Monday, April 22, 2019

at cross purposes reflections on the cross through the lens of Matthew's gospel (Matthew 27:11-66, Psalm 22)


I’m an amateur photographer. It’s my hobby. I’m starting to take my camera where ever I go.

In fact the image that has been on the service sheet and on the screen is one of mine. I came into the church one morning last year and as I opened the door I noticed that the light through the spire was shining on the cross up the front here. But the rest of the church was in shadow. I got out my camera and walked to different places to take different photos. It’s a digital camera and I thought that black and white really captured the moment well.

But also I found myself thinking about what I was seeing through my lens in terms of who I am my faith and my role as a minister of word and sacrament. This particular photo really picked up Holy Week. In the darkness there was the light shining on the palm tree, which got me thinking of Palm Sunday and then the cross being caught in the light… But also (spoiler alert here) the light itself like a light shining from an empty tomb. Matthew talks of an angel who rolled the stone away being like a blinding light. That event the empty tomb shines light on the cross and the whole of the gospel and allows us to see Jesus,  for who he really is… the Son of God…  

One lady who has become a friend on facebook, sent me a message on Tuesday saying that she really enjoyed my photos, that she thought I had a great eye. I’m not telling you that to blow my own horn, but rather it got me thinking about Matthew’s narrative of Jesus crucifixion. Because Matthew as a first century Jewish man presents us with Jesus life and his death through the lens of the Scripture of the Old Testament. His favourite saying is “this was done to fulfil the words spoken by the prophet”… Some people have used that to question the historical nature of Matthew’s narrative, But just because he has seen the whole thing through that lens does not make it any less true. Because of who he is, he has a great eye for seeing what is happening and capturing the truth that lies behind the surface.

On one level you see the story of Jesus on the cross as the story of political expedience and cowardice leading to an innocent man being condemned to death on a roman cross. It is a story of oppressive regimes and corrupt human systems, and injustice everywhere.  I’ve been listening to Bob Dylan’s greatest hits recently and the song ‘the hurricane’ which is the story of  black American boxer Rubin ’hurricane’ Carter who was  framed, tried, condemned, and imprisoned for a triple murder he did not commit… and its was part of the struggle to see him released and compensated for the decades he spent in prison. But Matthew presents us with a narrative of what happened to Jesus, that says that God was working at cross purposes that the cross is the story of God’s grace and our redemption.

I just want to reflect on three aspects of that cross purpose that comes out in Matthew’s narrative.

The first is Pilate offering to release one Jesus to the crowd… Jesus Barabbas, what we might call a terrorist these days, who had carried out violence against the roman occupation, the other Jesus, the messiah, whom Pilate believed innocent, and wanted the Jewish authorities to take responsibility for his condemnation and death.

Pilate offers the crowd the release of one prisoner to celebrate the Passover. You don’t get to be a governor of a Roman province particularly a troublesome one like Judea, without a proven track record of brutality and ruthlessness. But Pilate obviously wants to show some mercy at the big festival, which would have been a time of heightened nationalistic fervour. It helps him get rid of the Jesus problem… but really it shows a lack of being just and moral backbone.

The crowd wiped up by the religious authorities clamber for ‘Barabbas’ they bay for Jesus blood. Barabbas the criminal, goes free and Jesus, the innocent man dies in his place.

This story as well as showing us that Jesus was indeed innocent unjustly condemned also shows us the reality of the cross. Barabbas represents us all, guilty deserving of punishment and death because of our fallenness, but Jesus dies in our place and we are offered forgiveness and set free.

We find the echo of Isaiah 53 we had as our call to worship today…

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
    each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
    the iniquity of us all.

It was Passover and here Jesus shows himself as the Passover lamb, sacrificed in our place, so that the wrath of God would pass over us.

In the middle reading we had of Jesus, brutal treatment by the soldiers and his being taken to the cross, we see again cross purposes. The Roman guards, not only scourge Jesus, which was a way of   weakening a person before crucifixion. They mock him as well, it like the whole of crucifixion was designed to show Roman rule was absolute, to quote the borg in the star trek universe, who conquer and assimilate all the planets and species they encounter… ‘resistance is futile’.

He is But Matthew shows us this as being like a coronation for Jesus. In the upside-down kingdom that Jesus had been teaching about, we see its victory when it looks like defeat. In fact Matthew’s description show that Jesus lives out his Sermon on the Mount.  He is struck, but he turns the other cheek, Sion the Cyrene is forced to carry his burden, as was Roman law, the law we know by Jesus words that we should go the extra mile.  His love for his enemies, not returning their hatred and mock but by dying for their sins as well. Overcoming evil with good. Luke in his narrative brings it home more with Jesus saying “father forgive them they no not what they do.

The coronation is complete as Jesus is crucified under a sign that denotes his crime by saying ‘King of the Jews’… again meant to be mocking of Jesus and the religious leaders, but in God’s purposes the assertion that ‘The Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near.’

Finally, as we look at the crucifixion itself, we notice Matthew does not focus on what happens to Jesus. In fact the crucifixion itself is handled in a single simple line and after they crucified him… Matthew is not squeamish about the gory details, as crucifixion was a common event in that time and place… he isn’t like some preachers I’ve listened to intent on letting us know how much Jesus loves us by going blow by blow through how crucifixion slowly and painfully kills a person… rather Matthew’s eye is fixed on how everything is done to fulfil the scriptures.  Unlike at other times he does not say that straight out, but he allows his eye to be guided by Jesus own words on the cross ‘ Eli, Eli, Lema sabachthani’ which means ‘my God my God why have you forsaken me’. it is the first line of Psalm 22, which was our Old Testament reading today. Weather Jesus simply meant it as a cry of anguish as he went through the spiritual pain of feeling separated from God, and identified with humanity in the midst of suffering, or he meant to quote it as it is a psalm that finishes with an assertion that even in the midst of all this suffering God can be trusted to bring salvation. In fact it finishes with the words that John quotes Jesus as saying in that last cry Matthew records as undistinguishable. ‘It is Finished’… an assertion that God has done this…

We are invited to see, the offering of Jesus of poison to drink, the mocking of the crowds about not being able to save himself, the if you are the son of God which echoes the devils taunt in Jesus temptation in the wilderness, the guards gambling for his clothes, the offering of a drink, his thirst, his dying between two criminals, his being buried as an act of kindness in a rich mans borrowed grave. The fact that his legs were not broken, which John mentions, all this points us to the fact that this is not simply an accident, a tragic injustice, rather it is Jesus fulfilling the prophets and the law, it is God in control. This is God’s rescue scheme…

Mathew of course as Jewish man is also not adverse to speaking of aspects of theophany as well, he speaks of an earthquake and other strange occurrences, like people coming to life again, which the other gospel writers do not mention, maybe to avoid having their accounts  written off because of these more spectacular occurrences. That detract from the central story. The curtain in the temple is ripped in two. Showing that here Jesus is making a new way for God and humanity to be together.

For Matthew all this leads us to join with the centurion, a gentile in exclaiming that truly this is ‘the Son of God’…

Not only Matthew and us with our eyes able to look through the lens of scripture and for most of us our Christian faith, but this hardened gentile soldier without that background looks and sees that there is something special and important about this innocent man who had died on a roman cross…  we re to see the cross purpose and the purpose of he Cross, Jesus kingdom come through his sacrificial love, this kingdom overcoming injustice and violence with love for enemies, our freedom won through the death of the innocent man, and God’s purposes and plans worked out in His Son Jesus Christ.

Matthew leaves us set for the amazing end to the story. Not a tomb with the stone across the entrance and guards set just in case the disciples decided to steal the body away, but well… you’ll have to come along on Sunday as we continue and complete our journey through Easter…

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