Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them, take our minds and think with them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen.

Though it’s quite sad, there is a story I like to tell about a young woman named Rose.  The reason I tell her story is because I think it’s a story we are all familiar with to a greater or lesser degree.  It is a story about suffering and pain—something from which, unfortunately no one is immune apparently even God, as the passion narrative we just read suggests. 

Rose was in the prime of her life.  She owned part of a real-estate company in Southern California that bought and sold property up and down the Pacific coast.  Rose had money, a brand new silver Mercedes, and most importantly her health.  Unexpectedly by the account of all who new her, one day Rose checked herself into a local motel, penned a brief note and proceeded to take her own life.  The note left behind read, “I am so tired of clapping with one hand.”  I am so tired of clapping with one hand. 

Those of us who have lived through the suicide of a loved one know that the interior suffering and pain experienced by those who take their own lives is immense—even unimaginable.  One family friend of mine named James described the interior suffering caused by his depression as living in a pit of utter darkness—a darkness that is so complete that not even one ray of light can pierce it.  And in Rose’s case, apparently she felt totally alone in the darkness.  She had no hand to hold—no one to reach out to for help.  She felt totally alone in her suffering.  Perhaps right now you or someone you know feels alone….feels abandoned in your pain.    

In Mark’s account of Jesus’ passion which we just read together, Jesus has revealed nothing of his private thoughts or his personal feelings since the Garden of Gethsemane.  As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so Jesus has been silent.  He spoke a few words during the night while being unjustly tried by the Jewish leadership, and then a few more words in the morning when brought before Pontius Pilate; but these were responses to his inquisitors.  Jesus’ spirit has been mute.  Jesus’ body is before us exposed and broken; but his mind is hidden in mystery.

But then, finally, on Golgotha, the place of a skull, a place that reeks of death, comes a spontaneous gesture, and with it an insight into the mind and spirit of the Savior.  On Golgotha, as Jesus is being prepared for crucifixion, we catch just a glimpse of what I believe Jesus was doing in the solitude of his interior self. 

Jesus, stripped of his clothes, is laying on his back, his head and hands arranged on the patibulum, the crossbeam by which the Roman soldiers will lift him bodily to a thick post for execution.  His eyes are shut.  The wood beneath his head might seem like a pillow following the long and exhausting march from the place of Jesus’ judgment to the place of his execution.  But the respite is, indeed, only brief.  Soldiers with spikes stand beside him.  They seem ready to get the unpleasant work over with—the work of hammering spikes through human flesh.

However, just before the unconscionable act of piercing human limbs with metal can begin, some sweet soul rushes over and kneels by Jesus and offers him a drink.  Mark writes, “And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull).  And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh.”  This kind person is performing a merciful ritual, not unusual among the people of Israel.  Proverbs thirty-one reads, “Give strong drink to the dying and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and remember their misery no more.”  This person is seeking to ease the torment of the crucifixion.  She or he is offering Jesus myrrh, a narcotic.  And it’s right here, if we will only pay close attention, that we are given a glimpse, a revelation, into the mind and spirit of the dying Christ.  Mark writes, “But he did not take it.”  Jesus shakes his head no.  He will not drink from a cup filled with a narcotic.  Jesus will in no way dull his senses or ease his pain.

And so we now know.  What is Jesus thinking?  What are his feelings?  What has the spirit of Jesus been doing since his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane?  Suffering…suffering with a pure and willful consciousness, terribly sensitive to every thorn and cut and scornful slur—suffering.  This Jesus has chosen.  This suffering Jesus is attending to with every nerve of his being—and not for some perverted love of pain.  He hates all pain, and not just his own, but everyone’s pain. 

Instead, Jesus suffers for us, for all of us, for refugees in Darfur, for sex slaves in South East Asia, for starving people, for those who are still today sold into slavery, for the homeless and urban poor that live among us, for addicts, for single parents, for those marginalized because of race, gender, or sexual orientation, for those dying daily in Iraq and those suffering the atrocities of warfare around the world, for immigrants seeking a better life and those in our own country who can’t find work or a fair wage, for children who are sexually and physically abused, for all who suffer domestic violence, for those with cancer, aids, and all incurable diseases, for those who are depressed, for my family’s friend James, for Rose, for you, and for me. 

Jesus suffers for us all so that pain might be transfigured forever.  Jesus suffers so that none of us will ever be alone in our pain.  He is with us.  He is here.  Jesus is in our every moment most of all in our darkest and most painful.  We always have a hand to hold because Jesus suffered. 

What has our Lord been doing since Gethsemane?  Drinking—but not from the thoughtful person’s cup full of a narcotic.  Instead, Jesus has been drinking from the cup the Father would not remove from him—drinking swallow by swallow—tasting the hell that lies in his cup full of suffering, so that by the grace of God Jesus might taste death for everyone in every generation from the beginning of humankind, till now, and forever.  What has the Lamb of God been doing since Gethsemane?  Bearing our grief.  Carrying our sorrows.  By the bruises Jesus painfully and intensely receives, we are all healed.

Jesus is put to unimaginable grief and suffering.  His soul is made an offering for our sin.  We are an offspring of his sacrifice.  For by it, we are born again.  And, in the fullness of time, this new life of ours will transcend our pain and it will last forever—even beyond the end of time.  Amen

Back To Sermons