Look! He Is Crucified!

(A sermon for Good Friday, 2012)

It is a good thing during this Holy Week for us to imagine that we were there.

Please close your eyes and imagine.

It has been a long and awful day.

Your Teacher, your Master, the one on whom you had pinned so many of your hopes, has been beaten, mocked, humiliated, and convicted of challenging the cooperating authorities of religion and empire.

He has been sentenced to death.

After a torturous walk on which he was accompanied by other convicted insurrectionists and by crowds of onlookers, his arms were nailed and roped to the crossbeam that was then hoisted to the upright beam to which it was fastened. His ankles were then nailed to sides of the upright beam.

There he hangs, exposed and vulnerable, brutalized and humiliated.

Look at him.

He is bruised and bleeding.

Look at him.

He is exhausted and spent.

Look at him.

He is dying.

Look at him.

He is what happens to love and grace when they are lived fully and well.

Look at him.

He has given of himself until he is empty.

Look at him.

He said to be his disciples we must follow him.

Look at him.

He draws his last breath.

Look at him.

He is taken down from the cross.

Look at him.

He is laid in a tomb.

Look at him.

He is sealed in the tomb by a large stone.

Look at him.

He is dead.

Look at him.

Please open your eyes.

Now…

Look at him.

Look at him….

Now…hear the word of the Lord:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)

and

Then he said to them all, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?" (Luke 9:23-25)