3/26/58

Scripture: Luke 23: 27-31; Mark 15: 40-47

In the Wednesday evening Lenten series of sermons this year, we have been considering some of the folk who shared with Jesus in his passion and his cross. Some were his friends and some were not. Some carried out the sentence of death upon the Galilean teacher. Some took part in the awful event under compulsion. Others would have done anything within their power to prevent the crucifixion.

There was a centurion, carrying out his Roman duty at supervising the execution of a Roman sentence. He was impressed, however, not alone by his duty, but by an unexpected quality in one of the three condemned men -- the Nazarene. So patiently, so forgivingly, so nobly had this One died, that the centurion was certain that here was no criminal but an altogether righteous man. In fact Matthew and Mark report that the centurion remarked that Jesus was the Son of God.

There were many who passed by; some of them morbidly curious, some of them mocking and deriding the sufferers on their crosses, some grimly determined to witness the end of Jesus’ threat to their place and position, some sorrowfully and helplessly longing to liberate the suffering Savior.

There was the fellow from Cyrene, Simon by name, who though an innocent bystander, had been impressed to carry the Galilean’s cross, since Jesus appeared too faint, from flogging and other mistreatment, to be able to drag the heavy beams all the way to Golgotha hill.

There were the two other sufferers, prisoners sent to their death because of crimes or political insurrection. One of them was crucified on the right and the other on the left of Jesus. One was repentant, the other continued defiant. They were in sharp contrast to the innocent center figure who actually had committed no crime under Roman law, but was dying really because he had offended the sensibilities of the religious leaders of his own people.

There was Pontius Pilate, the unhappy Roman Governor who had to keep order, but who had been put in a tough spot by the clever temple leaders who wanted him to make the legal decision for Jesus’ death. These local people surely made it difficult for a governor to be fair. The prisoner really had committed no crime at all. But one had to keep a lot of people pacified. And it seemed to be better to sacrifice the life of one person, even an innocent man, than to risk a real nasty riot that would be hard to explain back in Rome. Sometimes the business of governing can be an unhappy lot for a fellow like Pilate.

Here, then, we have seen some of those who had a share, willingly or unwillingly, in the cross of Jesus. And how sharply the clean-cut cameo of his life and his passion and death stands out in the setting of these who surrounded him! It still stands out that way today in the setting of our lives. For we passers-by; -- we unwilling, impressed Cyreneans, we Pilates and centurions, we sinners and malefactors; -- are not worthy to be compared with the perfected glory of that one strong, humble, incorruptible, sacrificing saving life! We may not be named “Pilate” or “Simon”; we may not be Roman captains or Palestinian people. But we can detect in ourselves some of the same faults we see in them. And we sense, as they did, the saving greatness of the crucified Savior.

There were, beside those already discussed in the preceding sermons of this series, others who shared the suffering, the passion, the cross of Jesus. I refer to the women who lamented him. We read of no wife or sweetheart in the life of the Galilean. But there were women, nonetheless. For, just as he came to Jew and Gentile alike; to Judean or Samaritan; to rich or poor; to fisherman or Pharisee; so he came to men, women and children alike.

Jesus could look straight at the heart of a wicked woman, or man, and make that one suddenly conscious of the evil of one’s way. Jesus could understand the contrition of one who was repentant, and could assure that one of such wonderful forgiveness as to change one’s life completely. Not only was there a forgiven Zacheus and a forgiven cripple, healed of body and spirit, but there was a woman saved from stoning only by His divine genius with people, now forgiven and forever grateful. There were others, too, who had known the Master’s presence, His teaching, His friendship. There were the two sisters of his friend Lazarus -- Martha and Mary, in whose home he had been a guest. There was Mary Magdalene, always grateful for healing of her spirit.

Women had brought their children to Jesus to be blessed. It was the daughter of Jarius, a synagogue ruler, who was restored to life and health and family by the healing compassion of the Master. Women had served him food, offered him comfortable hospitality, listened to his teaching, confessed their faults, renewed their dedication --- just as had the men of Jesus’ acquaintance.

And so it is not surprising that there were women where’er the Master went -- women who welcomed him, women who listened to him, women who became disciples of His way, women who hailed his coming into Jerusalem along with all the others who shouted their “Hosanna!” There was a servant girl who came near causing Peter’s arrest as he waited at the fire in the courtyard during the trial of Jesus. And there were women, many of them who lamented the condemnation, crucifixion and death of Jesus. There were maidens who recognized His innocence, wives who were grateful for what Jesus had done for their husbands, mothers who looked on Jesus’ suffering with the compassion of those who, having had a part in ushering life into the world, could not be reconciled to seeing life snuffed out by the ruthlessness of other humans.

Women saw the desperately tragic little procession headed out of the city to the hill of execution. It may be that women like Mary the Mother of Jesus and Mary the Magdalene, had watched to see the gates of the prison enclosure open. In his book, “Behold the Man,” Kagawa gives a fanciful and convincing description of these two, waiting, tense, tearless, helpless, for those gates to open. Behind the gates, Jesus was being tormented, spat upon, derisively crowned with thorns, mercilessly flogged, cruelly worn down in sheer physical cruelty before being led out to die.

At length the gates did open. First came soldiers with spears; then others leading or beating the three condemned ones, each of the three carrying his own cross upon which he would soon be nailed to die. A few more guards, certain people from the temple staff who were charged to see for sure that there was no slip-up in the execution, a few curious followers. The Nazarene stumbles and falls beneath his burden, too faint to drag it all the way out to Calvary hill. So the soldiers order a bystander to carry the load, and the piteous procession continues, with the eyes of the Marys, now filled with helpless tears, following.

Other women along the way, some of whom recognized Jesus, and others who saw only another stranger suffering, wept for the prisoners. Of the gospel writers, only Luke tells us of the women in the crowd who watched and who “bewailed and lamented him.”

Turning, in his suffering, to these women, Jesus said: “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when it will be said that the childless are fortunate never to have brought life into this suffering, evil place. And people will cry to the mountains for help, even hoping to have the hills fall upon them. If they do such things as this to a green tree, what will be done to the dry?”

Jesus himself, coming into the beloved city hardly a week before, had wept over its perversity and its certain future doom. And now, he could suggest that some of this compassion expressed for him by weeping women might be expended on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, themselves and their children included, who would e’er long know the suffering, the enslavement, the destruction and death to be visited by a ruthless enemy.

Is it not possible; yes, is it not certain, that the same suffering Jesus, whose passion we seek to share in this season of holy reminder, has the same sort of thing to say to the women and to the men, the adults and the children of today? Weep for yourselves! and for your children! Even in his own agony, the suffering Savior does not ask for pity. His rebuke is gentle but firm at this point. For he requires something else of us.

What is all of this for? Is it not, in some mysterious way, yet most vividly certain way,--for our own salvation that Jesus went to his death? Therefore, what he requires of you and of me, as he struggles out to his crucifixion, is not our pity of him, but our repentance and our dedication, our love of him, and our willing service; our compassion toward sinful society, and our worship of the one true God. Not pity for a condemned man, but gratitude for his awful sacrifice of a Suffering Savior, is what we must offer to God and to our fellowmen.

Now these women of the crowd that lined the via dolorosa were not the only women who lamented Jesus. We return for a moment to recall that women, as well as men, figured largely in the whole span of Jesus’ mortal life --- even before his birth and after his death. It was his mother, Mary, inspired with awe and wonder over the annunciation and over her expectancy, who went to confer with her cousin, Elizabeth, also expecting the one who was to be John the Baptist. This was before the Savior’s birth.

It was two or three women who, having watched carefully to see where the dead Jesus’ body was laid, came very early on the first day of the week to finish caring for his body and prepare it for permanent burial only to discover the resurrection! It was these women who were the bearers of that wondrous news to the apostles!

It has been women from the beginning of Jesus’ life and ministry to the end of the same ministry, have stood along with the men, as members of the beloved community that became the church. We emphasize this here because it is so much a part of the Christian ethic that women have their place of worth and dignity in the Christian body just as do men. The place has sometimes been grudgingly conceded. And there are places upon earth, and areas in society, where the worth of woman is yet to be given its full accord. There are still injustices toward women that should be righted and burdens that should be lifted.

But now let us consider the accounts in Matthew and Mark of women who had followed Jesus from Galilee. They were not just residents of Jerusalem, but were women from his home province up north. They watched the whole sorry proceeding from afar. But they did watch! Some few of them were closer part of the time. Jesus’ own mother was there. And Mary Magdalene whom Jesus had freed from “seven devils” -- perhaps an acute melancholia, or some such similar affliction. There was Mary the mother of James and Joseph. And one whom Mark identifies as Salome. But note that there were not alone these few women from Galilee. There were many women.

Their motive for following Jesus down from Galilee all the way to his cross was blended of gratitude, courage and love. They were grateful because of the blessings he had bestowed. Their courage is shown in the fact that they did follow him into danger; they followed afar, because of the brutality of the Roman soldiers, but they followed! The love was the source of the courage. They had an intuition concerning Jesus that was as sure as their reason, and their loyalty was a pure devotion.

Possibly he could see them from the suffering of his cross. It is possible, too, that they could have been the ones who preserved for us some of the story of the crucifixion, since most of the men among the disciples had fled or were also afar off. At any rate some such mission may have assuaged the helplessness of their watching.

It is hard to find, in all history or literature, words with more sorrow or tragedy in them than these: “There were also women looking in from afar.” Here were the friends of Jesus who lived with him, believed in him, who had found new hope in him, now compelled to look in at his crucifixion, unable to do anything to stop it. Others have had the same experience. Sorrowing mothers, wives and daughters have looked helplessly on while their sons, husbands, fathers have thrown their lives into the holocaust of war. And they could do nothing to stop it. All they could do was to stand loyally by, looking on with broken hearts.

But was it all a matter of helplessness --- this watching of the women at the crucifixion; this watching of people of good will while the fury of organized hatred grinds up their loved ones? What have they done when they could do nothing?

For one thing, those women never saw it as anything but a monstrous wrong. And they never condoned it. I doubt that any of them ever said, or felt, “We must adjust ourselves to the decision of the Sanhedrin and the Roman court. Perhaps it is right.” That is sometimes done when a good cause appears to be defeated. Might appears to be right, or is mistaken for right. And moral issues get clouded.

It is a tremendous thing when, even in helplessness, men and women of conviction can say of an evil that has triumphed: “This is utterly wrong, and no show of power can make it right.”

For another thing, this defeat that the women were witnessing on Calvary did not shake their faith in Jesus nor end their devotion to him. Evil had overwhelmed him, and them, but it did not affect their loyalty. He was still Master; he would be “Rabboni.” These folk, considerable though their number, were only a small minority in the jeering crowd. Numerically, they were negligible. But they did not say, “This is defeat and that settles it. We can’t go on believing as we did.” They continued a loyal, unchanged minority. And that minority became God’s instrument for the future.

One more observation about these people looking on from afar. Among them were those who, only a little later in a room in Jerusalem, were going to launch a movement reversing the verdict that iron nails are the final power in the universe.

Is not this, in brief, the role of Christian folk, -- men, women, and children, -- today and always? We are to get our perspective straightened out; spend less time in pity for a suffering Christ; more in repentant, grateful, loyal, devoted service through the suffering Savior and in his name.

We are to exert our power with the greatest force that the world has ever known, the force of Christian love, in the promotion of right in the world. And in the face of forces and events which we can not yet overcome any more than those men and women disciples of Christ could restrain the Roman soldiers on Golgotha, we will hold to love as the ultimate force of the universe. We are to give ourselves, in service, to the tasks of that divine love in which we supremely believe. We are to be the church, the continuing body of Christ.

Says Halford Luccock: “Such a company is the lever by which God moves the world.”

Men and women! Let lamenting go on to dedication, and dedication to high service as tools of the living God!

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Delivered at a Union Lenten Service, Wisconsin Rapids, March 26, 1958.