Good
Pastor Troy Slater - Our
Perhaps some of you remember hearing
of the notorious serial killer Ted Bundy.
He was a convicted killer responsible for more than thirty cold-blooded
murders of young women across
If ever a man
deserved to get what he got, Ted Bundy did.
Here was a man convicted of the most shockingly vicious and savage
crimes imaginable, yet of those witnessing his execution no one baited him, no
one derided him, no one mocked him, although by any reasonable standard he
deserved it. The onlookers simply stared
in a stony, almost sympathetic silence. …
What a
strange, really almost sickening contrast to the events of our readings for
tonight of the execution of our Lord. For
in the execution of Christ, we see the very Son of God, pure and holy, innocent
of any wrongdoing, nailed to a cross, hanging seemingly helpless, between
heaven and earth. But yet during His
lifetime, He had done nothing but good for people. He had stooped down to help the bruised and
the broken. He had touched them with a
tender, healing hand. He had spoken
words of hope and comfort to the grieving.
To people crushed under a load of sin and guilt, He took their burdens
upon Himself when He spoke the words, "Son, daughter, your sins are
forgiven."
Yet in spite
of the life of love and compassion He lived towards His Father in heaven and towards
His people on earth, He is executed like the most despicable of criminals. Not one word was spoken in His behalf. Not one person pleaded with the governor for
a stay of execution. No one intervened
to save; in fact, just the opposite is what happened. People spit on Him and mocked Him and taunted
Him. The two criminals with whom He was
crucified even joined in, "If you are
the Christ, save Yourself and us."
And all this,
it causes us to ask, "What in the world was wrong with those people?" I mean people don't do the sort of things
that they did to Jesus even to the most vicious and ruthless criminals, but yet
here they are doing it to the best and the kindest of all men! Most of us wouldn't even treat an animal in
the way they treated Jesus. …
But you know,
as difficult as it may be to believe, this is a true picture of all mankind
since the Fall. It's a picture of hideously
wicked people, evil beyond description, all of them opposed to God, all denying
Him His due, all wanting Him out of the way, dead and buried so they can rule
in His place. Paul writes in Romans 8
that "the sinful mind is hostile to
God." It's a mind that hates
God. "Crucify
Him!" is all of humanity's cry.
This is what we all want, right?
To get God out of our way so we can live however we want - accountable
to no one. This is what is hidden in our
desperately wicked hearts. The Psalmist,
in Psalm 2 writes, "Why do the
nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together
against the Lord and against His Anointed One.
'Let us break their chains,' they say, 'and throw off their fetters.'" You see, with God and His Son out of our way,
we're free, or so we think. For who will
judge us if the Judge of all the earth is dead? …
Of course this
conspiracy against God to grasp authority from Him and to rule in His place
began in the Garden of Eden. For this
was the temptation which our first parents, Adam and Eve, succumbed to when the
evil one enticed them with the words, "You
will be like God, knowing good and evil." And when God promised to send the woman's
Seed to crush the serpent's head, the devil and his band of evil ones knew
exactly what would have to be done to accomplish their determined purpose to
rule the world. They would have to
murder that promised Seed of the woman.
"We've got to get him before he gets us," was their thinking. It was Satan who moved Herod to order the
death of all the children two years of age and under in and around
Satan thought
he had Him as Jesus hung there on the cross, as he incited the mocking and
jeering mob at the foot of the cross to ridicule Christ, "If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross." Of course Christ had heard a similar
challenge in His temptation in the wilderness a few years earlier. "If
you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread," Satan
tempted. And that temptation it
continued at the cross. And you know I
must confess that if it had been me, I would have gone down from that cross and
taught these people some manners. But
Christ did not respond in kind, did He?
No. St. Peter - an eyewitness to
it all - wrote, "When they hurled
their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no
threats. Instead, He entrusted Himself
to Him who judges justly. He Himself
bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live
for righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed." Jesus took it. In fact He even prayed for those who did the wrong
to Him. "Father forgive them for they know not what they do."
But yet they
continued to mock Him, "He trusted
in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, 'I am the Son
of God.'" And in the face of
that challenge came not one word from God to comfort or support Him. "Where is your God?", they
mocked. It was as if the heavens were
sealed up. A fact that Jesus even
recognized as He said, "My God, my
God, why have you forsaken me?"
There was complete silence from above.
Complete
silence because, you see, that's our evil hanging there. And indeed, even the evil of all humanity for
all time. Ted Bundy and the rest of us
Ted Bundy's deserve the punishment Jesus received. The lightning of God's wrath struck Christ
instead of us. "God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we
might become the righteousness of God." The one hanging there is the Lamb of God who
is taking away the sin of the world. The
one hanging there - mocked, rejected, jeered - He is the one being "wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities."
And indeed
with His words, "It is finished."
it IS finished, it IS accomplished. Satan
is defeated. The sacrifice is made. The blood is shed. Sin is paid for. Forgiveness is won. Today, tonight, we are confronted with the
inhumanity of humanity; tonight we ponder the repulsiveness of humanity's fall;
tonight we come face to face with the absolute wretchedness of our own sin and
shame.
But tonight on this Good Friday, we also find in this scene
our victory, our hope, our life, our forgiveness. For baptized into His name, baptized into His
Good Friday death and His Easter Sunday resurrection, Jesus is our Savior, our Redeemer,
our God. Stricken, smitten and
afflicted; mocked, jeered and taunted Jesus has bore our sin and the sin of all
the world all the way to