Crucified, Dead and Buried

Psalm 22:1-24 and Matthew 27:27-66

 

In 1969 the New York Mets baseball club was dubbed the "Amazin' Mets." They were amazin' because a mere seven years before, in the days before free agency could buy a team of good players instantly, the Mets had entered the league as the worst team in the history of baseball. Their record number of losses was matched only by the sorry way in which they lost those games. In 1969, the Mets reached the month of August as merely a mediocre team. They were something like 19 games back in the middle of August with but a month to go in the season. Then, they caught fire. Behind their star pitcher Tom Seaver, the Mets were amazin'! Not only did they win their division, but they went on to beat a heavily favored Baltimore Orioles team to win the World Series. The entire city of New York went crazy.

 

In America, we love a great comeback story. There is nothing so sweet to the American psyche as a former LOSER who becomes a CHAMPION!

 

Ø      One of our national treasures is the story of Abraham Lincoln: born a poor Kentucky farm boy, Lincoln learned to read by the light of the fire. Yet he worked hard to overcome his humble roots, and he eventually became the sixteenth president of the United States and left an indelible mark on our nation. Amazing!

 

Ø      Or who of her generation can forget Wilma Rudolph? She had polio as a child and could not walk. Yet in 1960, she won the gold medal in the 100 meter dash at the Rome Olympics. Amazing!

 

Ø      Or what about twenty years later when the U.S. Olympic hockey team captured our imagination and won our hearts. Two weeks before the Olympics the team played an exhibition against the Soviets and lost 12-2. It was a miserable defeat. But then, when it counted, somehow, someway, a bunch of U.S. collegians skated just fast enough and shot just well enough against the best team in the world, pro or amateur, to pull off the biggest upset in the history of Olympic sport. I still remember Al Michaels’ call at the end of the game, "Do you believe in miracles?"

 

The funny thing about that game is that most of us don't even like hockey...but we love a great comeback story. Today's gospel reading is the prelude to the greatest comeback story ever told.

 

*****

 

Now, to have a comeback, one must first have a set-back, commonly called a defeat. The defeat of Jesus is vividly described. He was whipped by the soldiers again and again. It was Roman custom to have prisoners sentenced to die whipped 39 times. Thirty-nine because it was held that no one could live through 40 lashes from a Roman soldier, so they whipped Jesus to within one lash of his life. Jesus could not carry his cross due to fatigue. Roman custom was to avoid the most direct path from the Praetorium to Golgotha but instead to walk the long route through the crowded city streets in order to ensure that as many people as possible could see the accused and know the penalty of disobedience to the empire. The Romans walked Jesus to a hill known as the Place of the Skull, which was a double entendre: not only did the hill look like a skull, but also it was the place of Roman executions. Nails were driven through Jesus' wrists and ankles to support his weight. Eventually, he would suffocate as muscle fatigue led to an inability to keep his weight off his diaphragm. Frankincense and wine, the ancient anesthesia, were offered to him to deaden the pain, but Jesus refused the drug to accept death at its most bitter. The world could see God only in power; Jesus shows that same God in sacrificial love.

 

There were some in the ancient world who could not accept the notion of Jesus’ actually suffering and actually dying on a cross. There was a group of Christians known as the Docetists who taught that Jesus only seemed to suffer and die but sense Jesus was divine he couldn’t actually die.  Incidentally, these folks are called Docetists because the word in Greek dokeo means “to seem.”  The Docetists held the common Greek idea of a duality between spirit and flesh and that all flesh was evil while all spirit was good.  If Jesus actually suffered and died, then he had participated in the world of the flesh in all its most base forms. If Jesus suffered and died, then the divine spirit was polluted with the flesh, which could not be! Therefore, Jesus could not have actually been flesh and blood, but only seemed to be flesh and blood. All the gospel accounts of Jesus eating and drinking and getting tired, the accounts, especially, of Jesus being whipped and beaten and crucified, they are only metaphorical accounts of what goes on in the spirit.  Of course, the Church rather quickly rejected the Docetists’ teaching because, clearly, the heart of the gospels is found in Jesus’ death and resurrection: real, physical, actual.

 

There are also some in our world today that seek to discredit Jesus’ death.  These skeptics attack Jesus’ death, in large part, to cast doubt on the credibility of Jesus' comeback. Jesus' comeback, of course, is the resurrection. And if Jesus was raised from the dead, then all of history is changed forever. If the reports of Jesus' resurrection are true, well then, everything he ever said and did must be seen in a whole new light. If Jesus actually was raised from death never to die again, then either one is a Christian or one is on the other side of eternal truth. The stakes are pretty high. Suppose I don't want to be a Christian. Suppose I have been to church, read the Bible, said a few prayers and decided that it is all a bunch of hogwash. What might I do? Well, I might just ignore the whole enterprise and let other folks worry about church and faith and Christian morality. Or I might decide that the church's worship is just too infuriatingly arrogant to be ignored: "How dare they claim the right of eternal truth! Well, I'll show them." And if one wanted to attack the truth of Christianity, there is no better place to attack than the resurrection; after all, it is the lynchpin for the whole New Testament and a pretty incredible story.

 

The English author D.H. Lawrence was no friend of the Faith. And he attempted just such an enterprise of trying to create credible doubt in the truth of Christian claims. He wrote a short story, an alternative version if you will, of what might have happened on Golgotha and in that cave tomb. He asked the questions: what if Jesus never died? Maybe he wasn't really dead? Maybe his disciples only mistook the resurrection for recovery?

 

Lawrence wrote of the coolness of the cave and the healing effects of three days rest. But what he didn’t consider was that Jesus was wrapped in cloth during those three days – body, head, face and all. Of course, I’m no physician, (I only play one in the pulpit), but all that time with a cloth wrapped around one’s nose and mouth can’t be good: breathing is our friend. What Lawrence didn’t consider was that Jesus' three days of rest would mean those same days without food and water. Again, I’m no physician but dehydration doesn’t seem to be a great way to recover. Most of all, what Lawrence failed to account for is the fact that the Roman soldiers were good at what they did; they were experts in execution. No Roman soldier, not to mention an entire company, would have mistaken passing out for dying, for they were executioners who had made a ritual out of the dance of death. Moreover, assuming Lawrence was correct, does anyone believe a brutalized, depleted Jesus could have a) moved the stone on his own, b) overpowered the Roman guards and c) looked the picture of strength and health to convince the disciples this was a resurrection rather than a recovery? No, this was no recovery: Jesus was crucified, dead and buried. This is what the Apostle's Creed tells us in today's phrase. In fact, the Creed stresses the same point with each of these three words. Crucified tells us what happened. Dead is the underline. Buried is the exclamation point.

 

*****

 

Crucified, dead and buried is a defeat that only God could overcome. Hey, other comebacks happen all the time, and they may have God involved or they may not depending on one's perspective. If one has a cold and is healed, it's no big deal because such things happen all the time. If one has a broken leg and it heals up we might say how nice it is that the body can recover so well from injury. But if one has a serious disease...and things are critical...and we make it through...we might talk about how thankful we are that the Lord brought us back. Now at least we have the Lord involved. But what about crucified, dead and buried? What then? Who can be responsible for that comeback? It can only be God the Father Almighty.

 

This is no idle truth. It matters whether or not Jesus actually suffered and actually died. There are concrete consequences that we realize because Jesus was crucified, dead and buried.

 

Ø      The Gospel of Matthew tells us the Temple curtain was torn in two. That curtain was the curtain that separated the people from the Holy of Holies, which is the inner room of the Temple where Jews believed the direct presence of God could be found. The symbolism of all this tells us that because Jesus was crucified, dead and buried, there is now nothing that stands between ourselves and the very presence of God. The great weight of sin has been lifted: all the sorrow of separation was borne by him, all the pain of reconciliation was endured in him, all wounds caused by our selfish humanity have been healed through him. Jesus has removed all obstacles from our having the possibility of an experience with God. 

Ø      Matthew tells us the tombs of the dead were opened and the spirits of the dead were raised from their slumber. This symbolism proclaims to us that Jesus has conquered death. In the words of Paul, "The perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality...Then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.'"

 

Ø      That Jesus was crucified, dead and buried speaks to us of God's solidarity with us in all things of this life. Have you been betrayed by friends?  So has he.  Have you known fatigue that burrowed into your bones?  So has he.  Have you had trouble with the law?  So has he. Have you lost friends before their time?  So has he.  Are you afraid of dying? So was he. He knows about and is intimate with the human condition in all its greatest challenges, even the challenges that call forth our greatest fears. But in Jesus Christ we have hope that the One who is in us is greater than the one who is in the world. We have hope that the challenges that face us are challenges still, but challenges made easier for we have one who leads us through them. We have hope, as children of God, because we hear the story of Jesus that tells us it is OK to be defeated in this life because our defeat is never the last word, for his last word is not that he was crucified; his last word is not that he was dead; his last word is not that he was buried. Indeed, he endured all of these things...but crucified, dead and buried is not the end of the story.

When you hear the end of the story...oh, what a comeback story it is.

The greatest story ever told.

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