God of all things, grant us to follow in the
way of your Son this week, that through his Death, we might receive the riches
of your grace ☩ in the
name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Continuing to look at Holy Week through the lens of sacrifice, tonight I want to reflect upon why it is that we use the word “sacrifice” when it comes to the Crucifixion. Yes, it was a death, and we speak of the death of Jesus, but it was more than a death. Jesus’ was a particular kind of death – one that was shameful and painful. This pain and shame were borne for us and so looking upon the horrors of this sacrifice shows us something about the love that stands behind it.
Tonight’s
Collect directs attention towards the suffering and shame of the cross when we
prayed, “Lord God, who blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and
his face to be spit upon.” This prayer is drawing on the imagery we heard in
the reading from Isaiah – that the Servant of Israel gave his back to those who
struck him and his cheeks to those pulling on his beard. He did not hide his
face from insult and spitting. As horrific as the cross was, it was endured
willingly by Jesus. When God chose to be incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, God
knew that the Jewish people were under Roman occupation. And God knew how the
Romans dealt with enemies of the state. God knew what crucifixion was all about
and that it would likely be the result of his ministry among us. It is one
thing to end up in a position of suffering or even making a sacrifice for
others in the moment, but it is something else entirely to choose that
sacrifice when it did not have to be so.
In her book, The
Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, the Rev. Fleming
Rutledge powerfully writes about the shame and horrors of the death which Jesus
endured. She writes, “The cross is ‘irreligious’ because no human being
individually or human beings collectively would have projected their hopes,
wishes, longings, and needs onto a crucified man.” And this is because of just
how deeply degrading it was to be crucified. Yes, the pain was horrendous, but
it was about more than just inflicting pain. Rutledge notes “Degradation was
the whole point… executed publicly at a major crossroads, stripped naked, left
to be eaten by birds or beasts, victims of crucifixion were subject to optimal,
unmitigated, vicious ridicule.” People would often hurl insults at the people
on the cross who had no choice but to be there, completely naked and on full
display. Quite literally, it is adding insult to injury. And, because of this
shame and horrors, and perhaps fear of joining him on a cross, Jesus is
abandoned by his disciples in his greatest moment of need. The message of
crucifixion was, as Rutledge writes, “to pile on shame upon shame to show that
the victim was not fit for human company at any level.”
This
is what led James Cone to compare the crucifixion of Jesus in 1st-century
Palestine to the lynching of blacks in 20th-century America in his
book called The Cross and the Lynching Tree. All the horrible things
that you’ve heard about lynching – the dehumanizing, the ridicule, the
spectacle of it, and even the normalcy of it – those things all applied to the
Roman practice of crucifixion. And in both crucifixion and lynching, the public
nature of it makes it all the worse. These murders were not illegal – they
happened in full sight of the law, sometimes even carried out by it. Rutledge
says, “Crucifixion was cleverly designed – we might say diabolically designed –
to be an almost theatrical enactment of the sadistic and inhumane impulses that
lie within human beings.” Through the shame and degradation, we might say the
cross was also a means of psychological torture.
But
the physical elements of it cannot be overlooked. I mention these things not to
add gratuitous descriptions of violence, but because it says something about
the God we have that would take on such a sacrifice. The events began with
scourging and whipping. The pain here would be enough to break us all. After
being paraded through the streets to the site of crucifixion, the criminal
would be nailed, often at the wrists, to the wooden plank, at which point the
crucifixion would commence. Victims could live for hours on the cross, some
even lived for days – a lot depended on the level of scourging that had been
endured. Beyond the pain of the wounds, the truly sadistic part of the cross is
that the person on the cross has to labor for each breath. What we call
“passive exhalation,” which we do thousands of times a day without thinking
about it, becomes an excruciating experience. You had to fight against your
body weight for breath, with the result that each breath took tremendous effort
and agony. Adding to the degradation, eventually you lose control of bodily
functions, you have unspeakable thirst, muscle cramps, and insects and animals
feasting on wounds. Eventually, the person, acting as their own executioner, no
longer has the strength to breathe or cannot endure the pain of doing so, and
so your diaphragm ends up suffocating you; your own body weight killing you.
Simply
put – it is too much for us. The social, psychological, and physical elements
all come together for the most grotesque and disturbing form of execution that
the world has known. And yet, this is the primary symbol of our faith. This sacrifice
is, for us, a sign of victory. We’ve become so accustomed to it that we might
skip over the absurdity of this. Why did God have to die in such an atrocious
way? Again, turning to Rutledge, she writes “According to the Christian Gospel,
the Son of God voluntarily and purposefully absorbed all of that, drawing it
into himself.”
The
4th-century Archbishop of Constantinople, Gregory of Nazianzus, one
put it quite succinctly: “For that which He has not assumed He has not healed;
but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.” The worst of the worst
happened to Jesus – he suffered emotional pain, psychological pain, physical
pain, defilement, and abandonment. The full weight of sin was experienced by
him and he died as a rejected and condemned criminal. No, Jesus did not
experience every form of pain – he did not have cancer nor he did not die in an
automobile accident. It’s not about the specifics, but rather the universality
of what he endured. Whatever pain, loneliness, darkness, fear, or situation we
find ourselves in – Jesus has known and brings that into the very heart of God.
And God, who is perfect, loving, and healing, redeems all brokenness that is
brought into God’s heart. Whatever it is that we are dealing with – God knows
that pain, God is with us in that pain, and God works to bring about healing.
Because the absolute worst was done to Jesus, the absolute worst has been
saved. This is why the Cross had to be as bad as it was, so that there would be
no question about the depths to which God would go to save, so that there would
be no question about whether or not God understands pain and rejection, so that
there would be no question about the limits of salvation. All is healed on the
cross and so we can say with confidence that all shall be well.
Yes, looking at the cross is a gruesome, repulsive, and horrific thing to do, but in doing so, we also see that Jesus’ sacrifice absorbs all evil, all suffering, all death. And that is what Jesus takes into the grave and will emerge from on Easter morning. As that lovely hymn puts it, “What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss to lay aside his crown for my soul, for my soul, to lay aside his crown for my soul.” Indeed, what wondrous love.
