Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; St John 18-19
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
On Monday we heard the reading from St Peter: He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might not die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls (1 Pt 2:24-25). He is clearly referencing the Isaiah 53 passage and the Suffering Servant; the “Gospel according to Isaiah,” who spoke with such precision of our Lord’s Passion; its as if he was an eye-witness. Interestingly, St John says, Isaiah beheld His glory and spoke of Him (Jn 12:41). And for the Fourth Evangelist the glory of Christ is in His crucifixion.
The prophet spoke in the plural, but the word St Peter used, usually translated “stripes” or “wounds,” is actually in the singular. It is the word for welt or wound. The Roman lash used for flogging was a multi-tailed whip of leather with pieces of bone and metal sewn in. A praetorian guardsman would have prided himself on inflicting maximum amount of pain in minimal amount of blows. Usually 39. Forty was considered a lethal punishment.
All of this is to say, our Lord’s back wasn’t striated with many different cuts. According to St Peter is was one giant, open wound. An absolutely vicious beating. His flesh was cleaved from bone. Isaiah says, His appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance. And when Pilate declared, Ecce homo; behold, the Man, He was unrecognizable; a bloody, revolting mess; unidentifiable. Even if they hadn’t crucified Him, it is fairly certain that He would have died from the flogging.
What sort of evil would cause a man to do this to another man? What type of disturbed and repulsive individual could do such a thing? This is nightmarish and ghoulish; something that could only have been dreamed up by the most deranged and evil people who ever lived.
For that is what we are. We are the ones who delivered the blows upon the innocent Jesus; by our sins of thought, word, and deed; by our fault, by our own fault, by our own most previous fault; by our sins and iniquities we have offended God. We surely deserve both temporal and eternal punishment. And that punishment is laid out in shocking, graphic imagery by the holy prophet, the Apostle, and the Evangelist. These are the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of the Lord’s beloved Son, Jesus Christ.
It is enough to make us hate ourselves and the sin-laden world we inhabit with billions of others just as deranged, just as disturbed, just as demented and destined for death. It is enough to make us lose hope.
And if we ponder only the sufferings and sheer agony of Jesus, we most certainly will lose hope. If we get angry at the Jews or Pilate or Judas or Peter we will lose hope and at the same time become Pharisees. If we weep and wail for Christ because He was so innocent, we will lose hope.
Martin Luther wrote: “The right way to reach a true knowledge of Christ’s sufferings is to perceive and understand not only what He suffered, but how it was His heart and will to suffer. For whoever looks upon Christ’s sufferings without seeing His heart and will therein must be filled with fear rather than joy, but if we can truly see His heart and will in it, it gives true comfort, trust, and joy in Christ.” (cited from Petersen p135).
This is the problem some have with the Cross. They fail to see the heart and will of Christ and the will of the Father. Our focus should not be on the agony and pain that our Lord endured. Today is not observed as a funeral for Jesus. The focus ought to be, as it is in the Bible, on our Lord’s free and loving desire to bear our sins in His own body to death on the Cross. Isaiah writes, It was the will of the Lord to crush Him; He has put Him to grief. St Paul proclaims, In Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men’s trespasses against them.
My dear friends in Christ, hope is precisely why this terrifying prophesy of Isaiah was fulfilled in Christ. All of the punishment we deserve was diverted to Jesus. He is the Suffering Servant, the Lamb of God pure and holy. Christ Jesus, the obedient Son of the Father is the High Priest and the Atoning Sacrifice. He is the Lamb and the Scapegoat. In boundless love for His fallen creation He took upon Himself our frail flesh, laying upon Himself your sin and misery and deceit and cruelty and death. He offered up His prayer by pouring out His life-blood: Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.
And yet the cruel passion and scandalous death of our Lord Jesus Christ is not a random act of meaningless violence. Do not feel sorry for Jesus. His Corss and Passion is the supreme act of love by the Supreme God who is Love in the flesh. His flesh was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace. Peace. Reconciliation. Hope.
The ancient enmity between God and man has been ended by God who is Man; a Man who is God. The punishment demanded by divine justice was absorbed and completely fulfilled by divine mercy. The Lamb the sheep has ransomed. Christ who only is sinless. Death and Life have contended, in that combat stupendous. The Prince of Life who died reigns immortal. He died for all. He died for you.
Our Lord endured this heart wrenching betrayal and agony to save us. He allowed Himself to be taken into custody - even though the mention of His divine Name, I AM, hurled His captors to the ground by the sheer power of His Word. Still, He endured this, willingly, obediently in order to rescue you.
He allowed Himself to bound and marched, to endure sham trials, and wicked so-called high priests. He was denied, struck, betrayed again by a spineless politician, viciously beaten, ridiculed, traded for a murder, treated as an impostor. And He did all of this so that we, who deserve the treatment He received, might be reconciled to God.
He was condemned, carried His own Cross, crucified, striped of His clothing so that we may be welcomed, unburdened, spared, and made rich with His own mercy and love. It is a strange story, full of sad events, but in this way the Scripture is fulfilled. It is finished. Satan is cast out.
This is the great mystery: the evil lust of the crowd and the will of the Father are one. Christ Jesus willingly bore your shame. He obediently became your Sin in order that by faith in Him you might become the righteousness of God.
And this is the message of reconciliation, the message repeated by His pastors to His beloved people of God, redeemed by Christ Jesus: the appalling prophecies of Isaiah 3000 years ago were fulfilled in the innocent suffering and death of Christ Jesus 2000 years ago and are joyously proclaimed to you today. This is no random act of violence, this is carefully planned act of love, a heroic rescue, a redemption beyond what any mere human author or tale-teller can come up with.
Since then we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus - the Name above all names - the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace - that is, to His Holy Altar from whence you receive His Body and Blood for the forgiveness of your sins, in mercy, and so find grace to help in your desperate time of need.
We know what is coming. We forgiven sinners loved by God know the great surprise that awaited the Marys. And with our fellow redeemed around the world, we await in joyful hope and expectation to see what they saw.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
On Monday we heard the reading from St Peter: He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might not die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls (1 Pt 2:24-25). He is clearly referencing the Isaiah 53 passage and the Suffering Servant; the “Gospel according to Isaiah,” who spoke with such precision of our Lord’s Passion; its as if he was an eye-witness. Interestingly, St John says, Isaiah beheld His glory and spoke of Him (Jn 12:41). And for the Fourth Evangelist the glory of Christ is in His crucifixion.
The prophet spoke in the plural, but the word St Peter used, usually translated “stripes” or “wounds,” is actually in the singular. It is the word for welt or wound. The Roman lash used for flogging was a multi-tailed whip of leather with pieces of bone and metal sewn in. A praetorian guardsman would have prided himself on inflicting maximum amount of pain in minimal amount of blows. Usually 39. Forty was considered a lethal punishment.
All of this is to say, our Lord’s back wasn’t striated with many different cuts. According to St Peter is was one giant, open wound. An absolutely vicious beating. His flesh was cleaved from bone. Isaiah says, His appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance. And when Pilate declared, Ecce homo; behold, the Man, He was unrecognizable; a bloody, revolting mess; unidentifiable. Even if they hadn’t crucified Him, it is fairly certain that He would have died from the flogging.
What sort of evil would cause a man to do this to another man? What type of disturbed and repulsive individual could do such a thing? This is nightmarish and ghoulish; something that could only have been dreamed up by the most deranged and evil people who ever lived.
For that is what we are. We are the ones who delivered the blows upon the innocent Jesus; by our sins of thought, word, and deed; by our fault, by our own fault, by our own most previous fault; by our sins and iniquities we have offended God. We surely deserve both temporal and eternal punishment. And that punishment is laid out in shocking, graphic imagery by the holy prophet, the Apostle, and the Evangelist. These are the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of the Lord’s beloved Son, Jesus Christ.
It is enough to make us hate ourselves and the sin-laden world we inhabit with billions of others just as deranged, just as disturbed, just as demented and destined for death. It is enough to make us lose hope.
And if we ponder only the sufferings and sheer agony of Jesus, we most certainly will lose hope. If we get angry at the Jews or Pilate or Judas or Peter we will lose hope and at the same time become Pharisees. If we weep and wail for Christ because He was so innocent, we will lose hope.
Martin Luther wrote: “The right way to reach a true knowledge of Christ’s sufferings is to perceive and understand not only what He suffered, but how it was His heart and will to suffer. For whoever looks upon Christ’s sufferings without seeing His heart and will therein must be filled with fear rather than joy, but if we can truly see His heart and will in it, it gives true comfort, trust, and joy in Christ.” (cited from Petersen p135).
This is the problem some have with the Cross. They fail to see the heart and will of Christ and the will of the Father. Our focus should not be on the agony and pain that our Lord endured. Today is not observed as a funeral for Jesus. The focus ought to be, as it is in the Bible, on our Lord’s free and loving desire to bear our sins in His own body to death on the Cross. Isaiah writes, It was the will of the Lord to crush Him; He has put Him to grief. St Paul proclaims, In Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting men’s trespasses against them.
My dear friends in Christ, hope is precisely why this terrifying prophesy of Isaiah was fulfilled in Christ. All of the punishment we deserve was diverted to Jesus. He is the Suffering Servant, the Lamb of God pure and holy. Christ Jesus, the obedient Son of the Father is the High Priest and the Atoning Sacrifice. He is the Lamb and the Scapegoat. In boundless love for His fallen creation He took upon Himself our frail flesh, laying upon Himself your sin and misery and deceit and cruelty and death. He offered up His prayer by pouring out His life-blood: Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.
And yet the cruel passion and scandalous death of our Lord Jesus Christ is not a random act of meaningless violence. Do not feel sorry for Jesus. His Corss and Passion is the supreme act of love by the Supreme God who is Love in the flesh. His flesh was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace. Peace. Reconciliation. Hope.
The ancient enmity between God and man has been ended by God who is Man; a Man who is God. The punishment demanded by divine justice was absorbed and completely fulfilled by divine mercy. The Lamb the sheep has ransomed. Christ who only is sinless. Death and Life have contended, in that combat stupendous. The Prince of Life who died reigns immortal. He died for all. He died for you.
Our Lord endured this heart wrenching betrayal and agony to save us. He allowed Himself to be taken into custody - even though the mention of His divine Name, I AM, hurled His captors to the ground by the sheer power of His Word. Still, He endured this, willingly, obediently in order to rescue you.
He allowed Himself to bound and marched, to endure sham trials, and wicked so-called high priests. He was denied, struck, betrayed again by a spineless politician, viciously beaten, ridiculed, traded for a murder, treated as an impostor. And He did all of this so that we, who deserve the treatment He received, might be reconciled to God.
He was condemned, carried His own Cross, crucified, striped of His clothing so that we may be welcomed, unburdened, spared, and made rich with His own mercy and love. It is a strange story, full of sad events, but in this way the Scripture is fulfilled. It is finished. Satan is cast out.
This is the great mystery: the evil lust of the crowd and the will of the Father are one. Christ Jesus willingly bore your shame. He obediently became your Sin in order that by faith in Him you might become the righteousness of God.
And this is the message of reconciliation, the message repeated by His pastors to His beloved people of God, redeemed by Christ Jesus: the appalling prophecies of Isaiah 3000 years ago were fulfilled in the innocent suffering and death of Christ Jesus 2000 years ago and are joyously proclaimed to you today. This is no random act of violence, this is carefully planned act of love, a heroic rescue, a redemption beyond what any mere human author or tale-teller can come up with.
Since then we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus - the Name above all names - the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace - that is, to His Holy Altar from whence you receive His Body and Blood for the forgiveness of your sins, in mercy, and so find grace to help in your desperate time of need.
We know what is coming. We forgiven sinners loved by God know the great surprise that awaited the Marys. And with our fellow redeemed around the world, we await in joyful hope and expectation to see what they saw.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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