Sermons

The Second Word

And they cast lots to divide his garments. ³⁵ And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!” ³⁶ The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine ³⁷ and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” ³⁸ There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”
³⁹ One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” ⁴⁰ But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? ⁴¹ And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” ⁴² And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” ⁴³ And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:34b-43 ESV)

The penitent criminal is of a different nature than the im‑penitent criminal. Both criminals apparently had reviled Jesus initially (Matthew 27:44; Mark 15:32), but then the penitent criminal apparently was changed. Still sinful by nature, he now also has a redeemed nature, that knows both that he is sinful and that Jesus is not sinful and that trusts Jesus lovingly and mercifully to forgive and so deliver him. Jesus hears the penitent criminal’s individual confession and plea for individual absolution, and Jesus absolves him. Jesus is hanging on the cross precisely to save sinners, sinners like the two criminals, and sinners like each one of us! When we confess our sin and trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us. God forgives our sinful nature and all our sin, whatever our sin might be. What a great gift God gives us by making available individual absolution from our pastor, so that the sins that particularly trouble us likewise can be confessed and forgiven and we can “go in peace” (LSB 293). Do not wait to make use of such confession and absolution until you are, as it were, hanging on a cross! Already brought by God into His Kingdom of Grace that is the Church on Earth, we who repent can be sure that we also will be brought by God into His Kingdom of Glory that is the Church in Heaven. God’s Word and Sacraments assure us that on the day of our physical deaths we also will be with Him in paradise, enjoying His Presence then in an “intermediate state”, until the Last Day, which brings our fullest enjoyment of His Presence in our resurrected and glorified bodies.

Collect for the Second Word, and Hymn 447:4-6

The Third Word

But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. ²⁶ When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” ²⁷ Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. (John 19:25-27 ESV)

You get a sense of how widely the name “Mary” was used at the time of the New Testament when there are at least three women named “Mary” standing by the cross of Jesus! Jesus’s mother’s “sister” is likely not “Mary the wife of Clopas” but Salóme the wife of Zebedee and so the mother of Jesus’s disciples James and John (Matthew 27:55-56; Mark 15:40-41), the same John who is usually understood to be the disciple whom Jesus loved and the Divinely‑inspired author of the Gospel account that bears his name. Apparently there are no half‑brothers or even step‑brothers of Jesus present, so Jesus entrusts the care of His mother to seemingly His first‑cousin John. One time Jesus’s mother and His step‑brothers or other “cousins” tried to seize Jesus, saying that He was out of His mind (for example, Mark 3:21-35), but now, as prophesied, a sword was piercing through His mother’s own soul (Luke 2:35). Jesus is dying for humankind’s—including our—failures to keep God’s Commandments, and Jesus continues to keep those Commandments perfectly, in this case, honoring and serving His mother, loving and cherishing her. No disrespect is conveyed by His addressing her as “Woman” (confer John 2:4), though, if some of us spoke that way to our mothers, we rightly might be slapped. Jesus’s love and obedience leads to our love and obedience, and to our forgiveness, when we still fail, as we will fail. Jesus’s entrusting the care of His mother to His disciple John is often also taken as representing Jesus’s entrusting the care of His Church to His ministers, even as their together dispensing His forgiveness of sins by means of such things as Holy Baptism and the Holy Supper are often seen in the blood and water that later flowed from Jesus’s side (John 19:34). Truly, He so graciously deals with us, who are brothers and sisters of and in Christ, His reconfigured holy family.

Collect for the Third Word, and Hymn 447:7-9

The Fourth Word

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. ⁴⁶ And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Ēli, Eli, léma sabachtháni?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” ⁴⁷ And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” (Matthew 27:45-47 ESV; confer Mark 15:34)

The Virgin Mary and the Apostle John may have left, but Jesus is neither alone, with a crowd of people standing by, nor afraid in the darkness, which they experienced from 12 Noon until 3 o’clock in the after‑noon. Apparently in a combination of Hebrew and Aramaic, Jesus cried out as if for help, in the midst of it all, the opening words, if not the whole, of Psalm 22, which was the last thing we heard here last night. Long before bad cellphone connections and mis‑typed text messages that muddle our communication, some of the bystanders mis‑heard Jesus as calling Elijah. No, Jesus was not praying to a saint, which prayer God has neither commanded nor promised that a saint even can hear, much less answer. Jesus asked the Father in prayer, and, as only seems to be the case when we pray, no answer comes—no booming voice this time (for example, Matthew 3:17; 17:5), either for His or for anyone else’s benefit (John 12:27-30). But, is the answer not clear? God the Father has forsaken His Son Jesus because His Son Jesus has taken on our sin. Jesus is forsaken so that we are not forsaken, as we otherwise would deserve to be forsaken. How God the Father could forsake God the Son, with Whom He shares one Divine substance, is part of the inexplicable mystery of the Holy Trinity, just as how only God the Son became human flesh, and not also God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, is part of the mystery of the Incarnation! Because Jesus on the cross was forsaken for us, we who repent are forgiven. The Triune God is present to forgive us in His Word and Sacraments, and, by His Word and Sacraments, the Triune God dwells within us. God answers our prayers in the time and way that He knows is best. And, as St. Paul writes elsewhere, “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, [is] able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

Collect for the Fourth Word, and Hymn 447:10-12

The Fifth Word

After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” (John 19:28 ESV)

The Son of God in the human flesh of Jesus is both all‑knowing and experiences thirst (confer John 4:6). Talk about a juxtaposition! As all‑powerful God, He could have miraculously quenched His human thirst. But, in His humble state, He did not always or fully use His Divine powers, so that He could suffer and die for our sins and we could be forgiven. And, perhaps at this point is as good of a point as any for me to say a word or two about Jesus’s suffering. Holy Scripture does not go into Jesus’s suffering in as great of detail, say, as Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ, which certainly is not to say that Jesus’s suffering did not happen, or even to say that His suffering did not happen as Mel Gibson’s movie portrayed it. We confess in the Apostles’ Creed that Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.” His suffering’s extent is not as important as His suffering’s purpose! We confess in the Nicene Creed that what He did was “for us” and “for our salvation”. Medical doctors in scholarly journals diagnose the cause of death by crucifixion as “hypovolēmic shock and exhaustion asphyxia” (JAMA), and dehydration can be a part of that suffocating to death. But, Jesus surely does not express His thirst in an attempt to save His life, but Jesus seems to express His thirst in order to prompt the soldiers to offer him some sour wine from their jar that they had, like someone today might carry a water bottle. Earlier Jesus had refused wine mixed with gall, or wormwood or myrrh (Matthew 27:34; Mark 15:23), perhaps a narcotic or even poison, but the soldiers’ giving Jesus the sour wine is said to have fulfilled Psalm 69 verse 21, and Jesus’s receiving the sour wine apparently helped Him say the Sixth, if not also the Seventh, Word. Jesus has fulfilled or will fulfill all that both others and He Himself prophesied about Him, including His suffering many things, being killed, and on the third day being raised (for example, Matthew 16:21). Thus, we who hunger and thirst for righteousness can be blessed, as Jesus said elsewhere, for we will be satisfied (Matthew 5:6).

Collect for the Fifth Word, and Hymn 447:13-15

The Sixth Word

A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. ³⁰ When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” … (John 19:29-30a ESV)

Recently I read that the use of a hyssop branch to hold the sponge full of the sour wine to Jesus’s mouth need not necessarily mean that Jesus’s body was all that high above the ground—apparently hyssop branches are typically only one to two feet long. So, Jesus was not “high” in the sense of vertical extent, nor was Jesus “high” in the sense of a euphoric state induced by alcohol or drugs. He fully experienced the pain of being nailed to the cross and all that resulted from that crucifixion. He received the sour wine in order to say, “It is finished”. His one Greek word states the action completed in the past with its result continuing in the present and the future. Though His statement does not identify Who “finished” it, or what “it” was that was finished, Jesus finished the work of our redemption. He kept the law that we fail to keep, and He paid the price for our failure to keep it. His death on the cross paid in full the debt of our sins so that we can be forgiven, and so He reconciled us to God. The Divinely‑inspired author of Hebrews says, “by a single offering [Chrst] has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14). The root of the verb “has perfected” used there is the same root of the verb that Jesus used when He said, “It is finished”. On the cross Jesus finished His work of redeeming us, but the work of our being made holy in a sense continues. Hyssop branches’ use with both the water of cleansing (for example, Numbers 19:18; Psalm 51:7) and the blood of the Passover lamb and the sacrifices that sealed the covenant with Moses (Exodus 12:22; Hebrews 9:19) can remind us of Holy Baptism and the Holy Supper, which God uses, among other things, as He works in us to complete our sanctification. And, as St. Paul writes elsewhere using another verb related to Jesus’s saying “It is finished”, we can be sure that “He Who began a good work in [us] will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6).

Collect for the Sixth Word, and Hymn 447:16-18