A Sermon on The Fourth Last Word from the Cross:
Matthew 27: 39-50
Dr. Charles J. Tomlin
The Fourth Sunday of Lent, March 14, 2010
As a child, sitting still and listening to a sermon was one of the most difficult and demanding things I had to do to obey my parents. It might be one of the reasons I became a preacher, so I could talk and you do the listening. But of course you don’t have to listen. And with the spring finally in the air, I can understand when the world outside is more inviting than the words on the inside.
When you think about it, a sermon is a very peculiar thing. It is normally about 20 minutes of listening to something that is often unpleasant to listen to and then, after the sermon is over you are supposed to feel better. I know for a fact that shorter sermons make us feel better than longer ones.
And what do you say to a preacher after the sermon is over? The preacher preaches about having hope in hard times, getting through pain and suffering, caring for people you don’t care about, or bearing our cross like Jesus had to carry his. You don’t exactly enjoy this kind of talk and it is very awkward, when you think about to tell the preacher you did. Listening to a sermon is certainly not as nice as an afternoon stroll and definitely not as good as ice cream, but for some strange reason, at least sometimes, it might be what you needed even when it isn’t what you wanted. What a strange and even risky form of communication?
A story is told about a preacher who was on program at convention meeting to preach for twenty minutes. The other preachers from the district were sitting behind him in the choir section, giving him moral support, throwing in an occasional "Amen" to help him along. The preacher preached his twenty minutes and continued, despite the time limited allotted.
He preached for 30 minutes, then forty minutes and then for an hour. He even continued for an hour and ten minutes. Finally, a brother sitting on the front row took a song book and threw it at the long-winded preacher, still going strong with his sermon. The preacher saw the song book as it was hurled his way and he ducked, something like President Bush did when that shoe was thrown at him. But the flying song book hit a man sitting in the choir section. As the man was going down, you could hear him say, "Hit me again, I can still hear him! Somebody please hit me again!" (From the Website: http://javacasa.com/humor/sermon.htm ).
This Fourth word from the cross can also be a word that hits us hard, not in the head but in the heart. As this “cry of dereliction” comes straight at us, we too might feel the need to duck, to want the preacher to stop; to tune out or turn away in repulsion. Who wants to hear anyone, let alone Jesus, scream out these words: “My God, My God, Why have your forsaken me?”
If Jesus was forsaken, what hope is there for us? We too can react to such a word at the cross very much like those who were around his cross, being filled with so much anxiety and nervousness about this moment, we can’t help but mock the man who has brought this agony upon himself and makes us keep looking at it.
But, knowing how demanding this sermon might be, especially if you come to this sanctuary hurting and to find sanctuary, let me give you this word of encouragement, even before I ask you to look straight into this very human and even divine darkness. By facing the pain of Jesus’ words head on, though very demanding and difficult upon our psyche, “this is the saying of the cross to have, if you have only one.” (Fleming Rutledge). Even though this is the cross “that causes us to tremble”, as the spiritual says, it is also the saying that probes the deepest depth, to build the firmest foundation of our faith where we find the greatest comfort.
AT THE CROSS WE FACE THE WORSE THAT CAN HAPPEN
But first we have to look straight into this darkness. And because we are far removed from the event of Jesus’ cross and so used to hearing of it, let me ask you to look into a darkness and dread you might not be used to. Let me ask you to look straight into the most dreadful, awful, and painful thought or reality you could imagine. This is not easy to do, especially at church where we normally come to hear a word of hope.
Will Willimon (Thank God It’s Friday, p. 39) has said his own church doesn’t do very well dealing with the dark anymore. With tongue in cheek but also with utmost seriousness, he says it all started long ago when they put Bonanza on Sunday night and his church stopped going to night services. Since that day, in his church and in many other churches, many have moved out of the dark, and even Sunday morning doesn’t face the darkness as much, because it has become a place we must entertain people, rather than entertain in our minds the difficult, dark side of life which demands reverence, stillness and attention. We prefer a happy church, with happy people, with upbeat music, and upbeat messages, instead of a real church, where we face life from all sides.
I heard one very popular T.V. preacher recently preach a sermon and said: “If you have God you should have joy in your heart, and you should then notify your face.” That wasn’t so bad, but then he added words that made me cringe: “God’s people should always be happy people.”
Maybe the preacher didn’t mean to sound like he did and maybe he had a good, expensive counseling service for all those people who’d come in wondering why they didn’t feel that way all the tiime. But when I heard this, I wondered what that happy, smiling, very “plastic looking and sounding preacher would tell Jesus on the cross! Could he even mention the cross on his national T.V. show and keep his big crowds coming?
Getting back to the other preacher, Will Willimon tells of a woman who told him once, “I’m at a happy church, unfortunately.
“A happy church?”
“Yep! Everything is so happy and upbeat. The preacher jumps up on stage at the beginning of the service, just grinning and giggling. It looks like he might be on drugs or something because he so unbearably and insufferably happy. Every other word from him is “awesome!” “Wasn’t that an awesome song?” “Isn’t our praise band just awesome?” The whole worship service, even the sermon is just so upbeat and giddy.
Then she said: “You know preacher, it’s a strange kind of living “Hell” to be going through a tough time in your life and be forced to worship in such a “happy” church. Don’t they realize that somebody here might be dying with cancer? Don’t they ever stop to think that somebody’s marriage might be falling apart or some parent is dealing with a difficult child?
There is something wrong with the church or the Christian who avoids seeing the dark side of life. Especially when have a “happy” life and attend a “happy” church there are good reasons to stop and look at the “real” cross, not just the one that we’ve decorated. There can even be an emotional and spiritual reward in looking straight into our greatest fears which we all hope will never come.
So, today, first of all, I want to ask you again not to duck, but sit up and dare to look directly into the worst thing you could ever imagine. You can’t really see the cross Jesus died upon until you look at the hill you might die on or you until you dare to peer into your pain or the pain of others and worship a while in the dark. If you are a parent, it might be the sickness, or the accidental death of your child that you can’t make yourself imagine. If you are married, it might be the death of your marriage, or worse the death and suffering of your spouse. It could be that this very day, right here and now, you are carrying a dreaded fear with you---a very real, tragedy, a sickness, a hurt, and a hidden pain, and carrying this “fear” around with you, you are looking around for something else, but you can’t see much of anything else.
AT THE CROSS WE LIVE THE QUESTIONS WITH NO LIVING ANSWERS
Though we all have mental pictures of our own worse fears, we may not want or be able to face them. But this is exactly what this Fourth saying from the cross asks us to try to do---to face the deepest feeling of dread and hurt Jesus felt on the cross so we can also face our own worse fears--our fears for others and our fear for ourselves. What we need also to consider, is that by facing the worse, even by facing this cross that hurts Jesus so deeply and so much, this very painful, dark, and fearful cross, is also the very same cross that can save. This cross which Jesus died upon and felt forsaken from, is the same cross that saves us from both the worst fears we have every imagined, and even from the realities we haven’t.
When we watched as the Two Towers fell in New York City on 9-11, the feeling most of us confronted was shock and disbelief: “I just can’t believe this is happening”, I felt myself and heard expressed from so many. It was that same kind of feeling I had when at 17 I was seriously injured in a car accident which nearly took my left foot. I remember my first thought in that moment was, “I can’t believe this is happening to me!” The next feeling that came to me and comes to most of us after “shock and disbelief” is this question being raise up by Jesus on the cross: “My God, Why?” This is living question that has no living answer, or at least no answer we can fully understand in this life. Why is this happening to me? Now that I know it is true, I could manage it better if I only knew why? Why God?
This question which Jesus asked is the kind of living question that was asked before the cross and it has been asked since. In fact, what Jesus is doing here is not only expressing his deepest emotion and feeling in this moment, but he is also quoting Scripture. The Psalmist, whether he was David or someone else also felt what Jesus felt. And the guarantee from the cross is that we, sometime or other will feel it to.
What did Jesus feel on the cross? Why was he quoting this Scripture from Psalm 22? Perhaps Jesus had memorized it as a child in his prayers or at the Synagogue, and like many of us do in life, we have no idea what these sacred texts might mean. Maybe when Jesus memorized this Scripture he had no idea, that when the time came and where he wanted so much to be the light of the world, that he too would have endure such extreme hours of darkness. But there this Scripture was, there in his heart and mind when he needed it most to express exactly how he felt, not only in the good, but also in the bad and the ugly: “My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?”
To hear Jesus say these words, brings both fear and comfort. If Jesus felt this way, so might we also feel this way. Life can seem unfair. Even the innocent suffer. Bad things happen to good people and there is no “living answer” to why. We have to learn to live the question without the answer. Though we’d like to have everything nice and tidy in our minds and in our morals, claiming that there must be “cause and effect” and a reason for everything, here, at the cross we can clearly see that there is pain for which there is no understandable reason.
While we might know that Jesus is suffering because of our sins, or because of the corrupt religion of his own people, or that he suffers because he was called to suffer, what we can never answer, is why he had to suffer in this most awful, despicable, destestible way, on the cross and why he had to feel that God abandoned him? What do you see when you look straight into the cross? Do you see how bad it was for God is to make his son suffer for us in this way, or do you see how bad humans can be? And if we are this bad, why did God make us in this way in the first place? Why did he make us so breakable? Is there some rhyme or reason for what it takes to have life and to have love? Why did this have to happen to Jesus and why do bad things have to happen to us? When heaven is in our future, why couldn’t we have a little more of it now, on earth as it is in heaven? We pray with Jesus on this, but this does not begin to answer the “why”. Why cannot be answered and will never be completely answered in our living. Some things, and perhaps the greatest things, even life itself, can never be answered in our living, but will only begin to be answered in our dying.
We all know this, but it needs to be said, so we will take nothing for granted. The most revealing, important moment in Jesus’ life is not when he lived, but when he died. Why is the cross right at the center of our faith? Why not the stone that was rolled away? Why not the dove that came down out of the sky and made Jesus feel special? Why not the staff of his strength and promise to be our shepherd? How does the cross get to be the central focus how we can we saved from what we come to know and experience in life, and also, how can the cross also save us from what we don’t know and can never know in this world?
AT THE CROSS GOD COMES NEAR
If there was ever a time since Jesus that any person or people felt like the were being abandoned by God, it was the Jews during the horror of the Holocaust. Eli Wiesel writes about one of the most horrible moments he observed, which still stands as the symbol of the worse thing that could ever happen. A young boy was being hung by the Nazis on the gallows and he was struggling and not dying quickly. The struggle against death went on and on and never seemed to stop. The boy was fighting in every way against this unjust dying.
Finally, after watching the boy struggle, someone can’t stand what they are seeing and cries out: “Where is God, Where is God?” After a few moments of silence, and the boy gives up his life, an attempt at an answer finally comes.
“There is God! There is God, dead on the gallows.” (As Remembered from Eli Wiesel's "The Night).
The apostle Paul says that and even greater mystery than Jesus dying on the cross, is the mystery that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.” It is not God demanding justice through his son, or righteousness through his son, it is God surrendering himself, his own rightness, so that he can love the world that is broken with sin. It is not justice that is on the cross, but it is love. It is God who empties himself of his high and mightiness, without losing his holiness, and this is what makes us know, that no matter what we’ve done, or haven’t done, what the world has done to us, or what life hasn’t done for us, that no matter how we might feel when darkness comes upon us, or great pain, even the great darkness of our own suffering and death, because God is there, in Christ, on the cross, not abandoning Jesus, but being in and so close to Jesus, that even Jesus can’t detect his presence, this is the moment that God promises to us, that what his son feels, we never have to experience.
The answer to our pain and our darkness is not an answer but a presence---a loving, forgiving presence that promises never to leave nor forsake us. It is no accident, that one of the most moving and endearing popular poems in our time, our own time of brokenness is the poem entitled “Footprints”. In that poem, a person who always walked with God and was used to seeing two sets of Footprints in the sand, complains to God because they look into the worse moments of their lives and see only one set of foot prints in the sand during those terrible moments. Most of you know how the poem ends, with God saying to the perplexed person; when you only see one set of footprints, that is not when I abandoned you, but that is when I carried you.
Whether or not you are able to look into the worst thing that could ever happen to you, it is the cross that not only startles us into reality, it is also the place where we discover God’s loving promise. Jesus felt everything in his own dying and death, and it is most important to know that he felt the worst thing, we don’t have to feel. We never have to wonder whether or not God will abandon us. Even when Jesus felt this way, he was still calling out to God. He couldn’t help himself, for he and the Father were one. If we will trust what God was doing through Jesus on the cross, we don’t have to understand it all, we don’t have to explain it all, all we have to do is trust him. “Jesus has redeemed us from the curse,” because, as the Scripture says, “because he was made a curse for us.” This is all we have to know. And because we now know that nothing separates us from the love of God, we still might experience the pain of life and death, we might even experience pain because we are innocent, not because we are guilty, but even then, we now know that “those who love God” and “are loved by God”, will never be put to shame nor ever, ever abandoned or forsaken. He will be there with us, even when we don’t even feel it or see it and find ourselves living the question. We can trust him, even without all the answers, because now, through the cross, we know God in the only way we need to know him. Our God is only the God of Heaven and Earth, but as the great creed of the Church declares, in the cross Jesus has descended into Hell and God was still with him, even when he felt abandoned. And if God can go there, God he can be anywhere. This God who did not spare his son going through this Hell, has come to save us from the worse Hell we can imagine. God goes there too, will he will be there with us and for us, to do for us, what we can never do for ourselves. Amen.
© 2010 All rights reserved Charles J. Tomlin, B.A., M.Div. D.Min.
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