic easier said than done. Jesus not only preached this ethic. He practiced it, and he was practicing what he preached on the night in the olive grove when the mob of soldiers came for him, led by deceitful Judas. If you saw the movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” you recall vividly how the disciples frantically tried to resist the soldiers, and how Peter picked up a sword and began swinging it, cutting off the ear of the high priest’s servant. People are shouting, people are running, a sense of panic shoots through the air. But Jesus stands there calmly, patiently, and identifies himself without the slightest hint of resistance. Just an hour before his arrest Jesus experienced the most intense conflict of his life as he prayed, “Let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as you will.” One last time he checked the flight plan. Finally, the resistance was over and he accepted the Father’s awful will for him. Once and for all he was ready. And it would never have happened had he not been. Why did the passion of the Christ happen? That’s the question we are considering in this short, four-week series as we lead up to Easter Sunday. The first answer, which we offered last week, is that God willed it. God, whose sovereignty is as vast as the sky, is surprised by nothing. In his wisdom he sometimes allows evil to have its way, and this is what he willed on that night in the garden. But that is not the whole story. Not only did it happen because God willed it. It also happened because Jesus allowed it. The prophecy of Isaiah 53 has been so inspirational to so many people, and we are looking at it in this series. It speaks about our Lord’s submissiveness specifically,
“He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.” To say that Jesus suffered greatly is an understatement, like saying that there is a lot of water in the ocean. So, let’s take a moment to consider the intensity of the suffering that he voluntarily submitted to. For simplicity sake, I’m going to group it into three categories. The first is PSYCHOLOGICAL SUFFERING. This is a kind of pain that is far deeper than skin deep, but surely it hurts just as much as blows to the head or nails in the hands. John’s Gospel tells us the sad truth that Jesus came unto his own, but “his own received him not.” Isaiah 53 prophesied this by saying,
All of us have experienced rejection in one form or another. I am happy to say that any rejection I have experienced has been minor in comparison to some. I heard the story not long ago about a young woman who was abandoned by her mother at six months of age. She was raised by an aunt, and she knew her mother, but her mother wanted nothing to do with her. This is a wound she will carry with her for the rest of her life. Some of you have been stabbed by the rejection of a husband or wife. Your spouse said on the wedding day, “for better, for worse,” “forever,” and “I do,” but all that changed. How much more painful can rejection get? It can get more painful yet. The hope of a Messiah had been born into the collective minds of the Jewish people even before the days of the prophet Isaiah, and he lived 800 years before the birth of Christ. As far back as the garden of Eden the Lord promised one to come who would strike the head of the serpent, a promise portrayed artistically in the Mel Gibson film. Yet, after so many generations of waiting, when he came they rejected him. Imagine saving all year for Christmas, then deciding not to celebrate it in December. Imagine hoping and praying your daughter through high school, then disowning her on the day of her graduation. Imagine waiting for months for your son to return from Iraq, then turning away from him at the dock. Then, turn the tables and imagine if it were you being rejected.
Jesus suffered psychologically, and he SUFFERED PHYSICALLY too. The movie did the best job ever done of depicting this aspect of the abuse of Christ. Just when you think he couldn’t possibly take any more, more is heaped on him. After the beatings, the whipping, the pressing of the crown of thorns, when the heavy cross is then dropped on his back, you are sure that he will never live long enough to be crucified. Was this a bit of Hollywood over-dramatizing in action? Not at all. If anything, crucifixion was more horrible than that. Today when we think of a cross we think of a steeple decoration or a cute necklace. Nobody thought like that in the first century. The cross represented everything horrible and nothing beautiful. It was a symbol of humanity sunk to the lowest hell. Melito of Sardis, in the second century, much closer, of course, to the events of the Gospels, wrote this about the pain and indignity associated with crucifixion, especially the crucifixion of Jesus,
When we think about the abuse that Christ suffered, of course we think mostly about this form of it, and also the psychological abuse, but there is a third category of abuse suffered by our Lord. Jesus SUFFERED SPIRITUALLY also. What do I mean by that? How could man inflict spiritual abuse on Jesus Christ, of all people? This is not a form of abuse inflicted by man but by God. The worst of it all wasn’t the rejection, much as that must have hurt. The worst of it all wasn’t the nails, though such pain would have been literally excruciating. (The word excruciate is from the Latin word “crux” which means cross. To say that something is excruciating is to say that it feels like crucifixion.) The worst of it was that, on the cross, Jesus took upon himself the sin of the world and thus became separated from God the Father. From the cross Jesus cried out, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.”
The Westminster Larger Catechism poses this question: “Wherein consisted Christ’s humiliation after his death?” And this is the answer: “Christ’s humiliation after his death consisted in his being buried, and continuing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death till the third day; which hath been otherwise expressed in these words, He descended into hell” (Question 50). In other words, in that separation from the Father, Jesus tasted the agony of hell.
When we lived in Fillmore, Amy was involved in 4H. Specifically, she was in the goat group, which means that each spring a young kid (the kind that come from goats) was purchased by her and raised to be auctioned off at the fair. The spring was spent rising at the crack of dawn, or earlier, every day in order to get to the pen and feed the goat. And of course goats eat more than once a day, so it was back again in the afternoon for more feeding, along with cleaning out the pen and exercising the animal. One year she named the goat “Butterfinger.” Amy would walk Butterfinger without the use of so much as a leash. She became part of its herd and, being a herding animal, it would never leave her side. Butterfinger trusted Amy implicitly and followed her wherever she led it. When she put it back in its pen and went home it cried its little head off. August meant it was time for the fair. The fair was fun mixed with the hardest work of all. Now, instead of tending to the animals just once or twice a day, the 4H kids had to be with their pigs, sheep, cattle, and goats all the time. Pens had to be kept meticulously because inspections were frequent. Then came judging. This was the tensest time. A panel of judges would grade your “project” against those of all your peers and say who did the best job. Ribbons were handed out. Winners were elated. Losers were dejected. Next came the auction, which was the true goal of the whole project. In spite of what the official judges said about your animal, the big issue was whether or not you could sell it for a good price. Nearly everyone was happy on auction day because the community supported the 4H program generously, usually paying a good bit more for the ham or veal than they might have to pay elsewhere. Goats were sold too, which of course included Butterfinger. There is only one reason that a farm animal is sold at an auction at the fair. The buyer is planning to butcher it for food. That is the hard and cold reality of it all. This concept doesn’t sound so bad when in April you are mucking out pens in the rain, but by the end of fair week, a change in attitude has taken place. Saturday was the last day of the fair. It was the day after the auction. It was the day to turn over the animals to the slaughter house. I called it Black Saturday. One last time Amy led Butterfinger. This time into a large, dimly lit barn, with all the other goats, as well as the pigs, cattle and sheep. A knot is formed in the pit of the child’s stomach, and you can see anxiety on their faces, but the animals walk in confidently, patiently and submissively, just like always. You lead the animal into the barn, you leave it there, and walk away. Amy was a mess when she came out of the barn, but Butterfinger was fine with it. That’s the way, the Bible says, that Jesus faced his passion.
Why did he do it? There is a song,
|