4.2.21 Good Friday
Jesus’ Empty Nail-Pierced Hands
Luke 23:32–34 (EHV)
32 Two other men, who were criminals, were led away with Jesus to be executed. 33 When they came to the place called The Skull, they crucified him there with the criminals, one on his right and the other on his left. 34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
You can tell alot about someone by looking at their hands. Lloyd Kramer, whom many of you probably knew, was a butcher on the south side here for years and years. His hands were bent and crippled from handling and cutting beef for a living. Joe Rechsteiner was another man who had huge and strong hands as a builder. You didn’t want to be on the end of a handshake with him when you had a broken finger. Trust me, I know. My father in law grew up as a dairy farmer, so naturally he had a very strong grip from milking cows. On the other hand, (pardon the pun), musicians and seamstresses need a completely different type of hand shape to do the work that they do; with thinner and more dexterous fingers.
As we’ve been journeying through Lent we’ve been looking at different people’s hands. Today we get the privilege of looking at Jesus’ hands. There are so many stories where Jesus did beautiful things with His hands. Think of the little dead girl in the upper room. He grabs her by the hand and says, “Talitha koum!” And she rises from the dead. (Mark 5) Think of when Jesus saw a funeral procession in Nain, walked into the middle of the procession, put his hand on the open casket, and raised the young man from the dead. (Luke 24) Think of Peter, sinking in the water, how thankful he was for the strong hand of Jesus to grab him by the hand. One of my favorite stories is how Jesus was approached by a leper, whom everyone had to avoid and distance from for fear of the disease. Jesus didn’t just speak to Him. He TOUCHED him and said, “be clean.” (Mark 1:41) And who can forget the gentle touch of Jesus on Malchus’ ear after Peter had chopped it off? People would bring their babies to Jesus, just to have Him touch them. What beautiful things Jesus did with His hands!
Today, on this darkest of days, we see something ugly being done with Jesus’ beautiful hands. The Romans soldiers are driving nails through them in order to fasten them to the crossbeam of a cross. That is what “crucify” means, to nail someone to a cross.
When you attack someone’s hands, you attack their ability to do almost anything. When I was growing up one of my best friends had a grandpa who had two hooks for hands. His arms had been torn off in an auger. He seemed like an angry man, and I can’t completely blame him. His wife had to feed him and clothe him and do so much for him. Or you might think of science fiction books where they tie up a wizard’s hands in order to keep him from casting spells. But Jesus was no wizard. Think of handcuffs in which they try to keep a criminal from being able to use his hands. You see forms of torture where fingers are broken in order to get people to talk. I would hate to think how painful that would be.
Here at the cross, the primary purpose of putting nails through the hands was to render their arms and hands useless, to keep the criminals hanging there until they died. They ended up asphyxiating to death, but nonetheless their hands must have been in tremendous pain as well. Here is the Messiah who had performed such miracles with His hands, having them nailed to a cross! It’s an awful thing to see such beautiful hands being crucified. But that’s what we do every year. We sit and listen to the story of Christ crucified. We envision it with our minds, the hands of Jesus getting nails put through them with a huge hammer. It’s a sad and bloody scene. In Mel Gibson’s movie of the Passion he centered in on the hammer striking the nail into the flesh of the hand, a very gruesome thing.
It’s striking to think about. I just watched a portion of the Derek Chauvin trial. Did you watch it? After you see George Floyd go limp, you can’t help but say to yourself, “Ok, get up and get off of him!” Then you hear the people in the video saying the same thing, but being quite vulgar about it. They were taunting and calling names, quite vulgar and humiliating names to the police officers. But then you think, “Why didn’t you do something besides just film it? Couldn’t one of you gone to try and pull the officer off of him? Why didn’t you risk arrest if you really felt he was being murdered?” And from what I understand, some of them are in fact very troubled by the fact that they just watched and filmed while doing nothing. It brings me back to my own life growing up where I’ve seen kids getting picked on or even beaten up and I did nothing to step up or step in out of fear of my own safety. I still feel guilty over the times I have passed by those who needed my help.
Isn’t that what we do every year during Lent? Maybe we think we’re not so guilty because we weren’t there or because we can point the finger at the Jews or the Romans for what they did. But these people doing this, they are a part of OUR race too! Years ago my wife and I went to Mexico. It was a truly enjoyable time. What wasn’t quite so enjoyable was seeing some of the behavior of some of our fellow Americans in the way they treated the Mexican help. They were sometimes rude and demanding, and they were from my country. I was a little embarrassed to be at the same place with them. How is it any different from watching what happens to Jesus? I may not like it. But these people are a part of MY humanity too. They are humans, both the Romans and the Jews.
Underneath the skin, behind the classifications, male and female, employee or employer, blue collar or white, young or old, we all have the same thing on the inside. It’s called sinful nature. The soldiers and the Jews of Jesus’ day, they are only a small portion of humanity. They have what we all have inside, this desire to have power, this desire to force submission and make the rules, to get rid of guilt and accountability. The only way to ultimately do this is to be rid of God. He threatens our autonomy. His holiness confronts us with our sinfulness. But if we nail Him to a tree and humiliate Him, we think we can crucify His power and rid ourselves of Him.
And that’s not all! Not only did we nail Him to the cross, but we taunted Him and made fun of Him in the process! Imagine people doing that to George Floyd while he was being arrested! And those who said they cared and wept for Jesus on the way to the cross, they still did nothing to help him either! What good was that? I can’t divorce myself from what humanity did, because I have the same sinfulness in me. When I failed to stand up to protect another boy getting picked on, how different was that than me failing to stand up for Jesus? No, I can’t divorce myself from what I did to Jesus either. Lord, I’m folding my hands in sorrow. Have mercy on me, a sinner. I’m no better than any of them. I’m probably worse. Who knows that I wouldn’t have been the thief on the cross, the self righteous Jew at His feet, or the soldier with the whip?
When you would least expect it, when you would expect God to curl His hand into a fist and strike back, here again Jesus does something beautiful with His hands. Jesus, who has the power to come down, could have torn His hands and feet from the cross and jumped to the ground. But He kept His hands right where they were, in this seemingly most helpless position. Isn’t it ironic that in this position of weakness, when Jesus can seemingly do NOTHING with His hands, He is doing everything! Yes, He is keeping Himself there in fulfillment of the prophecy of Psalm 22 which said, “They have pierced my hands and my feet.” He is keeping His hands on the cross in order to grab hold of the sins of the world and consume death and hell. Adam and Eve fell into sin by taking the fruit FROM the Tree, Jesus became the Tree of Life by being put ON the Tree and by STAYING on the tree.
So Jesus’ hands are spread out on the cross, but they aren’t empty. When your hands are spread out they are in a giving position. Think of when we give the Aaronic blessings. Our hands are raised and open, speaking out the blessing of the Lord. This is the opposite of a clenched fist. When Jesus' hands are open from the cross, He is there to give us a blessing while He is taking the curse.
The blessing we have is knowing that Jesus is hanging there in order to be cursed and blamed for the sins of the world. When He is doing seemingly nothing with His hands, He is doing everything. You can even hear this from Jesus’ mouth as He’s hanging on the cross. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Jesus is the answer to His own prayer as He hangs on the cross He is praying from. He is the forgiveness that He earned for our salvation. So envision yourself under the cross. See Him opening His hands and His mouth to you. He has not come here to take something away from you. He has come here to give you something with open hands, freely and mercifully. He has come to freely give you forgiveness and salvation through His suffering and death for you, open handed from the cross.
And that’s not the only hands we see from the cross! Listen to what Jesus says from the cross! “Into your hands I commit my spirit!” Quoting from Psalm 31:5, Jesus was confident that the Father would open His hands to accept Jesus' sacrifice. He wouldn’t shove Jesus away after what Jesus had done for Him. He would gather Jesus’ in His arms and welcome Him back into His graces, after having damned His only Son on the cross. It’s an ironic thing. After a child is disciplined by his loving parent for doing something wrong, you see the child return right back to the parent to be held and hugged. It is what Jesus prays to the Father, after having paid for the sins of the world. He died in confidence that the Father would open His hands to accept Him.
And isn’t it amazing that Jesus does the same thing for us, even after what we did with His hands? Most of the time, when someone has a deformity due to an accident or a birth defect, they try to cover up that deformity. They don’t want people to look at it. They are embarrassed about it. They think it makes them look ugly. But what does Jesus do with the hands that we nailed? He chooses to keep the nail prints. He openly shows them to the disciples. He says in Luke 24:39, “Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” In John 20:27 he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and look at my hands. Take your hand and put it into my side. Do not continue to doubt, but believe.” The very things that others would be repulsed by, Jesus is proud of. He doesn’t point to His hands and say, “Look at what you did to me!” He points at His hands and says, “Look at what I did for you!” All so that we can see that He truly does love us. He truly did die for us. He always wants us to know that. His hands are open to us as well!
So there are two other people at Jesus’ hands of the cross. They aren’t good people. They are thieves. One at the right, and the other at the left. And isn’t that a picture of what will happen on Judgment Day as well? Some will be on the right. Others will be on the left. The one thief on the right of Jesus has heard what Jesus has been saying. He’s heard Jesus take care of His mother. He listened to Him praying for the forgiveness of those who were crucifying Him. He’s witnessed Jesus’ gentle and strong love and compassion. He said, “We’re getting what we deserved. This man’s done nothing wrong. Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” The other thief on the left has nothing good to say to Jesus. He has only become more hardened and more desperate. He only taunts Jesus all the more, wanting Him to get DOWN from the cross in order to save HIM from the cross.” The one on the right was given an open welcome to heaven because Jesus stayed on the cross, as he believed in Jesus as his Lord and Savior. The other man also had an open hand from Jesus, but he wanted nothing to do with it as he wanted Jesus to come down. He thought Jesus had nothing to offer with His open hands.
Take a good look at Jesus’ beautiful nail stained hands this night. See what kind of a God they show you He is, a God willing to sacrifice Himself for your salvation. Look at His hands. Jesus hands are open to us as well. They look ugly, but even with nails sticking out of them He has showed us how beautiful they are, because He opens His hands and says to us, “This is for you.”
Like the thief on the right, we say to Jesus, “Remember me.” He has done that on the cross. He’s remembered your sins. He’s experienced your pain. He wasn’t only remembering you, He was becoming you. Because of that, He also remembered to be MERCIFUL. He remembered to be your Savior! What can we do, but to thank the LORD for His nail pierced hands which He left on the cross to give us the greatest blessing of all, the gift of forgiveness. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling, beautifully holding onto your nail stained hands, for me. Amen.
