Hanging on the cross … between Heaven and earth … what did Jesus see? He saw two other men … criminals … one to His left and one on His right … being crucified with Him. He saw His Roman executioners gambling over his clothing, indifferent to His suffering. He saw the religious leaders, who were there specifically to watch Him suffer and die. They were the ones who spearheaded His death.
They added to His suffering by mocking Him:
“He saved others, but He cannot save Himself.”
“He’s the King of Israel! Let Him come down now from the cross and we will believe Him.”
“He trusts in God. Let God rescue Him now if He wants, for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” (Matthew 27:42)
There were curious spectators, who also mocked and derided Him:
“You who would destroy the Temple and build it in three days … save yourself!”
“If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” (Matthew 27:40)
But in the midst of all this gawking, taunting, and derision … in the midst of all this rage and fury, pain and suffering … Jesus sees five people standing there who are dear to His heart: He sees His mother, Mary; He sees His mother’s sister, Salome, the mother of James and John; He sees Mary Magdalene; He sees Mary, the wife of Clopas; and He sees John, one of His beloved disciples.
Four people who loved Him so much that they dared to stand that close to the cross … knowing that their closeness to Jesus could result in their arrest and the possibility that they could be banned, beaten, imprisoned … or possibly end up like Him … and yet, there they were. They stood at the foot of the cross … they heard Jesus speak His last words. Why would they take such a risk? How could they stand there and watch someone they love being made to suffer like that? They were there because they loved Jesus, because they wanted Him to see them and know that they were going to be with Him to the end … no matter what the possible risks were to their own lives. They did not want Him to die alone, surrounded only by people who hated Him or were just bored. They knew the cost of going to the cross … but their love for Him was greater than their fear and they went anyways and stood before Him as a way of showing Him that they stood beside Him.
Standing with Jesus can be a risky, dangerous thing. There are some who dare to draw near to Christ … and then there are some who do not. But here’s the truth, my brothers and sisters, you are either seeking and drawing nearer to Him … or you are not. There is no in-between. It’s easy to stand in the crowd and feel like you’re participating in something. You can sing about the cross. You can listen to sermon after sermon on the cross. But if you want to experience the power and the truth of the cross, you must go to the cross. You must stand in the presence of the cross. You must stand close enough to hear the ringing of the hammer pounding on the nails. You must stand close enough to hear the dull thud of the cross as it is dropped into the hole. You must stand close enough to hear His final words and hear His final breath. To experience the cross … to have your life changed by the cross … you not only have to get close to the cross, you have to get close to the One who is hanging on the cross.
How close are you willing to get to the cross? Are you willing to stand so close that His blood spills on you? Are you willing to face the ridicule and scorn of the crowd? The world? Are you willing to risk your life? Where do you stand? Close to Christ … or do you choose to watch from a distance? Only you can decide how close you are willing to get to the cross of Jesus Christ.
How do we, more than 2,000 years later, do this? How do we get close enough to the cross to be spattered with His blood? How do we get close enough to hear Him breath … to hear Him speak from the cross? Jesus gives us the answer in Matthew 10:37-39:
“He who loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me. And he who loves son and daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.”
Jesus didn’t say that you shouldn’t love your mother or father, your brothers or sister, your sons or daughters. You are commanded to love them. What He is saying, however, is that you love Him more you love anyone or anything else on earth. If you desire to be close to Jesus Christ and His cross … if you desire for your life to have purpose and meaning and fulfillment … then you must become a disciple of Jesus Christ … a disciple who loves Jesus Christ more than anything … more than family, more than that wealth, more than status, more than power, more than life itself.
Becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ should be our heart’s desire, amen? In order for that happen, we must embrace everything that Jesus taught, everything that Jesus did, everything that Jesus went through … including the cross. In order to become a disciple of Jesus Christ we must go to the cross and see Him hanging there and know and believe with all our heart that He is who He is … the Son of God … the Savior of the World … who died for our sins. And when you know this … when you believe this with all your heart and soul … how can you stand off at a distance? How can you not want to stand for Him? Stand with Him? How can you not want to give Him your undying love? To be there for Him no matter what the cost?
Anybody can hide in the crowd, amen? The further away from the cross you stand, the safer you will be, amen? You can stand a hundred miles away and call yourself a “disciple” because it will cost you virtually nothing. In fact, at a hundred miles away, can you even see the cross? And if you can’t see it, you don’t have to worry about it, am I right? A real disciple of Jesus Christ is one who goes to the foot of the cross and stands dangerously close to Jesus … even in the presence of those who hate Christ and His followers.
Do you want your life to have fulfillment and to impact eternity? Did you hear what I asked? Do you want your life to have fulfillment and to impact eternity? Then you must choose to be a disciple of Jesus Christ … you must become someone who loves Jesus so much that you would dare to stand before Him as well as stand beside Him.
But …
Is it possible to stand at the foot of the cross and miss the whole point? The soldiers who crucified Jesus and then threw lots or dice for His clothes … they were the closest to the cross … and yet they were totally clueless as to who Jesus was and what was happening … even though they were the ones who nailed His titulus … the sign … above Jesus’ head that proclaimed Him as “King of the Jews.” They stood, they knelt, they sat in the very shadow of the cross that they nailed Jesus to and heard every word that Jesus said. They saw the noonday sun go black. They saw and felt the ground shake. They saw all of these unique and amazing miracles … and yet, except for one soldier, they were still unmoved by what they saw and heard … they were absolutely clueless and uninterested in what it all meant … and there are people today who are just as unmoved and just as uninterested as those Roman soldiers were, gambling with their lives and their eternal souls in the very presence of the shadow of the cross.
The whole world knows what today is (Easter). The whole world knows about Jesus. I doubt there’s a person alive on the face of this earth who hasn’t seen a cross and knows what it represents. The world knows about Jesus … the world knows about the cross … and most of the world would say, “So what?” Can you imagine what it must have been like for the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus that day, who gambled for His clothes, who stood around at the foot of the cross and watch Him die to suddenly find themselves standing in the Presence of God and realizing what they had missed out on that day? Guess what … they’re not going to be alone, I can assure you. A lot of people are going to find themselves in the same, shall we say, extremely “uncomfortable” position, amen?
This is exactly why I took the time to preach so much about the cross during Lent. There will come a day when everyone will find themselves confronted by the cross … and when they do, they will all have a choice to make. Will they believe, not in the cross itself, but in the One who sacrificed His life for us on that cross? Our job, our purpose, our role as disciples of Jesus Christ is to bring them into the presence of the cross so that everyone may come to know and believe and follow Jesus as we have ... not to force them or scare them into believing but to show them how much God loves them and let the love that captured our hearts capture their hearts and inspire them and lead them to become believers and followers of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
There were others who were stood in the presence and the shadow of the cross day and where just as clueless and just as unmoved as the Roman soldiers were by what they saw and experienced. I’m talking about the religious leaders and the crowd who taunted and mocked Jesus as He hung on the cross dying. They missed it.
But not everyone missed it. There were five people there at the foot of the cross who did believe. Five people who loved Jesus because He first loved them. Five people who came to stand at the foot of the cross as their way of showing their love … whatever the risk maybe … who came to stand beside Him and to be with Him in what they believed were to be His final moments.
As Jesus hung there, could He see the tears in their eyes? Could He hear the pain in their sobs? Did it remind Him of the sobs of pain and loss that He heard when He went to rescue His friend Lazarus from the grave? Even though He hung on the cross and experienced terrible pain and torment, was His heart as troubled by the suffering of His mother and His friends, His disciple as His heart was troubled when He saw the pain and suffering that Lazarus’ death caused his sisters and family and friends? Was His heart also troubled by the fact that they had been as close to Him as Lazarus’ sisters had been and yet had no idea who He was or the power that He had?
What does Jesus see when He looks at His mother standing there? He clearly sees her pain and her grief as she watches her son suffer and die an agonizing and humiliating death on the cross before the whole world. He wonders if she remembers the words that Simeon told her at the Temple when He was just eight days old: “This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed … and a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:34-35).
You would think that raising the Son of God would be, well, easy … you know, filled with joy and love. That you and your family would be protected and taken care of as you raise Emmanuel. But Simeon told Mary that her life with Jesus would be like a sword that would pierce here heart to the very depth of her soul … many times. Her heart was pierced when she heard about how King Herod had ordered the massacre of all the male children below the age of two on account of her son, Jesus. Her heart was pierced every time she heard the wagging tongues and looked into the accusing eyes of her family, her so-called friends, and neighbors who didn’t believe her story about how she came to be with God’s child. Her heart was pierced when Jesus’ hometown rejected Him and wanted to throw Him off a cliff. Her heart was pierced when Jesus’ brothers accused Him of being insane and embarrassing His family. And yet, none of that equaled the pain that she was now feeling as she watched soldiers whip Him, beat Him, lead Him through the street of Jerusalem naked, nail Him to the cross, and then gamble for His tunic in the shadow of the cross where He hung dying … the tunic that she had made for Him. Simeon was right … it was a pain that not only pierced her heart but pierced her very soul.
Jesus’ mother lifts her eyes to the figure of her son hanging on the cross and she remembers how she used to kiss His brow, now covered with thorns and blood. She remembers holding His little hand in hers when He was a child … the same hands that are now nailed to the cross of her salvation. As Lutheran leader Johannes Gerhard once observed:
“She sees Him suspended … but cannot touch Him.
“She sees Him nailed to the cross … but cannot loose Him.
“She sees Him dripping with blood … but cannot remove it.
“She sees Him wounded upon the entire body … but cannot bind up His wounds.
“She heard Him cry, ‘I thirst’ … but may not give Him to drink.”
She remembers the time when she asked Him to turn some water into wine at a friend’s wedding and He said to her “my hour has not yet come”… and now, as she watches Him suffer on the cross, how could she know that this was the hour that He spoke of.
It is at this moment that Jesus gathers up His strength, pushes up on the nails in His feet so that He can speak, and tells His mother: “Woman … behold your son” and then He said to His disciple, John, “Here is your mother” (John 19:27).
What did Jesus see as He looked down at His disciple, John? The first thing He saw was that John was the only disciple there. Where were all the others? They had run away. They were hiding. Even John ran when the soldiers came to arrest his Master in the garden … but he alone came back and followed Jesus all the way to the High Priest’s house and then all the way to this ghastly place – Golgotha … the Place of the Skull.
There on the cross … with eternity hanging in the balance … Jesus chooses His most loyal and affectionate disciple to take care of His mother … the woman who bore Him, raised Him, and understood Him in a way that only a mother could. In that moment, Jesus looks down and chooses His disciple John to take over from where He left off. “From that hour the disciple took her into his own home” (John, 19:27b).
When Jesus asks John to take care of His mother, His motivation was to not only to make sure that His mother be taken care of but something far more significant. If His only concern was that someone take care of His mother, He could have asked any one of His stepbrothers, like James or Jude, for example. In fact, Jesus wouldn’t even have to ask. It would have been safe for Him to assume that someone in the family would have taken care of Mary.
In fact, Jesus’ request is very unusual because Mary and John are not “blood” relatives … but they are related to each other by the “blood” of the cross. “Blood” ties are the strongest ties on earth. You can pick your friends, as they say, but you can’t pick your family. When Jesus declares that Mary is now John’s mother and John is now Mary’s son, He is pointing out that they are now family … a family tied together eternally by the shedding of His blood on the cross. They are now spiritually “family.” We have our worldly family … connected by flesh and blood … and we have our Christian or “forever” family connected by the shedding of Jesus’ blood and the sacrifice of His flesh, His life, on the cross.
Just as Jesus said that He is to be the most important person in our lives … more important than our fathers or mothers, our brothers and our sisters … our “forever” family is more important than even our biological family. Again, it doesn’t mean that family isn’t extremely important to us … they are … and they should be … but when it comes to our spiritual lives, our spiritual family is the most important relationship we can have outside of our relationship to Jesus. Understand? The moment you choose to believe in Jesus Christ … the moment you accept Him as your Sovereign Lord and Savior … when you believe with all your heart and soul that He is indeed the Son of God … you are adopted into His eternal family.
Jesus knew that His mother was going to need John … but He also knew that John was going to need His mother. Mary and John had one great thing in common … they both loved and believed in Jesus Christ. And, because of that, they were more than just friends. There were now members of the same “forever” or eternal family. They were now tied together forever by Jesus’ blood.
And that goes for you and that goes for me. The second we became disciples of Jesus, we immediately became blood relatives to Jesus and to each other through the blood of Jesus. Don’t believe me? Let Jesus tell you Himself:
“Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news who will not receive a hundred fold now in this age – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions – and in the age to come eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30).
If you are a believer and a follower … a disciple … of Jesus Christ, then you are a member of a great and wonderful forever family!
How big is our eternal, forever family? John got to see for himself! He got a personal glimpse into Heaven where he saw “a great multitude that no one could count … from every nation … from all tribes … and people … and languages … standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white … with palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7:9).
Our spiritual, eternal family will consist of people of every race, from every nation, from every language on earth. Just as we have no control over the family that we are born into here on earth, neither do we have any control over who will be in our Kingdom family because it is God’s desire that everyone … every child born on this planet … be a part of His family and His Kingdom.
When Jesus shared the good news with Mary and John that they were now part of His forever family, He was conveying to them … and to us … the deeper reality of the cross. The cross … or more specifically, what He did on the cross … was intended to make all of us … the whole world … part of His Heavenly family. When we become disciples of Christ, we become brothers and sisters by the blood of Christ. We share in a new birth. We share the same Holy Spirit. We share the same destiny … a home in Heaven.
When Jesus replaced Himself with John, it was His way of showing us just how significant the Church … which is the “body” of Christ … really is. Jesus committed Mary to John’s care and John to Mary’s care so that they could comfort each other and support each other after He was gone and was no longer physically present to take care of them any longer. That is what it means to be a part of the church. It’s not about the buildings. It’s not about denominations. It’s not about the liturgies or songs or traditions. It’s about being part of a family … a forever family united eternally by the blood of Jesus Christ … a family that is committed to taking care of one another just as Christ called Mary to take care of John and for John to take care of Mary.
There are many passages in the Bible that call us, as a church family, to take care of one another. For example:
"Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone" (Romans 12:10-18).
There are many of these so-called “one another” passages in the Bible … Romans 15:7, Ephesians 4:32, Galatians 5:13, Colossians 3:13 … you know what, there are lot of them. I suggest that you read the Bible and try to find as many as you can … and then live by them, amen?
All of these so-called “one another” passages, like the one we just read from Romans, are spoken to the church … you know, the body, the family of God … a family that is united by the blood of one person … Jesus Christ. Jesus died and gave His own blood so that grieving mothers could have sons to care for them … and sons would have grieving mothers to care for … and for grieving sons to have mothers to care for them and mothers to have grieving sons to care for. In other words, there should be no one in the body of Christ, in our church family, who is uncared for … who is suffering alone … who is left to fend for themselves. “We are family … I’ve got all my brothers and sisters with me” … come on, sing it with me … “We are family … I’ve got all my brothers and sisters with me.” Sweet!
Let me start to close this by asking you an interesting question: Who would you die for?
I’m serious.
Who would you die for? Who comes immediately to your mind? Your children? Your spouse? Your parents? A good friend? They’d have to be a really, really, really good friend to do that for them, amen?
Under the shadow of His cross, Jesus commands us to love one another as He has loved us. “No one has greater love than this … to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:12-13).
Who would you die for? Your family? A few choice friends? Not good enough. Christ’s death on the cross calls for us to go so much further than that. “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” … Christ died for who? The ungodly. “Indeed,” says the Apostle Paul, “rarely will anyone die for a righteous person – though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves His love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-5).
Guess what?
When Jesus died on the cross, who did He die for?
When I asked you who you would die for, certain names and certain faces came to mind immediately because, in our minds, they have some value … some worth to us. We see something in them that’s worth dying for. What about dying for someone that you see no value in? Would you die for someone that you consider to be absolutely worthless? How about your boss? Would you die for him or her? How about the accountant who embezzled your retirement? Would you die for them? How about the person who’s always talks trash about you behind your back, humm? How about the “friend” who stole your promotion or got you fired. Would you die for them? Would you die for the scoundrel who stole your spouse? Or harmed your children in some heinous way? Would you die for them?
Now let me ask you this: Who would die for you? That’s right. Think about it for a minute. Who would die for you? [pause]
When Jesus hung on that cross and He looked down at His mother, His aunt, the wife of Clopas, Mary Magdalene, and John, what did He see worth dying for? John, who was full of pride … who asked to be seated at the right or the left hand of Jesus when Jesus came into power? The first three times He spoke to Jesus, he was roundly rebuked by Jesus … yet Jesus knew that there was something in John worth dying for.
Mary Magdalene was demon possessed … yet Jesus saw something in her worth dying for.
Peter was brash, impetuous, fearful … yet Jesus saw something in Him worth dying for.
Judas was a traitor and a thief … yet Jesus saw something in him worth dying for.
Paul was a zealot who persecuted Jesus’ followers … yet Jesus saw something in him worth dying for.
Jesus saw something in the Roman soldiers who beat him and mocked Him worth dying for.
Jesus saw something in the soldiers who nailed Him to the cross and gambled for His clothes worth dying for.
He saw something in Caiaphas and Annanias worth dying for.
He saw something in Pilate and Herod worth dying for.
He saw a reason to die for every mocker in the crowd. He knew every hair on their heads. He formed their inner-most parts when they were in the womb. He was the one who made them in secret, who wove them together in the depths of the earth, who knew the number of their days right down to the second, who caused the sun to shine on them and the rain to water their fields and crops, who had searched them and knew the very contents of their hearts … and still He found them worth dying for … because, as we know, God so loved the world … the whole world … everyone who has, is, or will ever live on the face of this magnificent blue planet that He made … He loves everyone of us so much that He took on flesh, dwelled among us, tried to teach us and lead back on the right path, and then let us nail Him to a nasty, dirty, shameful cross … so that whoever believes in Him … that’s the key, right there … so that whoever believes in Him … can become part of Jesus’ Forever Family.
In case you didn’t know this already … Jesus died for you! He was there when you were formed in the secret place. He knitted you together in your mother’s womb. He knows every hair on your head, every thought, every secret … He knows your heart inside and out. He knows your every fear, your every doubt, your every sin … and yet … and yet … He still sees you as someone worth dying for!
When Jesus gave up His life for you and for me, His final words were: “It is finished” (John 19:30). What He actually said was “telelistai” … which literally means “paid in full.” After that, His body was taken down and laid in a tomb and three days later His Father called out to Him and said: “Jesus! My Son! My Beloved Son! Come out!”
From the cross, Jesus gives us a picture of what it means to be the Church … Christians caring for one another as though those in need were our own children or our own parents. Jesus’ words – “Here is your son … Here is your mother” – reminds us that Mary’s mission and John’s mission is our mission too. We are called to care for those whom Jesus cares for as if they there were our own family … because, spiritually speaking, they are!
God has a place for you within the church … His church. It’s a place where we are called to be brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers to one another. It is a place through which we are to be brothers and sisters, mothers and father to the community … to the world … the Oh, so lonely world around us.
The church is a place where we come to get closed to the cross … so close that we can hear the hammering of the nails … so close that His blood spills on us … so close that we can hear His voice … so close that we not only get to stand before Him but to stand beside Him and die for Him because He is worth dying for, amen?
Let us pray:
We thank You, Lord, that Easter is not about a people … it’s about all people … Your people.
Today is about Your love and Your salvation for all who confess with their voices, their hearts, and their lives that the person who died on that cross on our behalf, whose body was laid in a tomb which could not contain Him, is indeed the very Son of God who has risen from the dead … Who saw something in all of us, His children, worth dying for.
Let us stand close to the cross and know Your forgiveness.
Let us stand at the entrance to the tomb to know that we have been reborn.
Let us spread the good news that You died for all Your children so that we may all become members of Your Forever Family … bought and paid for and united by Your blood.
And now, in and by the name above all names, Jesus Christ, let all of God’s Forever Family make it so by saying … Amen!
