Walk With Me…to the Cross

Today, of all days, I want you to walk with me.

If you were not walking with me, I would prefer to just list facts and times and outcomes about this day and not walk these courageous, selfless steps with the Savior.

Jesus’ steps are numbered.  His days of walking this earth are almost done.

He has submitted to His Father’s plan and now it is a matter of time. There is no changing paths.

Each step He takes is for you and for me.

Jesus hasn’t slept much if at all.  In the wee hours of the morning, Jesus has gone from an initial trial with Annas, former High Priest, where He confesses His divinity as the Messiah to the Court of Caiaphas, the current High Priest and the Sanhedrin Court.  There He is bound, blasphemed and beaten before He takes His next steps.

His next steps are to Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor.  The whole Jewish assembly seeks to make a case against Jesus.  “They began to accuse Him, saying, ‘We found this man subverting our nation, opposing payment of taxes to Caesar, and saying that He Himself is the Messiah, a King'”.  Luke 23:2  There are two lies and one truth in this statement.  Even now the faulty rhetoric begins to unravel.  They have no proof.  There are countless testimonies of Jesus healing and feeding “the nation”.  He paid His taxes to Caesar – remember the fish and the coin?  Then, the foundation of it all is the Truth; THE Truth in fleshly form standing before them and they just cannot see.

I see Jesus in this moment.  He is who He says He is and that is why they want Him to die.  He cannot be anyone else but the Messiah.  I wonder how many guards who bound and pushed Him lowered their eyes when they met His?  I wonder if the assembly of learned men who accompanied Him seeking a verdict of death ever looked in His eyes?  The few words Jesus speaks in these moments must have echoed in their ears for a lifetime.

Pilate does have eyes that see, “Pilate then told the chief priests and the crowds, ‘I find no grounds for charging this man.'”  Luke 23:4  

But they keep insisting so Pilate looks for a way to get this man out of his court and into someone else’s.  He learns that Jesus is a Galilean.  How fortuitous is that?  Pilate marches Jesus over to Herod’s court.  Let Herod deal with this noisy, irritating group of unreasonable men.

Herod is glad to see Jesus.  In fact, he has been wanting to meet Him.  He would like a miracle, if you please.  He was important and held His fate in his hands the least He could do is perform.  Oh, how they did not know Jesus.  Here, in this court, Jesus said not one word.  He knew their hearts.

So, “Then Herod, with his soldiers, treated Him with contempt, mocked Him, dressed Him in a brilliant robe, and sent Him back to Pilate.” Luke 23:11

He was back.  What now?  They were back.  Why wouldn’t they just go away? Because the salvation of the world depended upon it.  These moments, as painful as they were and are for us to read and experience today, depended on each sacred step.  

“Pilate called together the chief priests, the leaders and the people and said to them, ‘You have brought me this man as one who subverts the people.  But in fact, after examining Him in your presence, I have found no grounds to charge this man with those things you accuse Him of.  Neither has Herod, because he sent Him back to us.  Clearly, He has done nothing to deserve death.  Therefore, I will have Him whipped and then release Him.”  Luke 23:13-17

There, that should do it.  A nice whipping by Pilate’s guards.  That should appease them.  I cannot even imagine.

There was no appeasing.  There was only fear.  Fear that Jesus was who He said He was and it was not the Messiah they wanted.  They wanted might and power and freedom from Rome.  Jesus couldn’t, wouldn’t give them what they wanted because the souls of every generation ever created by God needed to be redeemed.

“They cried out together, ‘Take this man away!  Release Barabbas to us!’ Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again, but they just kept shouting, “Crucify! Crucify Him!”  Luke 23:18-21 

It is painful for me to even type those words.

Pilate tried again to quell the unreasonableness of it all.  There was no fault in this man.  Surely, they would not want Barabbas set free.  Barabbas was a rebel and a murderer.  Yet, they would not relent. “Crucify!  Crucify!  Crucify Him!”  And Pilate granted their request; it was Passover week and it was their choice: one prisoner released every year during Passover week.

I wonder if Barabbas looked into Jesus’ eyes.  We have no way of knowing if they even were in close proximity.  The first to be bought with His sacrifice was Barabbas, whether he ever knew it or not.  Pilate did look in His eyes though, I do not doubt it for a moment.  Because he was changed.  He knew the truth and he was bound by it for the rest of his days.  “When Pilate saw the he was getting nowhere but that a riot was starting instead, he took some water, washed his hands in front of the crowd and said, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood.  See to it yourselves!”  Matthew 27:24   There was no bowl of water that could ever cleanse his soul.

“Then he released Barabbas to them. But after having Jesus flogged, he handed Him over to be crucified.”  Matthew 27:26

These next steps of Jesus are sacred and holy and marked in time by the bloodied soles of His feet.

Nothing would be spared to disparage Him, humiliate Him, blaspheme Him.  A full company of soldiers took delight in His nakedness, His bruises, His stripes of bleeding flesh.  Their spit ran down His face as a crown of thorns was carelessly placed on His head.  They gave Him a reed for a scepter and mocked the King of the Jews all the while they beat Him and battered Him.  I don’t know when enough was enough, but finally he was clothed and led away to be crucified.  One foot, on bloodied foot, in front of the other.  The worst was yet to come.

The cross was placed on Jesus’ back.  How He could bear it I do not know.  These steps of Jesus undo me.  He is walking towards Golgotha, the skull place, a place of decay and death.  A place nothing like Jesus.  Yet, carrying a wooden cross, I see so clearly that the weight of it is not what brings Him to His knees but my sin.  Jesus carried me there, you there.  I am that cross upon His back.  I could not do it.  I could not save myself.  I needed a Messiah, a Savior to carry the weight of all my sin.

When Jesus stumbles, a man named Simon, a Cyrenian, is forced to carry the cross of Jesus.  On the days I wrestle with my unworthiness, the folly and consequences of my sin, I wish I were Simon.  If I could carry that cross for just one mile would I ever be so nonchalant in my attitude toward sin?  If I could shoulder the cross for just one mile maybe, just maybe, I would have given Jesus something in return.  But, I am not Simon.  I am the weight of that cross.

At Golgotha, they placed Jesus on that cross and nailed His hands and feet to the cross.

Those hands that had healed and fed thousands.  Those hands who had just hours ago washed His disciples feet.  Every man, woman and child in that crowd that had been touched by those hands must have shed tears of sorrow to see them pierced.  Those feet that had walked hundreds of miles for divine appointments with sinners who desperately needed His message and His grace.  Those feet that had been anointed with sweet perfume not so many days ago.  Those feet that never wavered in the path of righteousness.  Those feet were nailed to a cross.

This was true love.  Jesus was not held there by nails but by His unending, sacrificial love for you and me.  There were any number of legions of angels that could have attended Him at the merest whisper from His lips.  Yet, His love was too great for His children to forsake them, to truly leave them in their sin and desolation.  So the nails remained.

The soldiers who cast lot for His earthly possessions offered Him myrrh mixed with wine.  Myrrh, always a gift for Jesus, but this time He refused it.

Nothing could ease this pain nor, I think, did He want it to.   Love was greater than the pain.  It needed to be felt and experienced so that we, those on the other side of the cross, would not forget.  We would not forget that love requires sacrifice.

Then, there are the voices, all the voices. They are relentless.  “Aren’t You the Messiah?  Save Yourself and us!”, “You said you could tear down the temple and rebuild it in three days!”, “If you are who you say you are then save yourself!”  A cacophony of lies lifted on the vocal cords of mockers and haters.

Then, there was a voice of humility and clarity.

“We are punished justly, because we’re getting back what we deserve for the things we did, but his man has done nothing wrong.”  Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom!” And He said to him, ‘I assure you:  Today you will be with Me in paradise.”  Luke 23:42-43

It had begun.  The salvation of the world, as we know it, began with the proclamation and forgiveness of thief on a cross.

The time is near…

“It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three, because the sun’s light failed.”  That is a long time to stand in darkness in the middle of the day.  The sun’s light failed, what a profound phenomenon.  The sun had been created.  It knew its Creator’s agony and perhaps simply refused to shine.  The depth of sorrow of God’s children who loved Jesus cried out to creation and it sympathized with them?  I do not know but I believe that if the stones could sing, then the sun can resonate sorrow.     

“The curtain of the sanctuary was split down the middle.”  This short verse is worth a tome of commentary but for now I will say that the Holy of Holies was no more.  God reached down and tore the veil away because He would NO LONGER be separated from His children.   I would have loved to have seen the expression on the faces of the high priests when they walked in and the twenty foot, 3 feet thick curtain was torn into from top to bottom.  They have thrown themselves on the mercy seat.

We are almost there.

And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eli’, Eli’, lema’ sabachtha’ni? that is “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Matthew 27:46.  Why?  For you and for me.  Because today, on this day, Love made flesh poured out His life for you and for me.  What has always separated us from God?  Sin.  Our own willful, prideful words, actions, thoughts and deeds that we selfishly masquerade as a justified version of okay.  It is not okay.  It is an eternal chasm that had been bridged by sacrifice since sin was given birth in the Garden of Eden.  Enough.  God had had enough.  Not one more lamb but THE Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world.

“It is finished.” John 19:30. 

Indeed.

Today our last steps are to a tomb.  A borrowed one from a kind and rich man named Joseph of Arimathea, who was also a disciple of Jesus.  With gentle and trembling hands they must have wrapped Him in clean, fine linen cloth and laid Him in the tomb.  It strikes me such, the similarities of Jesus birth and death, of the fine line cloth and being laid in a place that was borrowed.  Then the great stone was rolled against the entrance.  “Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were seated there, facing the tomb.”  Matthew 27:61  Like Mary Magdalene and Mary and Joseph of Arimathea, we can do nothing more here today…

… but reflect on the courageous, selfless acts of a Savior who loved YOU and ME so much that He poured out His life on a cross that our sins would no longer separate us from the God who created us.

Until tomorrow,

Laura Lea

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