Good Friday, new 2005
We who are parents know that there is nothing more excruciating; nothing that makes us feels so powerless as the cries of a child in pain. Many years ago when I was doing a pastoral residency in Cincinnati Ohio, I was visiting a patient on the pediatric unit. Sharing the room with my patient was a terminal leukemic child. The dying child’s mother, whom never left his bedside, was standing at the door when another pastoral associate entered the room. I am certain that the tension, grief and overwhelming feelings of powerlessness had reached its breaking point. Ignoring every one in the room, the mother screamed at this elderly nun, I don’t want you or your God in my room. I wish your God had to suffer the way my baby is suffering. This saintly nun, realizing that Her Merciful God can deal with such an outburst of anger, simply touched the arm of this grieving mother and said He did.
It is almost inconceivable to think that the Lord God would suffer; being all-good, all-powerful and all loving would he not be above suffering. But today, the holiest day of the year, the entire Christian world reflect upon the incredible fact that the Lord God did suffer. Scriptures reveal and history confirms that on the second day of the feast of unleavened bread, more precisely, that on Friday April 7 in the year 30 the earthly life of the God Man Jesus of Nazareth ended in pain and torment.
The last hours of our Savior’s earthly ministry was spent in excruciating emotional and physical pain but pain was no stranger to Jesus, Throughout his life, He denied himself the comforts and pleasures of this world. The things that we cherish he rejected. What we seek to escape, poverty, humiliation and even death he embraced willingly.
It is safe to assume that our Blessed Savior was quite aware of the fate that awaited Him. Jesus lived in a very rigid and violent culture. In first century Palestine, one could be stoned to death by the Jewish authorities for violating the Sabbath after a first warning. Capital punishment was used frequently and without the benefit of any type of appeal process. The religious and political authority of Israel had a violent history with holy men, particularly confrontational prophets. At the time of the Liberator, his countrymen were building monuments to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos and Micah in atonement for their martyrdom. We can assume that the fate of the ancient prophets as well as that of Baptist would have been in the mind of the Liberator during his final week in Jerusalem.
The Nazarene had made numerous powerful enemies. On almost all important questions, marriage, family, nation, traditional piety,. relationship with authority, the views of the Liberator were radically different from those of the political and religious authority of his day. Throughout his ministry, this itinerant Galilean without formal training came into conflict with the religious and political aristocrats of Jerusalem. This poor uneducated peasant with a confrontational message about pious self reliance would have clashed with the views of the urban rich and powerful.. This charismatic layman would have certainly annoyed the powerful and political hierarchy of his day because they perceived him as rejecting their interpretation of the sacred law, minimizing the significance of their cultic worship as well as questioning the entire religious and social system from which they benefited.
In the eyes of the spiritual pillars of his community, this Jesus was a heretical teacher who generated confusion for the simple uneducated people. . He would have been perceived as a false prophet and a seducer of the masses. The established guardians of law, morality and justice were convinced that they were absolutely justified in demanding the execution of this alleged blasphemers and false prophet who confronted the established way of being a pious Jew. It is safe assume that the very perceptive Nazarene anticipated serious conflicts and even violent reactions to his radical message from the religious establishment of first century Palestine He had predicted his execution on numerous occasions..
However he was not stoned to death in accordance with Jewish customs but was crucified as a political criminal in accordance with Roman law. Throughout his ministry the Liberator raised fundamental questions about established policies and procedures which would have had serious social and political consequences for him. Scriptural scholars and historians infer that the timing of his triumphant entrance into the capital city of Jerusalem for the Passover feast would have contributed to his status as a political threat. The Jewish peasantry did not have a reputation for compliance with the Roman practices of heavy taxation and land expropriating, The substantial number of oppressed pilgrims gathered in a very confined space to celebrate their ancient feast of liberation always had the potential to erupt into violence. The Roman oppressors anticipated that during the celebration of Passover, nationalist feelings and the desire to be liberated from the current oppressors was extremely high and subsequently they would bring substantial reinforcements into Jerusalem to secure the peace. Keep in mind that the concepts of due process and innocence until proven guilty were quite foreign to the Romans. They really did not need reason to punish or execute these conquered Jews with a well earned reputation for non compliance and revolt. But it does appear that his mere ceremonial entrance into Jerusalem during this period of perceived vulnerability would have been quite sufficient for the Romans to perceived and treat Jesus as a political liability and threat.
Most of us will never experience the physical pain associated with the ancient capital punishment of crucifixion. But each of us can empathize with the emotional pain experienced by Jesus during the last hours of his life. Think of how distressing it is when you are rejected, abandoned or betrayed. Try to imagine how traumatic it must have been for the Liberator when he was betrayed by friend, denied by disciples and abandoned by most of those who had a few days earlier acclaimed him as the messiah. During these trying hours, he had no chemical relief not even a friend to reassure or to console him. The God man had to endure this emotional trauma without human support or comfort.
Keep in mind that the Savior was fully human and therefore would have experienced an entire spectrum of emotions. The Liberator would have experienced a great deal of apprehension as he contemplated the ordeal that awaited him.. Crucifixion was quite common in first century Palestine. During the adolescence of the Liberator, there was a short lived revolt by one Judas of Galilee. To punish the insurgents and to serve as a deterrent to any other public resistance to Roman rule, the occupiers crucified some 1700 Jews. It is reported that the Romans crucified an insurgent every 30 feet for almost ten miles. Remember that sometimes it took days for the victims of crucifixion to die. I can not help but imagine that the odor and sight of decomposing bodies as well as the screams of the dying insurgents would have left a vivid impression on the young Jesus. He like every other first century Palestinian knew exactly what the barbaric execution of crucifixion involved and I am certain that this weighed heavily upon him that lonely Thursday evening.
On that night before his arrest and execution, I can only imagine the spiritual distress and anxious trepidation that Jesus experienced as he contemplated the gamut of excruciating pain that awaited Him. In Luke’s account of the passion he reports that the feelings of despair, discouragement and fear were so intense that his perspiration included drops of blood. The medical literature does report a disorder called hematridosis which is characterized by an excretion of blood pigments in the sweat. This phenomenon occurs during stages of severe anxiety.
As a therapist, I am quite aware that shared fear is diminished fear but in the midst of this acute anxiety Jesus lacked the human contact and support that he longed for. I can only imagine the feelings of distress and abandonment that he experienced when he discovered those he selected to be his support system were totally oblivious to his intense emotional turmoil. .
In the midst of this emotional suffering, there is a message of hope for us. It is a clear reminded that the Savior can indeed empathize with our feelings of loneliness, abandonment, rejection, anxiety, fear or depression because he experienced all these emotions the night before he died.
There was much controversy when the Mel Gibson’s production of the Passion of the Christ was released. Critics claimed that the ordeal was too frightening and that the graphic and relentless brutality left the audience emotionally drained and stunned. It is my contention that most disciples of the Christ find the cute sweet little Jesus boy of the Christmas season far more attractive than the battered, tortured and disfigured Christ of Holy Week. From what I have read in my research, the graphic bloody scenes of the Passion of the Christ minimized the brutality of the Liberator’s execution.
Historian assures us that crucifixion was the most painful means of capital punishment that the sadistic ancient world could device. In fact it was such a slow and agonizing death that is was reserved for slaves, political criminals, foreigners and those who were perceived as having no rights. A roman citizen could not be crucified. Cicero once described it as the most cruel and atrocious of punishments. But before the messiah was handed over to the executioners, he was tortured, tormented and brutalized by rugged anti Semitic legionaries. .
We know from the ancient sources of Philo as well as Josephus that a flogging was usually a preliminary to every Roman execution Flogging was used by the Romans as a very effective deterrent to crime and resistance to Roman rule. The process was so agonizing that roman senators, soldiers and women were exempt from that particular punishment. Roman scourging was conducted with a leather whip containing several leather tails with small weights of metal or bone attached the end of each tail... After the victim was stripped naked he was shacked to a low column forcing him to assume a bent position. The target of the lash was the back, shoulders, buttocks and legs down to and including the calves. While the Jewish law recorded in Dt. 25/3 limited the number of lashes to 39. The Roman legionaries were not restricted by these Jewish laws. These rugged and anti Semitic legionaries would beat the victim as often and as intensely as they desired The intensity of the scourging would often determine how long the convict would survive on the cross The fact that the Liberator died in a relative short time, several hours as opposed to thirty or forty hours would indicate that his scourging was particularly intense and brutal..
With each lash, the bits of metals dug deep into the flesh ripping small blood vessels, nerves, muscles and skin... Each additional lash would cause deeper lacerations. And each blow would generate a waving of burning misery throughout the body. Eusebius an ancient historian described a Roman flogging in this way. “The victim’s veins were laid brew and the bowels of the victim were open to exposure.” James Cavies, the actor who played the role of the Savior in the Passion of the Christ, wore a board on his back during the scenes of the scourging. One of the actors missed the board and hit his back. He reported that the blow took his breath away and left a 14 inch scar on his back.
During the excruciating lashing, the victim would often experiences bouts of vomiting, tremors and seizures. At the end of a Roman scouring, the victim was reduced to a mangles mass of flesh. Large black and blue and purple welts and swelling appeared all over the body parts subject to the whip. Often times the victims were so disfigured that they were beyond recognition. In some cases the victim would die from the scourging and thus were spared the long agony of the cross. .
But those who survived a scourging would go into what is known as hypovolemic shock due to the substantial loss of blood. It would cause the heart to race as it tries to pump blood that is not there. It lowered blood pressure causing fainting, fatigue and weakness. The victim would experience an intense thirst as the body craves fluid to replace the lost blood volumes.
After this sadistic beating and humiliation, the disfigured exhausted and thirty Jesus would have been led like an animal along this half of a mile death march. All along these narrow streets, he would face the taunts, curses and laughter of those screaming for his blood. In the hot Palestinian sun, the battered and bleeding Jesus would have carried a fifty pound crossbeam on his lacerated shoulders and made the uphill climb to the garbage dumb, outside the city walls, know as Golgotha... The hypovolemic shock from the scourging would have left him lightheaded and thus the exhausted bleeding Jesus would stumble and require assistance.
Once he arrived at the place of execution, he would have been stripped naked and exposed to further taunts and humiliation and than the actual crucifixion would be initiated. It must be understood that none of passion narratives actually tell us whether the Liberator was nailed or tied to the cross beam that he was forced to carry on the death march to Golgotha. . Archeological research has indicated that both techniques were employed by the Roman in first century Palestine. It is assumed from His post resurrection appearances, where he shows the piercing of his feet and hands that the Savior would have been nailed to the cross. There is also some current debate concerning where the 12 centimeters iron spikes would have been fixed on the body of Jesus.
How many lashes he received? Whether he was nailed or tied to his tree of death? What part of his precious body was traumatized by the nail? These are academic questions for which there will never be a conclusive answer. What is a historical certain fact is that the innocent and loving Liberator of mankind was subjected to one of the cruelest form of capital punishment ever devices by men.
. A study published in 1988 by Dr. Frederick Zugibe, a forensic pathologist and medical examiner is one of the most conclusive studies on the medical implications of the execution of Jesus It is his contention ,based on experimental studies that the 15 centimeter iron spikes would have been nailed into the upper palm region of the hand. His research indicates that a nailed placed in this part of the anatomy would be able to support the weight of the victim. This procedure would have injured branches of the median nerves and cause an affliction called causalgia. The pain from this disorder is described as a relentless burning sensation that is so intense that even the gentle contact of clothing would cause utter torment. After both hands were nailed to the crossbeam, he would have been hoisted up and the crossbeam would be attached to the standing vertical portion of the cross. When the crossbeam was in place than each foot was than nailed flushed to the cross. This procedure would damage the plantar nerves of the feet and would generate waves of brutal burning sensation. During the estimates six hours that he hung on the cross he would experience intense cramps in the knees and shoulders as well as a severe thirst. Breathing would become more and more difficult. No matter which way he would twist or turn in order to relive the pain, his efforts only produced further searing bolts of excruciating torment.
As the gentle savior hung from this tree of shame, his agony would have been intensified. Every damaged nerve and strained muscle in his body would have been aching. Every movement of his body even raising his head to speak would precipitate a new wave of uncontrollable pain. After hours of excruciating torture, the precious body of the Savior could endure no more and life left his dehydrated disfigured body. His earthly existence of suffering, rejection and humiliation came to an end. The actual cause of his death would have been cardiac and respiratory arrest due to hypovolemic and traumatic shock secondary to hours of torture. The suffering messiah died, the crucified God- man was executed as a political criminal on a hillside that he created by the people He came to save.
Each time that these horrible details of the passion are proclaimed, I can not help but ask myself : Why did the divine Jesus suffer? Since Jesus alone stood without guilt before God and man, death and suffering had no claim upon him. Why than did the all-powerful divine messiah permit mere creatures to judge, torture and execute him?
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We must never forget that Jesus did not have to die. Being fully human he had a free will and could have accepted the options to avoid execution being fully divine he had the power to avoid death if he so wished. The Savior was not masochistic he had no psychotic death wish. The scriptures reveal that avoiding this dreadful execution was very appealing to Jesus. In fact he prayed that he could be spared this torture. So why than was the eternal Son of God willing to endure the shame and agony of crucifixion?
We must not think that Jesus underwent his torment to appease or satisfy the wrath of His Father, after all our God is not some bloodthirsty monster who seeks revenge, human sacrifice or vengeance. The Father did not want the blood of His Christ, he wanted the Nazarene to live the type of life we humans were created to live, namely an existence of love, service and obedience to the Creator And this is precisely what Jesus did; he spent every moment of his earthly existence in perfect conformity with the will of the Father And because he live a life of total obedience in a world inhabited by sinful self centered men he was opposed, oppressed and eventually murdered by the very people he came to save.
Because his passion and death was motivated by pure obedience and unselfish love, the sacred blood that flowed through his veins had the power to liberate us from the bondage and oppressive consequences of sin Because of the cruel execution of this young Jew some 2000 years ago, our human condition has been permanently altered; sin, death and Satan no longer have any claim upon us. Because of his obedience even unto death, we have the hope of enjoying an eternal life of friendship and happiness with the Living God. And this my brothers and sisters IS THE SALVATION that is offered to you this afternoon Because of his sacrificial death on the cross, on the other side of our very last breath, we have the possibility of spending an eternity of happiness where all our hopes and expectations will be fulfilled.
Every time you gaze upon a crucifix, you must see both the horror of sin and the magnitude of God’s love. So horrendous is sin that only the sacrificial death of the god man could overcome its devastating effect and yet so immense is God’s love for us that he would go to that extreme to save us. Yes my friends, Jesus suffered and died for each of us, He was pierced for our offenses and crushed for our sins.
In the sanctuary of Golgotha, Jesus took upon himself the sins of every age. He suffered and died for every single sin you have ever committed and will commit in the future. This is why he is your personal savior. What this term’s implies is that if you were the only person in the universe in need of redemption and salvation, Jesus would have still suffered this excruciating death in order to offer you the possibility of eternal life.
However, despite his great love for us, the master will not impose this salvation upon us, each of us must make a very personal decision to accept this gift of salvation and to recognize Jesus as our savior
The repentant thief, traditionally known as Dismas, is one of my favorite biblical character. We know nothing about his life or what crimes precipitated his execution. We can, however, speculate that he was a rugged individual who probably enjoyed doing things his way. He was probably a risk taker who seldom learned from his mistakes and subsequently he had to suffer some very drastic consequences. So far does he sound like anyone we know? Regardless of the wrong choices that Dismas made throughout his criminal career, he is remembered because at the most decisive hour of his life a time of ultimate distress and misery, this public culprit made a choice to turn toward Jesus and sought his assistance. He never witnessed any of the miracles of Jesus or ever heard the Savior preach but n his moment of greatest need, he had a graced inspired faith that this poor pathetic man dying next to him, this disfigured political criminal who was being taunted and rejected by many of the good God fearing people was the one and only person who could save him.
Dismas is the only person in all the scriptures who had the audacity to call Jesus by his name, he did not call him Rabbi, teacher, Lord, Son of Man or messiah. He was neither polite nor formal just very desperate. In the Semitic world this degree of audacious familiarity implies a certain degree of intimacy. Who has more of an intimate relationship with the Liberator than a repentant sinner? And because of this courageous leap of faith, Dismas the sinner heard from Jesus words that were spoken to no one else in the scriptures. Jesus who can neither deceived nor is deceived assured this repentant sinner that before the sun would set on that dingy Judean day, he would be with him in paradise.
The saving message of this powerful incident is that our crucified Savior will always and everywhere respond to the authentic repentant cries of a sinner. This precious and powerful act of mercy rendered on his cross of torment confirms for us that Jesus loves us not because we are good but because he is good.
The eternal salvation that was so freely offered to Dismas on that first Good Friday, He now offers to each of us who gather in his name on this Good Friday. On that first Good Friday he died for every sin of lust, infidelity, ingratitude, exploitation, greed and dishonesty that you and I ever committed. From that ancient instrument of torture and death, the Liberator reminds us that there is no sin that we can commit that is greater than his love for us and His desire to save and heal us.
On the 7th of April in the year 30, Golgotha that ancient foul place of execution became the epicenter of the great drama of cosmic salvation. One criminal dies with curses on his lips and the dying belief that he did not need anyone. The other, our patron Dismas dies with the promise of hope in his heart because he accepted the grace that was offered to him. Who are you going to imitate?
The first step in this process of accepting this gift of salvation is to seek the grace of conversion. The Scriptures tells us that no one comes to Jesus unless the Father draws them to the Lord Jesus We must ask the father of all mercies to bestow upon us the grace that will enable us to recognize and accept Jesus as our personal Savior.
Secondly each of us must admit that we are sinners .who need the saving grace of Jesus of Nazareth. We must realize that we have a critical need for the liberating blood of the Savior. . We must believe in our heart and profess with our lips that Jesus is the one and only person who will ever save us, He alone has the ability to liberate us from the bondage of sin, death and Satan.
To accept Jesus as your Savior means that we also make him the Lord of our life and what this means is that we strive to live our entire life in accordance with his gospel and example We must realize that as our personal savior, Jesus is entitled to our unconditional love, total obedience and uncompromising allegiance. He and his gospel must become the guiding principle of each and every decision that we make, personal, parental business and political. We must be willing to suffer rather than compromise his gospel. Jesus must become the Lord of our entire life and not simply the Lord of the one-hour we spend in church each week.
Having faith in Jesus means that we are willing to make Him the most important person in our lives. We must be totally dedicated to his person, ministry and gospel. If there is anyone in your life who is more important to you than is Jesus if Nazareth than you must pray for an increase in faith. Jesus demands from each of us complete and total loyalty He tells us in no uncertain terms that if we love our spouse our children or our parents more than we love him than we are not worthy of him. He makes no exceptions and will accept no excuses.
As you can see accepting Jesus as our Lord is much more difficult than recognizing him as a savior but they go hand in hand. This process m of making Jesus the Lord of our life is so challenging that there is no a single person in this room who can accomplish this task without divide assistance
. But we have so gracious a savior that all we have to do is to ask and he will give us the grace that will make following him possible, if will never be easy but his divine assistance it will be possible.
Let us seek the grace that will enable us to imitate the example of Dismas and place not only all of our sins but all of our hurts, all of our fears and all those resentments at the foot of the cross. Like Dismas, look upon the bloody face of the Liberator and realize that he alone can save you; he alone can forgive you your most vicious sin. Therefore ask our Blessed Savior to remember you and lead you into his Kingdom.
Dismas waited until the very end to repent and turn toward the Liberator, None of us have the luxury of postponing our decision to make Jesus the most important person in our lives. After all this may very well be the last evening you spend on this earth. If your earthly pilgrimage ended this evening would the Lord Jesus assure you that you will spend Easter in paradise?
To Jesus the suffering messiah is all honor, all praise and all glory both tonight and forever more.
