Last Words from the Cross - A Good Friday Devotional

“After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), ‘I thirst.’  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.  When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished, and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” -Jn. 19:28-30, ESV

When Jesus was on the cross, dying from the most cruel and shameful death ever imagined by the Roman Empire, Scripture records seven things that he said to his disciples and those standing around before he died.  You would have to read all four of the gospel narratives to find all seven, because each gospel doesn’t have all seven.  

These words reveal some very important characteristics about our Lord.  They reveal his true nature.  The best way to really get to know someone for who they are, is to subject them to intense pressure.  All sorts of interesting thoughts and emotions come bubbling to the surface, some because they lose their inhibitions, others because they hold on to their core convictions to the very end.  

This is what Jesus did on the cross.  He held to his convictions to the bitter end.  The cross showed him to be true to the things that he had been saying and teaching all along, whereas a lesser man might have shown himself to be false when faced with such torture.  

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  This is one of my favorite sayings of Jesus.  He’s not angry, he’s not resisting.  The Roman guards are nailing him to a cross, and he has pity on them.  He prays for them.  There is forgiveness in his heart, and mercy in his words, something that we see again when Jesus talks with the two criminals who have been crucified alongside him.  The one mocks Jesus, but the other appears to repent of his crimes, acknowledging that he has received his reward and says to Jesus, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  

Again, Jesus feels nothing but pity and forgiveness and mercy, and he says to the man, “Truly, today you will be with me in paradise.”

What great love the Father has for us.

I’m going to skip around here a little bit, as this could really be an entire 7-week sermon series.  And while Jesus’ Words contain one of my favorite quotes of his, they also contain one that I find perhaps the most disturbing.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

How many of us here can honestly say that we have not ever felt abandoned and alone?  Have you ever felt forsaken by God?  Have you ever felt tempted to just give up?

Jesus has been tortured and crucified, his disciples have abandoned him.  Peter, who was to be the Rock upon which the Church would be built, publicly denied Jesus 3 times!  The people all surround his cross and mock him.

What would you do?

The Greek actually says that Jesus shouted in a loud voice, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  

But God did not abandon His only Begotten Son.  

It has been pointed out that Psalm 22 runs through the entire Crucifixion narrative, with this verse being the first verse of the psalm.  As we read that psalm on Good Friday, we can see how it moves from despair, saying “I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people (v.6),” to complete hopelessness:

“I am poured out like water...my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death (Vv. 14, 15).”  

But then the Psalm takes a positive tone, crying out to the Lord, in whom there is still hope.  It ends with a shout of triumph:

“The afflicted shall eat and be satisified; those who seek him shall praise the Lord!  All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you.”

Now, does that sound like abandonment?  Do you think Jesus would have chosen those particular words to exclaim if he truly felt abandoned by God?  Yes.  And no.  Jesus always chose his words very carefully, and very specifically.  

He knew what was coming, he knew the glory that awaited him, the glory for which he suffered.  But right at that moment, he was abandoned by God.  William Barclay says “that Jesus would not be Jesus unless he had plumbed the uttermost and ultimate depths of human experience.”  And there is no greater human experience than to feel alone and abandoned, even abandoned by God.  

Jesus came to forgive sins, and to live as one of us, experiencing the full range of human emotions and temptations, even the temptation to abandon the One who seemed to have abandoned Him.  He came to show us that God is with us, even though we don’t always feel or want His presence.

That’s what Jesus expresses in His last words on the cross.  In a nutshell.  So there is nothing left.  “It is finished,” he said, and gave up his spirit.  Amen.

Words of Wisdom. Before we can master others, we first must learn to master ourselves.

"I need to master martial art as fast as possible," I said, as my first instructor laughed in the 80s, "How many lessons will it take?"
"10 years," he replied simply.
"10 years?! I don't have a decade. I need these changes to happen NOW! What if I trained twice as hard, and practiced twice as long at home, THEN how long will it take me to master martial art?"
"20 years," he responded with a smirk. He continued, "I can teach you how to defend yourself in this weekend, and you'll be much more capable of addressing the violence you're facing now, but mastery involves lifestyle integration. You can't force it. You have to let it flow over time."

His cryptic words lingered throughout my life in every discipline I sought to master: martial art, yoga, fitness, coaching, speaking, writing, organizing, in nutrition, in parenting, in marriage, in community service. The harder I tried to force things to happen, the more artificial and ill-fitted they became, like quickly hammering a suit of armor. It only took longer to master, as all of the dents and dings needed to be smoothed and refitted anyway. Force only lengthened the process.

One day, ironically true of his forecast twenty years later, I awoke to his words I had long since forgotten. The violence had disappeared. I had changed my life so that those circumstances no longer could 'fit' within my lifestyle. Certainly, I had used my martial art to defend myself many times, but the process of slow, deliberate, methodical mastery also transformed my life to where I no longer needed to defend myself. I stopped 'doing' martial art; and had begun 'being' it.

Leon Brown wrote, "Impatience is the root of all your problems. You cannot force life to give you all of the answers. You must let them unfold before you." Baby steps are the way to succeed in anything. Carefully take one step of improvement at a time and latch it in.

It's not how fast or forcefully you try things, but rather how consistently and patiently you implement the lessons learned throughout your life. EVERY SINGLE DAY in each decision, that's where transformation happens. That's how real, significant, permanent change occurs, like the persistent drip of water's faith eroding the rock of your hardships.

Elegantly, last night, my son said to me after his high purple belt test, "Dad, I think I'm going to stay at junior black belt for a long time after I get there." I asked why. He replied, "Well... you said that when you die, I can have your black belt, but I don't want you to die so I can have yours. It's okay for me to be good. I can be great like you later."

Tearfully, I choked out the words, "Son, you surpass me already."

Very Respectfully,
Scott Sonnon
www.facebook.com/ScottSonnon
www.positiveatmosphere.com

Jesus' Triumphal Entry Into Jerusalem - a sermon for Passion Sunday

Jewish history is filled with conquest and political upheaval, but many of those victories belong to other nations, other kingdoms, not to the Jews themselves.  The ancient Hebrews were slaves to the Egyptians and the Babylonians.  By the end of the period of history during which the Old Testament was written, the Persians had become the dominant power in the Middle East.

At this time, the Jews had begun to rebuild their shattered temple, and to return to their ancestral lands, but all that began to change, as another government came to power.  In the 330’s B.C., Alexander the Great swept through the entire region with his army, replacing Persian rule with Greek.  The Jews simply shifted allegiances at first because, well, what else could they do at that point, but the Greeks’ intent was to spread Hellenization throughout their world.  Hellenization is a term that refers to their culture and language - a specifically Greek culture that has little room for other traditions.  

Alexander the Great wished to see the whole world educated in Greek fashion, holding to Greek values, speaking Greek, and, in fact, our education system to this day is leftover from the days of the Greeks.  

So the Jews didn’t get much of the return to independence that they longed for while under Greek influence.  They were dispersed even further throughout the region, so that sizable Jewish communities grew up in Egypt, which is quite likely the place to which Jesus’ own family fled when he was born, if you remember that story.  

The Egyptian Ptolemaic Empire took over control of their little corner of the world following the death of Alexander the Great.  They were replaced by the Seleucid Empire in about 198 B.C.  Both of these dynasties were Hellenistic, they continued to spread Greek culture and philosophy, and slowly, more traditional cultures began to disappear.  The Jews were forbidden to practice their religion and cultural traditions on pain of death, and the Temple in Jerusalem was turned into a pagan shrine.

Then, in about 164 B.C., a group of Jewish rebels led a revolt against the Seleucids, and gained independence for the Jews.  The temple was cleansed and the religious traditions were reinstated.  The people began to be Hebrew again.  There is still a commemoration of that time in Judaism with the Festival of Lights, or Hannukah.

This period of Jewish history is known as the Maccabean Period, or the Hasmonean Dynasty.  It lasted for about a hundred years until, wouldn’t you know it, the Romans marched in and seized control.  The governmental structure had begun to break down, and the Maccabean rulers began to be more and more dictatorial and corrupt, so Jewish leaders actually asked Roman general Pompey to come and restore order.  

He did, but it wasn’t the sort of order that the Jews would have wanted.  Roman conquest was much like Greek rule.  They believed so much in their own greatness, that there was no doubt that they would not relinquish control once they had their claws in the Jews.  

The Romans remained in power until 153 A.D., long after Jesus completed his earthly ministry.  He lived and died in occupied territory, and even today the Israeli’s continue seeking to “purify” their land.  Everyone dreamed of the day when a king would return, much like the Maccabees, to drive out the Romans and restore the Temple and its practices.  To return the land to the Lord and to glory.

I’d be willing to bet that someone suggested something like that to Pontius Pilate, who was the Roman governor of Judea during the time of Christ’s later ministry.  “Just don’t turn your back on them,” they probably said to him.  

So during the Passover each year, Pilate would fill Jerusalem with Imperial troops to “ensure” that the people didn’t get out of hand.  Passover, of course, is a festival commemorating and re-enacting the time of the Exodus, the time when the Hebrews escaped from slavery to the Egyptians.  It is a time when national pride runs especially high among the Jews, and while they always felt oppressed, the tendency to act out against Roman authority was a more bold at the time of Passover.

From Pilate’s point of view, the stories of the Maccabean revolt was probably foremost in his thoughts.  

So when Jesus was riding into town on a donkey, Pilate was also coming into the city with his army.  But while Pilate came riding a war horse, or maybe in a chariot, Jesus came on a donkey, in fulfillment of one of the Prophecies of Zechariah (9:9), “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!  Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!  Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

Kings in those days in Palestine only rode horses into battle.  During times of peace, they would ride donkeys.  So while Pilate rode into the city with a display of force, as a king bent on conquest and domination, Jesus came in peace, also as a king.  This itself was a tremendous act of defiance, as there was probably a price on his head, but more than that, the people looked for a king like David, a mighty prophet of God like Moses, and a powerful revolution like the Maccabeans, to catch the Romans by surprise.

That’s not who Jesus is.  That’s not what Jesus does.  But he did ride into Jerusalem in triumph that day, because his victory was at hand.  He also rode into Jerusalem that day to disappoint a lot of people, because of the manner in which he would be victorious.  

He wasn’t going there to take up the sword, he was going there to take up the cross, and even when his own disciple Peter took a sword to attack those who came after them, Jesus rebuked him and said to him that this is not our way.  

Vengeance and resentment has a way of burning in our hearts and in our memories.  We want to lash out at those who have been unfair to us, we want to make them pay for what they did!!  How often do we reprimand our children because they did something mean to a brother or a sister and then complain when we scold them saying, “Well he started it,” but then we ourselves lash out in anger and spite against those whom we once called ‘friend’ because they were mean to us?  

Jesus did something that was unparalleled in all of history.  He allowed himself to be led to the Cross, and although He understood what was at stake - our immortal souls - he not only had to bear the pain of knowing the torture that He would have to endure, He also knew how disappointed people would be.  Wasn’t he supposed to be the Messiah?  He can’t even save himself, how is he supposed to save anyone else?  

Can you imagine doing something so selfless, something that you know is what’s best for another, but by doing it, you’re almost certain that they won’t get it, they won’t appreciate it, they will, in fact, be disappointed in you?  And disappointment is perhaps the hardest shame to for anyone to have to bear.  

But without shame, Jesus went to Jerusalem that day.  Without shame, he faced his enemies and sacrificed himself for a people who wouldn’t understand.  Amen.

Signs of the Messiah: Jesus Heals a Disabled Man - Jn. 5:1-15

Underneath the Pool of Bethesda is a stream which feeds it, and every now and again this stream would bubble up and cause a disturbance in the water.  The people, however, believed that this disturbance was caused by an angel who was stirring up the waters, and that the first person to enter the pool after it was stirred up would be healed of whatever ailed him or her.  

Thus we can better understand the invalid, when he says to Jesus, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”

I used to always wonder at that passage. The man can obviously get into the pool by himself, it would just take him awhile because of his disability, but its the belief that he must be the first one to enter it after the waters have been disturbed, that causes him to stay there year after year, hoping for a cure.

So Jesus asks him, “Do you want to be healed?”  

Of course, my first reaction to this question is, “No, I don’t want to be healed, I’m drawing disability from the government!”  But that was the other invalid that Jesus tried to heal.  The Bible left him out.

This man had been an invalid for 38 years, says the Gospel of John.  The fact that it points that out suggests that he was well known, and perhaps that was why Jesus went to him and theres no mention of him healing anyone else at the Pool.  It also points out that this man had been an invalid longer than most people in that age were alive at all!  

The average lifespan in the time of the Roman Empire, for a man, was about 26 years.  For a person with a disability it was probably a great deal shorter than that.  

Now, I’ve known a lot of disabled people in my life.  I used to do some work with disabled kids in school, at camp, I had a good friend with a severe disability, that sort of thing.  And one important thing that I’ve learned about other-abled people (and I use that term specifically, as I’ll explain) is that they can either be handicapped, or disabled.

A handicap is something that you overcome. It’s an obstacle, its something in our way.  We all have a handicap of some sort.  Maybe its a physical limitation, maybe its psychological, maybe its cultural, or a social stygma.  The point is, a handicap is just a handicap.  We can overcome it.  We can work around it.  Life moves forward if we accept it and learn to live with it.  We can even learn to use it and gain strength from it.

A disability is entirely the opposite.  Dis-abled means ‘not able.’  Of course, that’s not how society typically uses these terms, but for purposes of my illustration, this serves to emphasize my point.  A disabled person cannot function, or doesn’t function, because of the limitations that he or she has.  A disabled person does not see beyond his or her limitations, they only see what they cannot do.

Therefore, of the many other-abled people that I’ve known, I’ve learned that there are those whose attitudes and acceptance of themselves as individuals who must struggle through this life just like anyone else.  Their limitations - physical, mental, whatever - they are merely handicaps.  Life moves on, they learn to see beyond their limitations, and so those limitations aren’t really limitations at all, not in the broader sense of the term, because the only limitations that we have are the ones that we impose on ourselves.

But then there are those who are truly disabled.  Perhaps they don’t even have a physical impairment.  Perhaps they are only crippled by their fear of taking risks.  We can be paralyzed by our fears alone, and that is a disability in and of itself.  

Those who are disabled are often bitter, resentful of whatever hand life has dealt them.  They don’t accept themselves as who they are, and so they never rise above it.  But those who are merely handicapped, I can usually see a joy in their lives that nothing can conquer.  There’s a strength that goes beyond what I can truly comprehend, and a witness that I wish everyone could learn from.  They own themselves.

The invalid at the Pool of Bethesda, he was disabled, not handicapped.  He had been impaired for 38 years, 10 years longer than the average lifespan of a healthy male of his generation!  And there’s no mention that he was born that way, so it’s very likely that something crippled him after birth, something caused him to lose proper function of his legs.

But that was not the cause of his disability.  We create our own disabilities.  This man could not see beyond his situation.  In v. 6, Jesus “knew that he had been lying there a long time.”  His goal in life was to be cured of his ailment, because of course, life cannot go on if we aren’t physically “normal.”  

In the meantime, life passed him by.  

Later, after the healing had taken place, Jesus encounters the man once again and says to him, “See you are well!  See that you sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.” This is a bit troubling, and has troubled Christians for a long time.  There was a belief in Judaism that our physical ailments were caused by our sins.  Sometimes it just so happens that this is true, like drunk driving that causes an injury from a car wreck, or something.  But there is no indication of that in this passage, only the suggestion that something happened to this man at some point in his life which caused his condition.  

It’s not the point.  There’s a thing behind the thing here.  This man’s sin was, as I see it, his disability.  Not his physical disability, but the disability that he imposed upon himself.  The limitations that he could not see beyond, the life that he did not have - not because it was denied him, but because he refused to accept who he was and live his life.  

His sin...was giving up.  His sin was putting his faith and his trust in some superstition that was fed to him about this pool of water, when the source of his healing, and ours, is much greater.  Healing is on the inside, healing is living our lives to the fullest despite having - what some would call - a disability.  What is it that cripples you?  What do you fear?  What is it that we wish we could rise above, but continues to get us down. While everyone around us goes down into the waters and takes control of their lives, we remain crippled.  

Jesus can heal that.  

Amen.