The Gospel writers tell us that Jesus spoke from the cross seven times and you have just heard the first words.  In fact, Joel Green, the New Testament Professor of Asbury Theological Seminary points out that the very first words spoken about the crucifixion are by Jesus himself.

We have been listening to the stories of the windows in this sanctuary – stories that proclaim to us the life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.  Today’s window is the most comforting and the most troubling at the same time.  It is the story in the center of the Christian faith.  It is the story that distinguishes Christianity from all other religions.  The window itself was donated by Ms. Anne Haines of Cedar Bayou Methodist Church.  James Jackson was the pastor of this church when this sanctuary was built and shortly thereafter moved to Cedar Bayou Methodist Church.  In many ways this window is much prettier than the story that it tells and in many ways it does not even come close to the glory to which it points.  First, let me point out the symbols in this window.  At the top of the window is the Latin inscription, INRI.  This is the crime for which Jesus was condemned, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews”.  In the upper left quadrant is the crescent moon, the symbol of the Jesus’ mother Mary, who is the reflection of the sun of righteousness that fills the moon.  In the upper right corner is a daisy, the symbol of innocence and purity, reminding us that the one that was crucified was innocent and sinless.  In the middle of the window and winding into the lower quadrants is the crown of thorns, the painful and mocking expression paid to the king, by the cruel soldiers.  At the bottom of the window is the cup of suffering that Jesus’ prayed in Gethsemane would pass from him.  Of course, dominating the window is the cross, that wretched and glorious cross.

It is from this cross that Jesus spoke his seven last words.  The first words, R.C.H. Lenski points out, “Is not a brushing away of a few feathers.  The doing referred to is crucifying the King of glory.”  Listen once again to Luke’s account.  It is just one verse, but it continues to speak volumes.

Hear now the Word of the Lord:

³⁴Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” And they cast lots to divide his clothing.

This is the word of God for the people of God.  In this one verse Luke recorded for his readers words of grace groaned by Jesus.  

There is a question that I have avoided most of my ministry through quotes, scriptures, and many words.  It is a question about which I am guessing a number of you have struggled.  Why the cross?  After a great deal of reflection on this question, listening to several sermons, reading lots of commentaries, and talking with several experts I have come to this conclusion, At the Cross we see sacrifice seriously.  Allow me to unpack that statement for you this morning.  At the cross we see sacrifice seriously.
 

At the cross we See

The first thing we see is ourselves.  We see things of which we are capable and for which we are culpable.  This verse starts with the seemingly innocent word, “Then”.  However, when you begin to glance back at the events leading up to this then and you get a little queasy.  Jesus has already been arrested in the Garden, blindfolded and beaten, mocked and spit upon, mistreated by Pilate’s guards, treated with contempt by Herod’s soldiers, flogged within an inch of his life with whips having metal objects and bone at their end, and finally fastened to a beam weighing about 75 pounds and forced to carry it a little over a mile to his place of execution.  Had it not been for Simon the Cyrene, he may have died on the way to Golgotha.  We see the cruelty of the soldiers and we wonder, “How can they be so cruel?!”  They were trained that way.  Each one of us is capable of the same thing.  Human history has borne it ought - in racial mistreatment of our own history, genocide of Darfur, piracy of Somalia, the holocaust, and the list goes on and on.  All we need is to be convinced of the face of the enemy and we are capable of cruelty.

The first thing we see is ourselves.  Of course, we see more than the cruelty of the guards.  Look at Pilate.  Here is a guy who tried his hardest to get out of making the call on Christ.  He declared him “not guilty” after a brief hearing, but his accusers insisted that Jesus was a trouble maker throughout Galilee.  When Pilate heard that he was a Galilean he sent him to Herod, hoping to wash his hands of the matter.  Herod heard him, but seeing the determination of the crowd wanted nothing to do with the man and sent him back to Pilate.  Pilate again declared Jesus “not guilty”, but to satisfy the crowd had Jesus flogged and then intended to release him.  He even stacked the deck by saying because of the holidays he could liberate one prisoner.  He gave them a choice between a proven evil man, Barabbas the murderer, and a proven innocent man, Jesus of Nazareth.  They said, “Release Barabbas!”  Luke 23:20 states, “Pilate wanted to release Jesus”.  But in the end, verse 25 reads, “he handed Jesus over as they wished.”  Mark added a commentary in Mark 15:15, “So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd…handed him over to be crucified.”  This is the then referred to in Luke 23:34.

William Carlos Williams wrote a note and attached it to his refrigerator in 1934.  The note has become famous in poetry classes from elementary schools to graduate schools.  It is entitled, This is Just to Say: “I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me they were delicious; so sweet and so cold.”  Something about this poem has encouraged hundreds of thousands of different parallel versions.  Last week on the radio show, This American Life, some of the contributors submitted theirs.  Shalom Auslander submitted three of them and just as I was ready to change the station I heard his third one that brought tears to my eyes, “This Is Just To Say, by Shalom Auslander: He was a trouble maker, OK and didn’t know when to shut up. Still, we never would’ve killed him if we’d known he was the Lord.”

At the cross we see and the first thing we see is us, but the first word we hear is, “Father, forgive them.”  Just who are “them”.  Are they the cruel guards?  Are they the cowards, like Pilate, who wish to satisfy the crowd? Or are they as William Arndt wrote, “all of the sinners who by their wrongdoing caused His woe”?

At the cross we see and we see things of which we are capable and for which we are culpable – cruelty and cowardice that causes Christ woe.

Why the cross?  At the cross we see sacrifice seriously.
 

At the cross we see Sacrifice

Jesus calls to his Father for forgiveness, for God to remit their sins, to release them from the guilt or penalty of their evil.  Philip Hughes wrote in his commentary, “We were bound to be destroyed unless reconciliation could be found,” and then wrote, “Here the reconciling love of God burns with purest and most intense flame.”  This is the problem that we encounter at the cross.  Here is the why.  Here is the sacrifice.  Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”  There was something transpiring at the cross that expresses love as Jesus, said, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Here is a God that will pour himself into human flesh and take obedience all the way to the cross, because of his sacrificial love for you and for me.

In another place, Acts 20, Paul is addressing the elders of Ephesus and giving them final instructions. Listen to what he tells them, “Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son.”  He wrote, “The church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son”!  Do you realize that the value of most things is reflected in the price?  Do you then realize how valuable this church is to God?  Do you then realize how valuable you are to God?

I was struck by the biblical message in the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”.  In one of the scenes Jamal Malik is trying to get a celebrity’s autograph.  He goes to great lengths to save the celebrity’s trading card and wade through dung to get to the celebrity and acquire his autograph.  His older brother, Salim, later sells the card without Jamal’s knowledge.  The boy is crushed and furious.  Its value was determined by the price that he went through to get it, which was far greater than any monetary figure.

Dr. Tim Keller not long ago was speaking to a man who attended a Billy Graham address at Cambridge on a Wednesday night in 1955.  He asked the man, who claimed that that night changed his life forever putting him on a Christian track, what happened that night.  The man told the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York, “All I remember is that I walked out of Great Saint Mary’s for the first time in my life thinking, Christ really died for me.”

I know that the cross may take you the rest of your life to figure out.  So many words are used in the Bible to describe what happened on that dreadful device: atonement, justification, reconciliation, love, servanthood, and many others.  Jesus made it clear that this act was for you.  Christ died for you.  Why the cross?  At the cross we see sacrifice seriously.
 

We see sacrifice Seriously!

I have discovered that, at least in my house, teenage boys are less verbose than teenage girls.  That does not mean that they say less, they just use fewer words.  My son has the gift of using one word to communicate what takes many of us entire essays.  The best example I have of this is his use of the word, “Seriously!”  He can say this one word in such a way as to cause one to doubt the very core of one’s being.  If I begin to talk about the anxiety I have felt over his having to choose a college to attend next fall, he looks at me squarely in the eye, pausing long enough to receive my full attention, places his hands on his hips with a great deal of authority and says only one word, “Seriously!”  With that one word, he has communicated that he too feels a little stress over this decision, and that he is unclear about the next year or four in his life.  He awakens my soul to the reality that he gets it and may even be able to trump my anxiety with his own.

Friends, on the cross we have a Savior who speaks to us with all the love and compassion in the world, “Seriously!”  When we read in Luke 6:27-28 to love our enemies and pray for those who abuse us and we protest that we would much rather retaliate and that God simply doesn’t understand, Jesus prays, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”  Then he looks at us from under his crown of thorns and says, “Seriously!”  When we cry out that we do not believe in a God who will let evil rule the day and abuse go unchecked, we see the beaten and bloody Christ fix his eyes on us and say, “Seriously!”  When we are all alone and our prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling, we remember the hours of silence in the Garden when Jesus prayed for the cup to pass from him and we hear his cry of desperation, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and then he looks at us and says, “Seriously!”  Jurgen Moltmann began his classic sermon, Birth of Hope from the Cross of Christ, with the words, “Ave Crux, unica spes.  Hail cross, our only hope.”  He noted that in the cross, “our disappointments, our loneliness and our defeats do not separate us from him; they draw us more deeply into communion with him.”  He went on to write that here “is the most comprehensive and most profound expression of Christ’s fellowship with every human being.”

Jesus gets it.  There is no place that you can go that he does not get.  Seriously! 

Why the cross?  At the cross we see sacrifice seriously.  There is much about this window that I don’t like.  I don’t like the cruelty and the cowardice of humanity reflected in these panes, but in this window is a story that has the power to free me like nothing else – Here is the sacrificial love of God who simply will not settle for separation.  Seriously!  Amen.