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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning, for this evening, comes from both readings. You may be seated. All that Matthew’s gospel says is they crucified him. That’s it. Not a lot of details. But the details are important, for that’s the people that took him to the cross that evening, the soldiers. It was just another thing for them to have to do, and they did it. For someone who’s being crucified, you pray that the soldier who gets to pound that nail through your flesh is a strongly built man with a steady aim and a strong hand. Just as the psalm says, they have pierced me and have nailed me, so did they against that cross through the wrist bones in his hand and through the feet.
Setting him up on that cross, and yet even though the soldiers were the ones who led him to the cross, nailed him to the cross, lifted up the cross and let it pound into the hole, it was God the Father who really led him. It was God the Father who beckoned him on. It was God, the Father’s will, set before time began that Christ would be the one to fulfill your death, your damnation, your rejection. That’s why Jesus said in Psalm 22, you lay me in the dust of death, you being the Father.
The dust of death, that is a very important statement because it pulls in from Adam to the present. The dust of death. Adam was made from dust. Last Wednesday night you had a cross placed upon your forehead with ashes and it was said to you, dust you are and to dust you shall return. The left-hand panel, top picture is of Christ being crucified. At the bottom of the cross in yellow is a skull and crossbones symbolizing death. Symbolizing the death that came into this world through Adam, the man made from dust, and inheriting from him have we all been made from dust and shall return to dust, save one, the one who hangs upon the accursed tree for you.
You can imagine how many times those soldiers who had to pound those nails through that flesh and bone, the people would not cooperate and lay there calmly, would they? No. It was common to give them a little gall mixed with wine in order to kind of get them to calm down and drug them in a sense. Not our Lord. Lovingly and willingly, he laid there and had it done to himself. Lovingly and willingly, he hung there, led by the Father in his beloved love for you.
After they had him crucified and upon that accursed tree, these words from that same psalm that we read this evening, Apply. Your and my moral fiber is not above reproach. Your and my thoughts and ideations are not beyond compare, but rather compare to all the other flesh that dwells in this world. Whether they sit in a pew, whether they have reverend before their name, or whether they sit out on the street begging money, we all come from the same dust. His strength was focused on one accomplishment and one accomplishment for your and my salvation.
And as they sat there and watched him, they divided his garments. You see, contrary to the artwork that’s depicted of Christ crucified, they were typically crucified naked, their privates not covered. So that full humiliation, full abandonment, fully in the sight of God, where Adam ran away and hid himself, stands or hangs Christ our Lord for you. He who knew no sin became sin for you. They gambled on it, didn’t they? Throwing out their dice. Christ’s death was not a gamble, but a certain win for those who believe. It was not a chance; it was divine and providential. God’s hand was in it all.
The only death in this world ever willed by God is the will that crushed him. Death was never a part of God’s will for his creation. It was what Adam brought into this world. It is what you gave to your sons and daughters and what was given to you by your parents. And we all have to wrestle with it. Degree by degree, day by day, decade by decade, we all have to wrestle with it. Knowing that only one will for death was given, and that was given to the one who hangs upon the tree.
As they looked at him and watched him, that’s all the text said, they looked at him and watched him. What were they waiting for, or were they? You know how many times we drive on 35, and if the traffic’s slow, we guess there’s probably been a wreck. And when we finally approach it, we see the lights and we drive by it slowly, gawking and looking. And we wonder, was anyone injured or was anyone killed or was anyone hurt or whatever? And then we get past it out of our mind and drive on home. That’s kind of how the soldiers viewed Christ. He was something to behold, to watch, but he was not watched with faith, but with disdain.
Lent is a time for us to watch him again. Not so that we can have our gut cringe with the gore. It is not about the gore per se. It is about the sacrifice. All sacrifices are gory. But this sacrifice was the sinless one for the sinner. The innocent one for the guilty. He cast himself completely on the Father’s will and not his own. He did not seek what he wanted or what he thought best or how it would advance him. Unlike you and unlike me, our thoughts so self-centered and self-protecting, we even love another person typically by how what we’re going to get out of it. He doesn’t serve my purpose, I won’t see him.
And they watch a man who’s abandoned. There is no one there. They’ve all scattered. No one close. Save, yes. Yes. Mary, the mother of our Lord, and John, his beloved. But death is a time when you are abandoned. No one dies with somebody. Somebody is there while they die, but no one dies with somebody. We, you, I, die alone as he died alone, but never alone like him. Truly, he was abandoned on that tree.
Adam wasn’t abandoned after he had sinned, was he? The prodigal son wasn’t abandoned after he had left his father. You were not abandoned when you were conceived in your mother’s womb, no matter if it was in a Christian family or not. You were not abandoned. All because he was the only one truly abandoned. So that you always have him with you. Lo, I am with you always. You are never alone. Just him. Just him.
In fact, there is no other place in all of Christ’s life that reveals him as God’s anointed son as here on that tree. Yes, the other places fulfilled Scripture and pointed to him, but here is the glory of which Jesus spoke in the Gospel of John. This is the glory of which he speaks. It’s not just the resurrection. It’s the entire event, and the crucifixion is an integral, critical part of that. And there we see God die for the creature.
But it wasn’t the soldiers who crucified him, was it? You and I know that. Yes, it was your sin and my sin, but it wasn’t the soldiers. It was the Father. As Isaac lay beneath the drawn knife of Abraham, so the Father was not stopped as he plunged the knife into his son as the sacrifice. There was no ram in the thicket. This is the sacrifice for all that the Father was pleased to give. Amen.
So that you, his children, can be called children of the Heavenly Father. And so that you, his children, can cry out, Abba, Father, with words that only children can. You will never be denied. And he, in his midst, never denied the Father. He even says, you have been my God in the psalm. You have been my God in the past and at this present moment as I am dying. You have been my God.
For all the times when we can say we have not acted as if he was our God and we were his children. In perfect faith and in perfect words did he proclaim that. Watch and believe in the sacrifice given for you.
Then for all that wrought my pardon… For thy sorrows deep and sore, for thine anguish in the garden, I will thank thee evermore. Thank thee for thy groaning, sighing, for thy bleeding, and thy dying, for that last triumphant cry, and shall praise thee, Lord, on high.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.