Grace Evangelical-Lutheran: Hebrews 9,15.26b-28. Good Friday

✠ We preach Christ and Him crucified ✠

Iesus Nazarenus rex Iudaeorum

Hebrews 9,15.26b-28 2018

Karfreitag 031

Guido, Abbot at Pomposa near Ferrara, Italy. ✠ 1046

30. März 2018

1. О Lamb of God, the Suffering Servant, let Your suffering, Your blood, Your wounds be written on our hands and hearts, that we meditate upon Your Passion, Your death, Your blood, so that we remain certain that You will wean us from the world, sanctify, wash and purify us (Starck 83). Amen.

2. »Therefore Christ Jesus is the Mediator of a new testament, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first testament. Christ has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that judgment arrives, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of all, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him.«

3. The Epistle to the Hebrews proclaims: »Jesus is the Mediator of the New Testament, and He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, having been offered once to bear the sins of all.« The Apostle Paul says that the crucified Jesus is the fulfillment of the old testament, has put an end to it and has established the new testament upon the cross. The old testament instituted by the Lord through Moses at Mt. Sinai was bloody and deadly. Every morning and evening priests slaughtered hundreds of lambs at the temple in Jerusalem for countless Jewish families seeking the Lord and longing for His forgiveness. These lambs were pure, spotless and holy. Their innocent blood paid for men and women’s forgiveness. Day after day, year after year, for 2 millennia, the Lord received this brutal and bloody slaughter of innocents, for it was the only way His holy wrath and righteousness could be sated against vile, wicked sinful human beings.

4. This old Sinai testament was only a temporary solution, for dead lambs could not fully and finally satisfy the death of mankind’s sin. This testament was meant to prepare Israel for a new and better testament. So when John the Baptizer arrives in the Jordan preaching repentance and preparation for the imminent arrival at the Messiah, he pointed out this Messiah, one Jesus of Nazareth, and proclaimed: »Behold, the Lamb of God who is taking away the sin of the world!« (John 1,29) Three years later this Lamb of God established this new testament when He was crucified.

5. The new testament instituted by Jesus on Mt. Zion was more bloody and even deadlier then the Old testament, for God Himself suffered and died for the sins of the world. The Apostle John recalls the facts for us tonight in his Gospel: »So Pilate delivered Jesus over to the chief priests to be crucified, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called the place of the skull, which is Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified Him with two others, one on either side and Jesus between then. Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews« (John 19,16-19).

6. We tend to romanticize Jesus’ crucifixion and remove the horror and spectacle of it as much as possible. The Romans did neither; they took their crucifixions seriously and reserved this form of capital punishment for the vilest of criminals. On a Friday 2000 years outside ago of Jerusalem, Pilate had ordered the crucifixion of 3 notorious Jewish criminals. Their crime was sedition against Rome; Barabbas and his compatriots had been arrested for a recent uprising or riot in Jerusalem with the goal to rebel and overthrow Roman rule over the Jews. Pilate had no qualms about punishing those who took up arms against his legionnaires and he knew the best way to quell such rebellious fervor was to publicly and gruesomely execute such men as an example do not trifle with, nor question, Roman rule over Jerusalem, Judea and Palestine. The priests and Pharisees wanted to swap out Barabbas for Jesus and eventually Pilate relented to the passioned request and sentenced Jesus to crucifixion.

7. It began when Jesus was beaten to a bloody pulp: 20 lashes from a cat-of-nine tails formed deep cuts in an „x“ pattern across His back, and then 19 more lashes across His chest. We’re not talking about a bullwhip here, for Roman whips were fashioned with broken pottery, bits of metal and even nails to tear into the condemned’s flesh. A crown with 6-inch long thorns cut deep lacerations into Jesus head. Then Jesus was forced to carry an 100 pound cross beam out to Calvary where He would be crucified naked. There was the smell of sweat mingled with fear, along with urine, and other bodily releases. The body was caked with blood. Groans and cries for mercy were uttered by the crucified and the onlookers.

8. The Romans stretched out Jesus arms and nailed each wrist to the cross beam. Then His feet were nailed together on the vertical pole so that His body formed a T. „As the crucified slowly sagged down with more weight on the nails in the wrists, excruciating, fiery pain shot along the fingers and up the arms to explode in the brain. As he pushed himself upward to avoid this stretching torment, he placed his full weight on the nail through his feet. Again, there was searing agony as the nail tore through the nerves between the metatarsal bones of his feet. Hanging by the arms, the pectoral muscles were paralyzed and the small muscles between the ribs were unable to act. Air could be drawn into the lungs, but could not be exhaled. The crucified fought to raise himself in order to get even one short breath. He suffered hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-rending cramps, intermittent partial asphyxiation, and searing pain as tissue was torn from his lacerated back from his movement up and down against the rough timbers of the cross. Another agony was a deep crushing pain in the chest as the sac surrounding the heart slowly filled with serum and began to compress the heart. The compressed heart struggled to pump heavy, thick, sluggish blood to the tissues, and the tortured lungs were making a frantic effort to inhale small gulps of air“ (Dr. C. Truman Davis). Jesus suffered this way for 6. Grueling. Hours. The way to end this horror was when the crucified could not or would not push up on his legs to breathe, or if the fluid pooling around the heart caused congestive heart failure – asphyxiation would occur in seconds.

9. John concludes his Passion narrative with that ominous verse: »When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said: It is finished!, and He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.« As Jesus exhaled His final breath upon the cross, Pilate’s order was fulfilled: 3 notorious seditionists had been successfully executed. The Jewish leaders, the 70-man Sanhedrin, comprised of prominent priests, Pharisees and Sadducees had also achieved their goal: that blasphemous gadfly Jesus had finally been silenced. Peace with Rome had been maintained. The Sadducees and priests their temple and its sacrifices intact, the Pharisees and scribes had remove their most vocal opponent to their teachings and relative calm had been maintained at yet another stressful Passover celebration in Jerusalem under the watchful eyes and rule of the Roman Gentiles. Indeed, it was finished.

10. The lifeless body of Jesus on the cross also finished something else vastly more important to the Lord then the insignificant machinations of Pilate and the Sanhedrin; God had fulfilled the promise He had made thousands of years earlier. In the Garden of Eden, Satan had used a serpent to entice Adam to sin against his God and Creator. Hardship and death resulted as mankind’s curse, but the Lord had one final say in all this, and he looked squarely at the Devil and his complicit dragon and said to them: »Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall crush your head, and you shall bruise His heel« (Genesis 3,14-15). Christ fulfilled His promise on the cross where He paid in full the costly ransom price for our sinfulness. Salvation has been secured; forgiveness has been obtained; the Devil has been defeated; it is finished.

11. The Devil had deceived Adam into rebellion by promising him wisdom. He had wrapped himself around the tree of knowledge of good and evil, like the mythological Nidhogg, to tempt him with fruit bearing the flowers of wisdom. Jesus brought life once again to mankind by taking His place upon another tree bearing the thorns of suffering and portending the mythical Yggdrasil as is gallows. By His crucifixion Jesus has crushed the head of Satan. That tree’s name is the Cross; long ago, trembling, drenched in blood, it bore a Powerful King (Cædmon 44-45, Wessex version). „Therefore, let no one fear Death, for the death of Christ has set us free. He has destroyed Death by enduring death“ (Chrysostom). Do not be afraid, for Jesus now has the keys of Death and Hades (Revelation 1,18). Jesus has triumphed over them and given us the victory: our sin is forgiven, Paradise is now ours and we have been commended into the saving embrace of God. Karfreitag ends in darkness and shadow, but tomorrow is the vigil of Holy Saturday as we await the next chapter of Jesus’ Heilsgeschichte (salvation history). Amen.

12. Let us pray. O Almighty and Most Merciful God; pour out on us Your abundant blessing, so that all who in true faith share this night in joyful celebration of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead may be filled with Your heavenly benediction. Once we were in darkness, but now we are in the light, Jesus Christ our Lord (A prayer from the Easter Vigil in the LSB Altar Book 532). Amen.

To God alone be the Glory

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All Scriptural quotations are translations done by The Rev. Peter A. Bauernfeind using the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia, 4. Edition © 1990 by the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart, and the Novum Testamentum Graece, Nestle-Aland 27. Edition © 1993 by Deutsch Bibelgesellschaft, Stuttgart.

Grace Evangelical-Lutheran

Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church

Saturday, March 31, 2018

Hebrews 9,15.26b-28. Good Friday

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