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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
The First Word
And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. 34 And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:33 – 34a ESV)
The Heavenly Father’s only‑begotten beloved Son, with Whom the Father was well pleased, as His crucifixion begins and His suffering climaxes, pleads with His Father—not for vengeance upon but—for forgiveness for those who were crucifying Him. How fitting that the First Word from the Cross related to the very reason Jesus was there, namely, the forgiveness of sins! Do not misunderstand: Ignorance of the law is not an excuse for transgressing or breaking it, not in the Old Testament, and not in the New Testament, either. Rather, from the cross Jesus prays that all those who had any role in His crucifixion would be forgiven as they are led to turn in sorrow from their sin and to trust God to forgive their sin for Jesus’s own sake. Like those nailing Jesus to the cross, you and I, each of us individually, have a role in Jesus’s crucifixion, for the sin of each one of us individually put him there as much as the sin of anyone else—the soldiers, Pilate, Caiaphas, Judas, Adam. And, there Jesus not only is crucified but also intercedes for all sinners, including each one of us. Our great High Priest’s sacrifice and intercession for us make possible our salvation and transformation, so that we in turn plead with our Heavenly Father not for vengeance upon but for forgiveness for those who wrong us in any way.
Collect for the First Word, and Hymn 447:1-3
The Second Word
And they cast lots to divide his garments. 35 And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!” 36 The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine 37 and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” 38 There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”
39 One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” 40 But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” 42 And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:34b – 43 ESV)
As if Jesus’s prayer for those responsible for His crucifixion to be forgiven was immediately answered, one of the sinners for whom Jesus was dying turns in sorrow from his sin and trusts God to forgive him for Jesus’s sake. The penitent criminal apparently just earlier had also reviled Jesus (Matthew 27:44; Mark 15:32), but it seems that Jesus’s love, mercy, and grace for those crucifying Him and perhaps also the patience with which He bore His suffering led the penitent criminal to repent and believe in Jesus as the Coming One, the Messiah (Arndt, Hoerber, Roehrs, 187-188). The faith that the penitent criminal had cried out for the forgiveness that would open to him the Kingdom of Heaven, and that cry was itself immediately answered with Jesus’s very public but also very individual absolution, or forgiveness. In His Second Word from the Cross, Jesus most-assuredly assures the penitent criminal that that very day he would be with Jesus in paradise—no soul sleep, no limbo of the unbaptized, no purgatory, but—paradise. There would be an end to the penitent criminal’s and to Jesus’s suffering, as there will be an end also to your suffering and mine. As we seek Jesus’s forgiveness in the form of individual Holy Absolution, or by any other exercise of the Keys of the Kingdom through the Office He establishes, we have the same sure and certain promise and, at peace with God and with one another, we look forward to the eternal day of our Lord’s Kingdom.
Collect for the Second Word, and Hymn 447:4-6
The Third Word
But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. (John 19:25 – 27 ESV)
No depth of woe would keep the Lord Jesus from exercising care for those whom He cared about. Probably the only Son by blood of His likely‑widowed mother, Jesus lovingly entrusts His mother’s care to the disciple whom He loved, usually understood to be St. John the evangelist himself, perhaps a first‑cousin by his mother’s sister, Salóme. Jesus’s mother Mary was to look to her nephew John as she would have looked to her only Son on earth, and John was to honor his aunt Mary in the same way he would honor his own mother. And, immediately they did! In Jesus’s Third Word from the Cross, the Church also hears Jesus’s entrusting the care of the Church to Her ministers, who should care for Her as She looks to them for care. In the Church, as God’s Word transforms us, making us His children born of God from above in the water and Spirit of Holy Baptism, we love Him and our neighbors in keeping with our vocations and the Ten Commandments, including honoring, serving, obeying, loving, and cherishing, our parents and other authorities (Small Catechism, I:8), no matter how lowly, poor, feeble, and eccentric they may be (Large Catechism, I:108). In the family of God for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed and delivered into the hands of sinful men to suffer death upon the cross, as we are able, we exercise our care for those we care about, including preparing food for them as they need it, giving them rides to church, and the like. Behold your children and parents, your brothers and sisters in Christ!
Collect for the Third Word, and Hymn 447:7-9
The Fourth Word
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. 46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 47 And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” (Matthew 27:45 – 47 ESV)
As darkness and death close in on the crucified Jesus, He plaintively calls out the Fourth and central Word from the Cross, the only Word St. Mark records (Mark 15:34), and the only Word recorded by more than one Evangelist. In the words of Psalm 22, all of which Psalm we heard last night as Pilgrim’s Altar and Chancel were stripped, Jesus cries, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Although perhaps hidden to Jesus in His state of humiliation, Jesus otherwise, of course, knew why His God had forsaken Him: God had made Him who knew no sin to be sin for our sake, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). God the Father saw not His holy Son but our sin, and, in His righteous wrath, God forsakes Him. How such a forsaking is possible, we can hardly imagine, when the two Persons of the Blessed Trinity share the same one divine substance! Oh, great indeed is the mystery of godliness (1 Timothy 3:16)! Yet, the faithful Son does not lose faith and continues to call to God, as we should continue to call to God. For, on account of our sin and sinful natures, you and I deserve to be forsaken by God, not just for a time but for all of eternity! (And, one’s calling out to Elijah or any other saint would not do Jesus, you, me or anyone else any good.) Yet, because Jesus bore the forsaking that we deserve, God does not forsake us. When we call to Him in repentance and faith, we are not forsaken. God’s promise to Joshua is true for us: God will not leave us or forsake us (Joshua 1:5; Hebrews 13:5). We do not despair, for nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:39).
Collect for the Fourth Word, and Hymn 447:10-12
The Fifth Word
After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” (John 19:28 ESV)
Thirst is said to be “one of the excruciating agonies of the crucified”, and “Jesus must have thirsted long before Golgotha was reached” (Lenski, ad loc John 19:28, 1304). (We think that we know what it is to be thirsty, or maybe we do not think so, in our bottled-water-carrying times and places.) Knowing that all was being finished, with what strength Jesus had, in the Fifth Word from the Cross, He implicitly asks for His lips and throat to be moistened, seemingly so that He can cry out His final Words before His death. In order to fufill the Scripture, that Scripture might receive its final fulfillment, that Jesus can accomplish all that Scripture set out, He Who had hungered and thirsted for righteousness in this case arguably takes only what is needed to satisfy that hunger and thirst (Matthew 5:6). Commentators debate whether Jesus’s thirst in fact fulfills a specific prophecy of Scripture, but, regardless, we can think of our physical and spiritual hunger and thirst that Jesus satisfies. After Jesus’s death, water and blood came out from His side (John 19:34), which the Church has seen as pointing us to the water of Holy Baptism and the Blood of the Sacrament of the Altar. Truly, as believers before us, we all drink the same spiritual drink and eat the same spiritual food (1 Corinthians 10:1-4; confer 12:13). For, as St. John records Jesus’s saying elsewhere, whoever feeds on His flesh and drinks His blood has eternal life, and He will raise him or her up on the last day, for Jesus’s flesh is true food and His blood true drink; whoever feeds on His flesh and drinks His blood abides in Him and He in him or her (John 6:54-56). And so, the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ not only slake our thirst and satisfy our hunger for today, but they also strengthen and preserve us in body and soul to life everlasting.
Collect for the Fifth Word, and Hymn 447:13-15
The Sixth Word
A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” … (John 19:29 – 30a ESV)
Jesus’s request implicit in His expressing His thirst is granted with a “spongeful” of sour wine extended to Him on a branch of hyssop, but far more important is the Sixth Word from the Cross that the moisture enables Jesus to speak: in this case, literally one Greek word, τετέλεσται, “It is (or has been) finished!” Like the stamp “paid in full” on an invoice, Jesus’s perfect life of love has now finished all that He left His throne above to do for us below (Lutheran Service Book 452:1). Jesus perfectly kept the law that we fail to keep, and Jesus perfectly paid the price for our failure to keep the law. There was nothing left for Jesus to do after He died on the cross, and there is nothing left for us to do for our redemption, our justification, the forgiveness of our sins. Sure, Jesus descended into hell and the third day rose again from the dead, but those declare what He already had done on the cross. Sure, Jesus ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty and from there still teaches and works through the Church by the power of His Holy Spirit, but that is applying what He already has done on the cross. Sure, Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead, but that will be the final realization of what He already has done on the cross. For us and for our salvation, there is nothing left to do—nothing, nichts, nihil, rien, nada. It has been finished for us.
Collect for the Sixth Word, and Hymn 447:16-18
The Seventh Word
Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. (Luke 23:46 ESV)
You might think that when Jesus says, “It is finished” that He is done, but there is still the Seventh Word from the Cross. As if returning to His First Word addressed to His Father, His truly final Word from the cross in prayer commits His spirit into His Father’s hands. Some of us might have read and remember what is regarded as “a classic of early American literature”, the eighteenth‑century British Colonial Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards’ sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (Wikipedia Edwards and Sermon). Edwards does not appear to have used in his sermon but might have more accurately referred to Hebrews 10:31, which passage says, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (ESV). Indeed, for sinners who, in that context, have trampled underfoot the Son of God and have disregarded the blood of the covenant by which we are made holy and have outraged the Spirit of grace (Hebrews 10:29), it no doubt is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the righteously‑angry living God. But, as we repent and believe, God, Who has poured out His wrath on Jesus, is no longer angry with us and no longer sees us as sinners. Like His only‑begotten beloved Son, with Whom the Father was well pleased, we can commit our spirits into the loving, merciful and gracious hands of our Heavenly Father. We may not be in control of the circumstances of our deaths as Jesus was, but, unless He returns first, the day will come when we also will breathe our last. And, like St. Stephen, who is usually thought to be the first Christian martyr, in the moment of our deaths, we can pray for the Lord Jesus to receive our spirits (Acts 7:59). Whether we ourselves so pray, or the Holy Spirit prays for us (Romans 8:26), we, like our Lord Jesus and thanks to Him, so depart in peace.
Collect for the Seventh Word, and Hymn 447:19-21
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +