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.
6 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.
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 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…
No comments:
Post a Comment