Title: Surveying the Cross
Text: Luke 23:36-56 v. 27 A great number of the people followed him...
They called the other day to conduct a survey about the alumni of the University of Southern California. Asked me about my ethnic background, and I told them I was Mexican. They asked my line of work and I told them I was pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Germantown. Then they asked my age and gave me four choices, 20-25, 26-35, and 36 or older. And I thought to myself, when did they change the categories? I may have to revisit that web site and change the introduction of the pastor to read Dynamic 30 something pastor.
From verse 27 you get the sense of the vast number of people who were there at the cross when Jesus was crucified. In surveying that crowd and those participating and/or victimized in the crucifixion of our Lord, I do believe that we might hear from heaven this day and proclaim the salvation that comes flowing from that place on Calvary known as the Skull. The old song asks the question, “Were you there when they crucified my lord?” And it is in surveying the crowd, in studying these lives and their purposes for being there, in their backgrounds and in their personalities that we might be able to answer affirmatively that old question and realize that while it took place two millennia ago, Jesus died on that cross for you and for me. So let us survey that wondrous cross and see if we do not in fact find ourselves there among the great number or as a centurion or even dare I say as one of these two thieves crucified one on his right and one on his left.
Firstly, I want to understand the ethnic makeup of this historical event as somewhat of an example of the plurality of peoples that makes up the family of God. Secondly, I would have us look at the various classes of people that comprised this great multitude as noted in their job descriptions and in the locations of their respective homes. Then I’d like to look at the various personalities of these people as seen through their recorded words and understand how it is that our Lord suffered on account of those personalities. And then finally, I would want us to survey the cross for the various states of spiritual conditions that were to be found there. It is my aim in all this that we will at once be convicted and encouraged, guilt-riddled and redeemed, included in the blame but excluded from our due punishment. I believe that in hearing that old hymn after looking at this text, we will each individually realize that we were there at that cross.
That first thought, of understanding how so many ethnicities were present at this crucifixion is a point that differs from traditional Western European views. Maybe you too were of the persuasion that the folks around the cross were White folks. It’s what we’ve seen in paintings. It’s what has been in the pictures of our children’s books. It might even be in your bible somewhere in an artist’s rendition. For ever since the time of the Renaissance, paintings began to depict the biblical world as being filled only with White, European looking faces, and the thought in so many minds then is that in surveying the wondrous cross one would find people of one color, one nationality, and one ethnic origin, and they would be White. But as we survey the cross there, one man, Simon of Cyrene was of the country of Cyrene, a country on the North Coast of Africa. There were women there who were presumably from the mix of groups that formed the Jewish people, which included a line of people from the regions of modern day Iraq and also which included the descendants of Moses whose wife was a Cushite woman, and the descendants of Ephraim and Mannaseh, whose mother was Egyptian. There were soldiers of the Roman government at the cross of Jesus, Italians by descent. There was also a man named Jesus there, and that is the one that draws the most hesitation by traditional academia who for years have known that Michelangelo’s paintings of Jesus do not accurately depict the historical Jesus. Jesus as indicated in the genealogy in Matthew’s gospel, was in part a descendant of Rahab, a Black woman. He was also a descendant of Ruth a Moabite woman, a woman of color. There are others in Jesus’ lineage but I think you get the idea that the pictures of Jesus we’ve seen throughout the years may not portray how Jesus actually looked. In fact, do you know that prior to the domination of Christianity by the European community, that most every depiction of Jesus was as a Black man? The Madonna and Child that was so prevalent among ancient art only ever depicted Mary and Jesus as Afro-Asiatic individuals. It was the Italian church that first took the liberty to draw up a Jesus that resembled their pigmentation, and then when the West engulfed Christianity, it became common place to understand Jesus as looking like a White man. Images of the Black Jesus were systematically done away with. And you know you can do or say an awful lot of things to try to hide the truth. But it doesn’t change the truth anyway. You can hear a defense lawyer make a well reasoned, impassioned and logical argument on behalf of his or her client. But it may say absolutely nothing about whether or not the charges are true. Church I come to tell you, there were a whole lot of folks there at the cross. Black folks were there. People of mixed backgrounds were there. Italians were there. May even have been some Greeks there. The survey of the cross shows that when Jesus died on that cross, he died for people all over the globe. He died for people of all nationalities. He died for people of every color, of every ethnic group. He died in the presence of and on behalf of all of God’s children.
Secondly, let us survey the classes of the people at the cross. There were as we mentioned Roman soldiers and another level of the military known as the centurion. The soldiers were the nuts and bolts type, the blue collar guys, like a private or a corporal. The centurion was by definition in charge of 100 soldiers. So here we have a manager type, white collar type in our midst. Pontius Pilate was there hanging a sign over the head of the cross. He was a governmental leader of the region, like a governor or a senator. A person of political power at the cross. Verse 55 says that there were women who followed Jesus from Galilee, a poor district at that point in time, such that the term itself was a put down, to be called a Galilean. It wasn’t something folks were proud of. Remember when Nathaniel first heard of Jesus and retorted, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Nazareth was in Galilee. It was the wrong side of town, the wrong side of the tracks. ON top of that, these were women in a time when women had little to no rights. Yet there too were there at the cross of Jesus. Then on his right and on his left were two people of another class, the criminal class. That’s right, there were two thugs at the cross of Jesus. There were two guys who rather than work stole, who rather than sacrifice, took. There were two people who were so reviled by society that they were sentenced to death by crucifixion. Society had given up on them. And though they were vile, though their sins were like crimson, though they had stained every ounce of virtue they had ever come across, these two thieves were there at the cross of Jesus too. They were all there. The rich, the poor. The powerful, the powerless. The white collar, the blue collar. The law and the law breakers. Everybody was there at the cross of Jesus. Were you there? I wonder today, were you there when they crucified my lord?
Next, in our survey, we will analyze the varying psychological traits that can be ascertained by the words of the people themselves. Look at verse 27, where it says that there were women who were weeping for him, beating their breasts and wailing for him. There were those, then who were in the throngs of grief, who couldn’t believe that they were seeing an innocent man who loved them being sentenced to death. The had been wronged by society. They had been injured by the hatred and the jealousy of the religious leaders of the day. They had been wounded because their lord, their savior, their shepherd was being mistreated and disrespected. Look now with me at another person who filled out our survey with the words in verse 35, “he saved others, but he could not save himself.” Somebody else in verse 36 mocked him, and still another said in verse 37, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” Even a man dying alongside him on a neighboring cross spoke with contempt on him in verse 39 saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” These are all the voices of cynicism, those who have seen them come and seen them go. These are people who had been burned once before and they weren’t going to be fooled again. These were people who had trusted once in their lives, but whose trust had been abused. They were cynical, sarcastic, bitter people who refused to believe in anything, who had given up hope, who had given up faith. You offer them a loving caring saving Messiah in Jesus to such people and they demand proof. But not the sort of demand that is filled with hope but the type that is filled with skepticism, that almost rejoices in their certainty that no one could ever be this good, this loving, this just. These were cynics. These were the emotionally vacant and the spiritually bankrupt. They too were there at the cross of Jesus. For them too, Jesus suffered and bled and died. Those who with deductive reasoning and persuasive argument had concluded that Jesus couldn’t be who he said he was, he couldn’t be the son of man and the son of God. He just couldn’t be. Is that you this morning? Is there one here today who maybe enjoys the music and the camaraderie, but for whom this Jesus is really nothing more than a myth, than a feel good subject and not a soul-cleansing savior? Is that you? Were you there? Or are you to be numbered with that centurion in verse 47, who watched it all, who contemplated not just the low rate of probability that a man could be both human and divine, but who actually watched Jesus as he suffered, bled and died, how he never said a mumbling word, how the sun went away in blood, and the darkness covered the whole earth even though it wasn’t raining and it was high noon. This centurion watched it all, watched the false witnesses, watched the two thieves, watched the humble servant of the world lower his head and finally give up the ghost and the centurion cried out, “Surely this man was innocent.” In Matthew’s version of it he said, “Truly this must be the son of God.” I know there are a few here who have watched what Jesus has done in your life, watched how he took your penalty, watched how he took your sins. And you too have cried out, truly this must be the son of God. You too were there along with those who refused to believe. You were there in our survey of the cross. They were all there, the emotionally wounded and the emotionally bankrupt. The skeptical mind and the open mind. The cynic and the believer all there around our Lord as he gave himself for us.
Then lastly in this survey of those who were present at the cross of the Lord, not only did we have a group of people from every ethnic group, from every class of people, and from every emotional and psychological standing, but there were also those from every spiritual condition as well. Look over at verse 50, and read how there was a good and righteous man named Joseph who though a member of the council had not agreed to their plan and action. There were righteous people there to be sure. John recorded in his version that the mother of Jesus was there, that John the beloved disciple was there. Those women that Luke recorded, who followed Jesus, who took care of him from their own limited funds, they were faithful to him even in his death. They didn’t turn tail and run when the going got tough. They didn’t abandon him when he needed them the most. They were righteous. But you know there were most certainly those whose spirits had been seared by the branding of sin, who not only mocked the lord openly but who participated in his demise. They mocked him. They spat on him. They teased him and mad fun of him. They whipped him in the courtyard. They placed a crown of thorns on his head. They bruised him, they wounded him. They nailed his hands and his feet to an old rugged cross. They gave him vinegar to drink. They pierced him in his side. They did it all knowingly and disgustingly intending to harm him, not knowing that they were wounding the son of God.
There was an old seminary professor who was well know for his unusual and insightful gimmicks that he would use in his teachings. All the students looked forward to them every day. One day, he asked the class to take out pieces of paper and to draw a picture of someone they most would like to throw a dart at, and he would assemble the pictures on the wall and then give every one a dart and allow them to throw them at the pictures of their enemies. Each one thought of those who had wounded them, who had betrayed them, some person they never liked, some president they didn’t vote for, some ex wife, some ex husband. And one by one they all joyfully went to the big white wall and taped their pictures of their hated foes onto the wall. Then one by one they took turns throwing darts at those pages that bore the images of those whom they despised. Some threw with passion and laughter as they tore open the paper cutting the pictures of the faces of these people, deforming them so that they were hardly recognizable, and relishing in their accomplishments. Then after the last dart had been thrown and the last injury to those faces had been endured and the last derogatory remark had been uttered about those whom the students despised, the professor pulled down from the wall the wall paper that now was severely damaged by the darts that had been hurled at it. Behind those ruptured pictures and that damaged wall paper was a picture of Jesus on the cross, now badly torn, filled with holes from the darts that had been hurled, filled with marks and bruises and tears and wounds from the darts these seminary students had caused. In their shock, these Christian men and women listened to the professor read aloud from two passages, “Inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these, you have done it unto me. And then, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Oh maybe you and I were born out of time, but we were there. Maybe we are two thousand years removed but we were there. The survey of the cross tells us that we were there. It was for our transgressions that he was wounded. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed. We were there. We may be 21st century generation Xers, but we were there. Maybe you’re a baby boomer, but you were there. You may be Black or White or Rich or Poor, young or old, but we were there. I was there. You were there. When Jesus died for the sins of the world, we were there.
