Mark 15:1-47[1]
Love is a mystery.
It’s wonderful and painful. It can bring out the best and the worst in us. We
long for love and yet at the same time we are at least a little afraid of it
(or maybe a lot!). Hopefully, all of us at some time in our lives have someone
who embodies the best of love. They love us “just because,” without any
conditions, exclusions, or limitations. And they keep loving us that way for as
long as they’re a part of our lives, no matter where we go or what we do.
Unfortunately, one of the greatest tragedies in this life is the fact that some
of us never get to experience that kind of love from another human being.
It’s not the same
thing, but I think that recognizing the love of God expressed for us by Jesus
Christ can help us here. The Bible speaks of God’s “unfailing love” long before
Jesus was born. But I think in Jesus our Savior we see just how far that love
extends. There is no place we can go in this life where we are excluded from
God’s love. Wherever we may find ourselves, even the most hopeless places, God
has already been there in Jesus Christ to pave the way back to his love. In
truth, even the love of those people who have loved us so wonderfully is
“complicated” by their humanity. That means all of us will come to the place in
life where we must look to God’s love to sustain us, because his is the only
love that truly never fails.
I see that
unconditional, unlimited, and irrevocable love displayed in the story of Jesus’
experience of being arrested, tried, beaten, mocked, and crucified. Our Gospel
lesson for today includes it all. And one thing that amazes me is the fact that
Jesus—who was fully human and subject to our physical limitations—endured that
whole ordeal out of his unwavering resolve to carry out God’s saving purpose for
us fully. When I think about all that he went through over the course of about
18 hours that day, it’s overwhelming. It’s hard for me to grasp that Jesus
Christ our Lord and Savior willingly subjected himself to it all out of his
commitment to be “obedient to the point of death” (Phil. 2:8).
I thought we might
walk through the events of that day in order to have a better sense of all that
Jesus endured. Prior to our lesson, Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane.
His prayer revealed his anguish about what was about to happen to him. And to get
an idea of the emotional and physical toll of the stress he felt over what he
knew was coming, Luke’s Gospel tells us he was sweating profusely as he prayed.
He felt the dread that any person would feel when faced with impending trauma.
That evening, Jesus
was arrested and taken before some of the Jewish religious leaders, where he
was interrogated all night. He was bound and was subjected to constant
questioning. Mark’s gospel tells us he was assaulted by the false accusations
of “many” lying witnesses. That takes its toll emotionally and physically. Finally,
at daybreak, they sent him off to Pontius Pilate, the Roman official who was
governing the province of Judea. We
don’t know how long this interrogation lasted, but it seems that he endured more
verbal attacks from his accusers for several hours. Remember that Jesus had
been up all night, and the last food he had eaten was the evening before.
After that, Pilate
brought Jesus and a rebel named Barabbas before the crowd, both of them bound
as criminals. Perhaps he may have even recognized the faces of some of the
people who had shouted, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”
when he had entered Jerusalem a few days earlier (Mk 11:9). But now they were
shouting, “Crucify him!” So Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified and had
him beaten. Jesus was “scourged” with a whip made of leather straps to which
were attached nails, glass, or rocks. Some who were “scourged” didn’t survive
the beating. At this point, the soldiers who were going to crucify him staged a
“mock coronation” for him as the “king of the Jews.” They struck him, they spat
on him, and they placed a crown of thorns on his head.
Finally, they took
Jesus to crucify him. He had endured the physical and emotional stress of no
sleep, no food, and a constant barrage of verbal assaults. He was literally
beaten to within an inch of his life. It’s no wonder he couldn’t carry the
crossbeam they laid on him! One detail that sticks out to me is, after all
that, Jesus still had the presence of mind to refuse the mixture of wine and
myrrh that was intended to ease his pain. After all he had endured to this
point, his determination to fulfill God’s saving purpose completely remained
resolute. He was “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil.
2:8). After reading the full story, I think that may be something of an
understatement!
When I stop to really
think about all this, I find myself overwhelmed: I grieve to know that Jesus
went through all of this for me. I’m humbled by his unflinching commitment. But
perhaps most of all, I’m amazed by the love that I believe was behind it all,
motivating him to endure everything he suffered for our sakes. As our
affirmation of faith says it, “there is no sorrow he has not known, no grief he
has not borne, and no price he was unwilling to pay” to enable us to know the unconditional,
unlimited, and irrevocable love of God. All I can say in response is, “What
wondrous love”![2]
[1] ©
2021 Alan Brehm. A sermon delivered by Rev. Alan Brehm, Ph. D. on 3/28/2021 for
Hickman Presbyterian Church, Hickman, NE.
[2] Cf.
Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 277: “There is no loneliness and no
rejection which [God] has not taken to himself and assumed in the cross of
Jesus.”
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