Dying Was His Reason for Living
The Hero: Who Is Jesus
Brad Crocker
Landmark Christian Church, Chippewa Falls, WI
2/18/2004
A man fell into a pit and couldn’t get himself out.
An emotional person came along and empathized, “I feel for you down there.”
An intellectual person walked by and analyzed, “It’s logical that someone would fall down there.”
A moralist condemned, “Only bad people fall into pits.”
A mathematician calculated how deep the pit was.
A news reporter wanted the exclusive story on the pit.
An IRS agent asked if he was paying taxes on the pit.
A self-pitying person whined, “You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen my pit.”
A fire-and-brimstone preacher declared, “You deserve your pit.”
A psychologist noted, “Your mother and father are to blame for your being in the pit.”
An optimist smiled, “Things could be worse.”
A pessimist frowned, “Things will get worse.”
Jesus, seeing the man, went down into the pit, took him by the hand and lifted him out.
[Source: Internet for Christians newsletter, 7/29/02. Source: SermonCentral PRO]
The coronation scene in The Return of the King includes a moment in which the large throng of elegantly dressed people turns and bows. It is not until they bow that the audience can see to whom they are giving honor. The only ones left standing, to which this huge crowd is paying homage, are four half-sized, plainly dressed hobbits, squirming with discomfort at being so revered.
In The Passion you see something very different – you see Jesus down in the pit - one eye swollen shut, lacerations striping his face as well as his back, so beaten that he can barely stand. [Displaying a picture of Jesus from the Passion material might work better than the description.] Disgusted, the crowd shouts for his execution.
These two contrasting images capture contrasting themes from these two great movies. A major theme in The Lord of the Rings is the small ones rising to do something great, the lowliest rising to the heights, accomplishing a triumph which the greatest and noblest of the land were unable to achieve.
The biblical teaching about Jesus, displayed in The Passion, is just the opposite. Not the lowest ascending to the heights of glory, but the highest descending to the depths of humiliation to do for the lowest what they could never do for themselves. Jesus is the conquering hero, but He conquers in a way that no one would have ever expected, in a way that no one else could, in the way that we needed most – because we are the ones in the pit. He is the only one who loves us enough and is strong enough to come down where we are and lift us out.
One of the flashbacks in the movie is to the scene of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples while he is together with them in the upper room. Let’s read the Bible’s account of that scene because that scene is a microcosm of the entire story of Jesus, it tells us who he is, what he did and why he did it.
[Read John 13:1-8]
The first thing that this story tells us is the identity of Jesus – who He is.
1. Jesus is God with you.
Verse three relates what Jesus realized about Himself. First, that God “the Father had put all things under His power.” All things – Jesus wields power over every created thing. In the first chapter of His history of Jesus, John had written that not only was Jesus in authority over all things, but He was also the creator of all things. It was by Jesus that this world was made.
Second, verse three tells us that Jesus came from God and was returning to God. John chapter one had already made it clear that Jesus had always existed as equal with God, living in perfect harmony with God from all eternity.
In other words, Jesus – this person who was rejected, flogged, beaten, ridiculed and crucified - was none other than God come down to earth in a human form.
The following is not a true story: A brilliant magician was performing on an ocean liner. But every time he did a trick, the Captain’s parrot would yell, “It’s a trick. He’s a phony. That’s not magic.” Then one evening during a storm, the ship sank while the magician was performing. The parrot and the magician ended up in the same lifeboat. For several days they just glared at each other, neither saying a word to the other. Finally, the parrot said, “Okay, I give up. What did you do with the ship?"
There’s not much point to that story – but there is this: That parrot just didn’t get it. He was still caught up in his narrow point of view that everything that happened with the magician was a trick, so he couldn’t see the reality that the ship sinking was no trick.
In a (slightly) similar way, we struggle to understand how Jesus could be God because we are so used to our ordinary way of thinking that we fail to be able to see that things could be different with God. The Bible says that there is only one God. But we see that Jesus prayed to God, cried out to God, obeyed God, was tempted to disobey God. So how could He pray to and obey God, if He was Himself God? It’s hard to see how that could be.
Alister McGrath, in his book, Understanding the Trinity, gives several examples which make sense of this mysterious teaching.
Imagine you take a journey across the Atlantic in an ocean liner. You are impressed with the vast expanses of water, not being able to even see land for days. You feel the spray of the salty water on your face and sense the untamed power of it in the rolling of the ship. When your journey is done, someone asks you, “Did you experience the Atlantic Ocean?” You would immediately say, “Yes.” But if they pressed you, you might have to admit that the ocean is miles deep, and all you saw was the surface. The ocean stretches from one icy polar sea to the other, and all you traversed was one narrow swath. In reality, you experienced a tiny bit of the ocean. Nevertheless, you would still rightfully insist that you did in fact experience the ocean.
A second illustration: When astronauts went to the moon, they brought back moon rocks, which the public got to see and scientists got to examine. When they studied those rocks, were the scientists analyzing the moon? Well, not the whole moon - there was much more to the moon than those few rocks. But because those rocks were from the moon, they did have a direct encounter with the substance of the moon.
Illustration number three: If you were in chemistry class and the teacher told you to find out what gases are present in air, how would you go about doing this? Would you try to examine the whole atmosphere? No, you would get a sample of the air in a test tube and submit that to chemical analysis. Because that small sample really is air, you could correctly draw conclusions about the rest of the air.
I hope you are beginning to see the parallels between those illustrations and Jesus and God. Jesus is to God as your test tube sample is to the entire atmosphere, as the moon rocks are to the moon, and as your small swath is to the entire ocean. Jesus is not all of God, there is far more to God than what appeared in Jesus, yet Jesus really is God, sort of a sampling of God. God knew that we couldn’t handle all of Him, but He still wanted to come and be with us. So He sent a sample, so to speak. God extended Himself to earth in a package we could understand – another human being. So when we see Jesus, we truly see God and can, from what we see in Him, understand what God is like.
So – what is God like? If Jesus is showing us God, what does He teach us about the true nature of God?
Going back to John 13 we find out.
2. Jesus Is God Stooping Down for You.
John 13: 3-4a – “Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under His power, and that He had come from God and was returning to God; so…”
So – what? Knowing that He is the Glory of the Universe, the Almighty, the everlasting Splendor, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Creator, Sustainer and Ruler of all – knowing this about Himself, what does Jesus do?
Does He command them to bow?
Does He blind them with His glory?
Does He instruct them in all the secrets of the universe?
Does His voice roar like thunder, His eyes burn like fire, and His body dazzle with light?
Does He shake the world with an earthquake to show His power?
Let’s see what He does. [Read John 13:3-5]
(Part of the following paragraph is taken from a sermon by Daniel Myers – Christ Church in Oak Brook, IL)
He knew He was Almighty God, so He stooped down, took stinking feet in His holy hands and washed them. What kind of God is He? He is a God who serves. He before whom angels shield their eyes, on other occasions bent to embrace lepers, knelt to take the hands of adulteresses. He who had dwelt in unapproachable light prayed for the souls of those who hated Him and hurt Him. He at whose command the worlds and winds and waves move in instantaneous submission stooped further yet. He became obedient to death, death by the lowest most humiliating, painful form of execution, dying naked on a criminal’s cross.
Why? Why would Almighty God stoop down to serve us? Why would God Most High come down to our pit?
There has been a great deal of talk leading up to The Passion regarding who was really responsible for the death of Christ. Was it the Jews, was it the Romans?
Mel Gibsons’ perspective on this, and the point he was trying to get across in the movie, is that each of us is responsible for Jesus’ death. Our sins sent Him there. We each drove the nails.
You may be aware that Mel Gibson does in fact appear in this movie – in just one place. It is his hand that wields the hammer, driving the nails through Jesus’ hand – Gibson’s way of showing that not the Jews, not the Romans, but he himself, and by extension every one of us, is the true Christ killer.
In one sense, this point of Mel’s is entirely true. It is certainly all of our sins, not just the sins of one group, that prompted the cross. But in another sense, this idea that we drove Jesus to the cross is false. No one drove him to the cross. No power outside Himself made Him go there. He voluntarily submitted to the cross, suffering all that for one reason and one reason only – He loves us.
Who is Jesus? He is God with us. He is God stooping down to us. He is also, and most importantly, God loving us.
3. Jesus Is God Loving Us
John 13:1 – “Jesus knew that the time had come for Him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world, He now showed them the full extent of His love.”
We mentioned before that Jesus is the creator of the world. But He is not just the creator of the whole world, He is also the creator, the designer, of each person in this world. The Bible tells us that God knew us before we were born, shaping each of us personally, which means He was the personal designer of each individual He encountered on the way to the cross.
When Jesus healed the cut off ear of the guard in the Garden during His arrest, He was restoring what He Himself had designed before the world began.
When Jesus looked into the cold eyes of the high priest, His heart was broken because He had fashioned those eyes to be soft with love, not hard with indifference.
When Jesus probed the mind of Pilate, He was trying to save His child from slipping into the despair of cynicism.
When the whips were ripping apart His back, I think His greatest sorrow is that the strong arms and hands that He had made were being used not to protect but to destroy.
As the execution technicians callously discussed the most efficient crucifixion procedures while killing the only innocent man they had ever encountered, that man cried out for their forgiveness. He was their Creator, and from all eternity He had wanted them to enjoy life with Him and work as His partners in the beautiful productivity of His Kingdom.
When his seemingly hopeless cross companion suddenly turned and by faith embraced the suffering Christ, without hesitation Jesus said, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.”
Jesusalso wants you to join Him someday in Paradise. He was on that cross because He loves you. Before the world was made, Jesus had you in mind. He fashioned you with His own creating hand, and then when he saw that His beautiful design of you had been ruined by the sin that plagues us all, He went down to the pit to bring you out. He hung on that cross so that you too could be with Him in paradise.
And when His final breath was breathed, and when He stunningly walked out of that grave 3 days later, the victory of love had been accomplished. He had gone through Hell so that we wouldn’t have to. He had paid the price of sin in our place. He had achieved the victory over death that we could not achieve by our own power. At last, those He loved were free to return to Him forever.
Leonard Sweet in Postmodern Pilgrims recounts a letter a physician wrote to a church related magazine.
Today I visited an eight-year-old dying of cancer. Her body
was disfigured by her disease and its treatment. She was in
almost constant pain. As I entered her room, I was overcome
immediately by her suffering – so unjust, unfair, unreasonable.
Even more overpowering was the presence of her grandmother
lying in bed beside her with her huge body embracing this
precious, inhuman suffering.
I stood in awe, for I knew I was on holy ground ….
I will never forget the great, gentle arms and body of this grandmother.
She never spoke while I was there. She was holding and participating
in suffering she could not relieve, and somehow her silent presence
was relieving it. No words could express the magnitude of her love.
As Jesus, the eternal Son of God, looked down at His creation, He saw it twisted with evil. He witnessed His children suffering from all the wrongs they had brought on themselves and yet were powerless to reverse. Seeing this, He didn’t just weep from on high, He put aside His heavenly splendor and stooped down to be with us in our sufferings. Like that magnificent grandmother did for her granddaughter, Jesus came so that He could be with us in our hurt and relieve us by His presence. But He also did more than that grandmother was able to do, more than any of us little ones can do. He did what only the God of all could do. He entered the very heart of evil and defeated it, so we could be delivered out of it, be brought up out of the pit to the heights of never-ending joy that He created us to live in – with Him forever.
Who is Jesus? He is God with us, bending down to us because He loves us and wants us to live in that love now and forever.
