Pastoral Thoughts about the Death of Jesus

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Luke 23:33-43

          “When they came to the place that is called The Skull….”

          Can there be any compilation of words, any assemblage of English letters, that creates more tension, more anticipation, and more foreboding than those?  Those eleven words take us to the precipice, right up to the edge, of the event that has done more than any other event to shape human history.  From this place, we can wrap our toes over the edge and peer into the next moments when Jesus, our Lord, was crucified. 

I feel like Moses today.  I’ve been preaching sermons since I was age fifteen.  That’s forty-eight years.  After all these years when I speak about the death of Jesus, I feel like I’m standing on holy ground and should remove my shoes.  You see, I believe this event really happened.  On a day in history long ago in a place far from here, a man named Jesus of Nazareth was put to death by crucifixion. By our standards today, he was guilty of no crime.  He simply stood for truth.  He tried to reclaim religious faith that was real.  Not just checking boxes.  Not just obeying rules because the rules existed.  He tried to uncover the heart of faith, the spirit behind the rules.  Of course, that brought him into conflict with the rule-keepers.  They were powerful.  They controlled the people’s lives, enslaving them to dry-as-dust faith.  Jesus tried to set the people free, and, well, the rule-keepers took him to the place that is called The Skull.

Forty-eight years.  And I’m still deeply moved, humbled, awed, when I read this story.  When we hear it, when we really hear it, it is not easily dismissed.  It pulls us into it.  Some of you will remember the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, The Greek Passion.   It’s about a small, remote village in Greece where the townspeople decide to put on a live passion play.  The villagers take the key roles of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and the apostles. They decide to prepare for the play by living as best they can as the character they’ve taken.  As the novel unfolds, the reader begins to realize that the villagers are not just living like their characters.  They are becoming their characters.  That’s what this story can do to us. 

Today is the last Sunday of our Christian year, and I want to share some pastoral thoughts about this deeply moving, very powerful story of our faith.  “When they came to the place that is called The Skull….”  That is how the text begins.  Then the next four words push us over the edge: “there they crucified Jesus….” Crucifixion was actually quite common at that time.  It was carried out in a public venue, and often the bodies of the crucified were left on public display to serve as a deterrent to crime.  In my translation the definite article and the word “skull” are both capitalized: the place that is called The Skull.

I’ve actually seen The Skull.  I hope to return to Israel with a group from our church in September of next year.  We will visit the Old City of Jerusalem, and there we will see the two traditional sites that are argued to be the place of the crucifixion.  One is inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. It claims to be the place of both the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.  The other site is called the Garden Tomb. You will see a tomb carved into the side of a mountain.  You can actually walk inside it.  A short distance away, you will see another mountain.  Rain, wind, and time have carved into the side of this mountain the image of a skull, still visible to this day.  When I was there in 2007, I couldn’t help but believe that I was looking at the place our text calls The Skull.  Our group had Communion in the Garden Tomb and sang Amazing Grace and Tis a Gift to be Simple. 

Luke is the only one to include Jesus’ prayer: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”  Luke does not make it clear for whom Jesus was praying.  Was this prayer for the soldiers who were carrying out the crucifixion?  Was it for the religious leaders who turned the people against Jesus?  Was it for the people who taunted him?  Or was it for all of the above?  And more?

Luke says “they” gambled for Jesus’ clothes.  Again, he doesn’t tell us who “they” are.  John identifies them as the soldiers.  Remember, when Jesus was on trial before Herod, Herod and his soldiers treated Jesus with contempt and mocked him.  Then as a gesture of contempt they placed an “elegant robe” on him.  Now beneath the cross they cast lots for that robe.

Notice that three different groups taunted Jesus.  The religious leaders “scoffed.”  The soldiers “mocked.”  And one criminal “derided” him.  I find it interesting that each of the taunts focused on being saved. 

“He saved others; let him save himself.” 

  “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.” 

  And then the criminal: “Are you not the Messiah?  Save yourself and us!”

Then the soldiers, who appear to be the ringleaders, offered Jesus “sour wine.”  Sweet wine was more expensive.  Sour wine is what the poor would have drunk.  They nailed a placard above Jesus declaring him the King of the Jews, but they offered him the sour wine of the poor.

Three were crucified that day.  Luke is the only one to record the conversation of these three dying men.  One of the criminals, as he hung dying on his own cross, joined the mockery of the crowd. He “kept deriding” Jesus, Luke says.  He didn’t do it just once.  He kept deriding Jesus.  Check your translation some time and see if it has a footnote here.  Mine does.  It says that the word “blaspheming” could be used here.  He kept blaspheming Jesus, which is a truer sense of what was happening.  His words were intended as vile sarcasm, contemptuous blasphemy.  Like a man who goes to the electric chair still unrepentant and spewing venom, this criminal blasphemed Jesus, “Are you not the Messiah?  Save yourself and us!”  Don’t miss the irony here.  He asked for salvation, and he died that day, filled with bitter cynicism, only a few feet from the Savior who could have extended him mercy. 

The other criminal, known now as the “penitent thief,” rebuked the first.  He said, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?  And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” 

Then in a tender moment, as if a spotlight shone on this man’s face, he called Jesus by name and made a request: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus assured the penitent thief, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

And that’s where the lectionary reading ends, with Jesus’ conversation with the two thieves—one defiant, one humbled.  It seems odd, don’t you think, for the text to end here?  Before Jesus dies?  It strikes me as inappropriate to end the text in the middle of the crucifixion.  Unless the purpose is to ask us a question.  Which one are you?  The defiant one?  Or the humble one?

Do any of you remember the Womey massacre?  This happened back in 2014 during the Ebola crisis.  Ebola is a rare but deadly virus.  Its death rate is around 50%.  In 2014, there was an outbreak of Ebola mostly in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Senegal, and Guinea.  Global medical personnel scrambled to contain it.  Sierra Leone was put on lockdown.  In the end, about 11,000 people in West Africa died, though some say the real number is closer to 100,000.

Womey is a small village in the country of Guinea.  The World Health Organization dispatched a team to this small village to warn the people and help them put safety measures in place.  They were there to protect the villagers, to save them from this deadly virus.  The team included two medical doctors, other medical personnel, a pastor, and some journalists.  There were nine in total. 

Anybody remember what happened?  The villagers attacked the team, killing eight of the nine aid workers.  A journalist escaped.  The bodies of the others were found in a sewer beside a school.  They had been butchered to death with clubs and machetes.  Three had their throats slit.

According to an article in the Washington Post, the villagers killed them because they believed the aid workers had come to kill them with the virus.

Don’t miss this irony.  The villagers murdered the ones who came to save them.

They killed the One who came to save them.

          “When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there….”  Yes, we’re on holy ground. It touches the deep within us.  When we really hear it, it pulls us into its cast of characters.  Some scoff.  Some mock.  Some find Paradise.  Which will you be?

Closing Prayer 

We do not scoff, Lord.  We cannot.  Instead, we bow in humble, grateful adoration.  Amen.