From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), (Matthew 27: 45-46).
Today is the middle of what Christians know as Passion Week, or Holy Week. Beginning with the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday, the week changed from one where the multitudes shouted “Hosanna!” (which ironically means “save us”), to a rigged minority demanding “Crucify him!”.
A number of years ago, I was invited to Mel Gibson’s office to view an early cut of “The Passion of the Christ”. Mel’s partner Bruce Davey had become a good friend and invited me to the screening. At the time, the film was over three hours long and the dialogue was all in Aramaic, without subtitles. Not long after, I arranged a screening with some colleagues in LA who I hoped might partner in the distribution of the film. Their consensus was that the film was entirely too violent and no one would pay to see it. I repeatedly disagreed with their evaluation, but lost the argument. The rest, as they say, is history.
As I watched the film, my own conviction was that it actually was not as violent as the actual crucifixion of Jesus. Later, when my good friends Mark Burnett and Roma Downey took on first the Bible as a whole, then the life of Jesus in particular, and now A.D. (which premieres Sunday night on NBC), I had the same feeling. As difficult as it was to watch the crucifixion scenes, I knew that it was worse in reality.
Good Friday and Easter are intended to remind us of how costly God’s grace really is. Someone coined the explanation of Grace as “Gods Riches At Christ’s Expense” – GRACE! The most loving person in human history, the incarnation of God in human flesh, the one who spent three-plus years healing, restoring, loving, and teaching was falsely arrested, subjected to a kangaroo court, beaten, mocked, and spit upon by the religious leaders of the day, turned over to the Roman authorities, beaten again, mocked again, scourged to within an inch of his life, and then subjected to the most brutal and painful of human executions: crucifixion.
The ultimate goal of crucifixion was death by either exposure or asphyxiation. Here was how it worked. Jesus hung from the cross by nails driven through his wrists (considered part of the hand in his day). His knees had been bent before driving another spike through his feet. As he hung from the cross, there would come times when his arms and lungs cramped and he could not breath. When this happened, he would have pushed up on his bent legs just enough to catch his breath. The pain of doing this was nearly unbearable and the position could only by maintained briefly until Jesus would have dropped back to hanging from his arms until he could not breath and the exercise of pushing up would be repeated. Up and down…up and down…up and down… This was the process of crucifixion. Jesus endured it for six hours!
About noon on Good Friday, darkness began to cover the city of Jerusalem. For three hours it was dark as Jesus hung in agony. It was during this time that Jesus endured another kind of agony. In a mysterious cosmic transaction, our sin was placed on him. This was the main reason for the crucifixion from God’s perspective. His agony was reckoned a substitute for our sin. As Paul later wrote, “God made him who knew no sin to became sin on our behalf…,” (II Cor. 5:21). In a moment that is so mysterious I can’t fully understand it, Jesus cried out the words of the prophetic Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Theologians believe that in this moment, the Eternal Son of God, the second person of the Godhead, experienced separation from the father in order to pay the price for our salvation.
The final cry from the cross (depending on how you harmonize the gospel accounts) was a triumphant “Finished!” The Greek word used here in the gospel is tetelesthai, and it meant “paid in full”. Jesus died. At the cross, God did all he needed to do, and could do, to make grace possible. He now deals with us on the basis of the finished work of Jesus. As we move toward Good Friday, and Easter, remember this: grace is free…to us…but it was paid for by the precious blood and suffering of Jesus!
For more on the crucifixion, go to: http://www.highlinecc.org/go/index.php/teaching/recent-sermons