At The Cross: The Nails Colossians 2:13-14


How many of you make a grocery list before heading to the store in order to make sure you don’t forget the things you need?  Where do you keep your list?  Anita and I have a pretty cool app on our phones now call Listonic.  In this free app, we can make a grocery list and add to it at any time, and it will appear on the list on the other person’s phone. (You can make all kinds of lists, not just grocery lists, that’s just what we use it for.). I truly love this app.  Why?  Because we used to keep our grocery list in a different place.  Our list was written on a pad that was on the refrigerator.  Quite often I would get to Walmart, BJ’s, or Food Lion, and do you know where that list still was?  That’s right.  It was still on the fridge.  Do you know how much I would usually remember of what was on that list without calling Anita? That’s right, practically nothing, and if she didn’t have the list in front of her, she couldn’t come up with much of what was on it either.
On Wednesday, during our Ash Wednesday services, we began a new series with a framework based upon Max Lucado’s He Chose The Nails.  Through this series, we will explore what God has offered us as Jesus approached the cross and was crucified,  each week exploring various things encountered from Jerusalem to Golgotha, gifts offered by God through this most horrific event—evidences that God can redeem even our most gruesome of sins, for what sin could be greater than the crucifixion of the Messiah?  We will explore these gifts in our Sunday sermons and during our Wednesday reflections.  I will not review each one each week, as though connected, they each stand alone.  The sermons and reflections will be found online and I will be glad to share paper copies of both the sermons and reflections for those who cannot access them online.
Today, we consider the nails.
In the movie, The Passion of the Christ, we watch in what many consider overly violent, what is probably a toned-down depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus.  We watch as Jesus is forced to carry his cross, first alone, next with the help of Simon of Cyrene, up the hill known as Golgotha, or Place of the Skull.  Once at the top of the hill, the cross is dropped to the ground and Jesus is forced to lay on top of the cross.  His arms are stretched out as far as they can with the help of ropes tied to the wrists, and the tip of the spike is placed against Jesus’ palm and we watch as a hand grasps the spike while another hand grasps the mallet and drives the spike through Jesus’ hand.
What many do not know about this scene is it was not the actor portraying the Roman soldier whose hands drove the spike into Jesus’ hand.  The hands we see at that point are actually the hands of director Mel Gibson.  Why would Mel Gibson step and do that?  He answers that question directly, “‘It was me that put him on the cross.  It was my sins’ that put him there.”[i]
Mel Gibson realized what many forget.  Too much hate has been spread through the years looking for someone to blame for the crucifixion of Jesus.  A great deal of the anti-Semitism (or anti-Jew sentiment) through the years has been the result of labeling Jews as Christ-killers, blaming not just the religious leaders for the crucifixion of Jesus, but the whole Jewish faith.  Others are quick to defend the Jews and point out that it was not really the Jews that crucified Jesus, but it was Roman soldiers that put Jesus to death, thus blaming the Roman Empire for the death of Christ.
What those who make those arguments fail to remember is that Jesus came to die.  God, who exists in eternity, which is beyond our past, present, and future, knew from the moment He said, “Let there be light,” that humanity would fall into sin and that He would have to come, as God the Son incarnate in Jesus, to die for all of humanity’s sin.  The Jews are not the ones to blame for the crucifixion of Jesus.  The Romans are not to be the scapegoats for the death of Christ.  Jesus was nailed to the cross, not just for Mel Gibson’s sins, but because of the sins of all of humanity.
From the first bite of forbidden fruit to that lustful, vengeful, greedy, deceitful, or gluttonous thought that we had this morning, we all bear responsibility for the spikes driven through the body of Jesus into the hard wood of the cross.
The sin of the pedophile hammered the spike.
The sin of the drug dealer hammered the spike.
The sin of the murderer hammered the spike.
The sin of the glutton hammered the spike.
The sin of the gossip hammered the spike.
The sin of the liar hammered the spike.
The sin of the prideful hammered the spike.
The sin of those who claim they have no sin hammered the spike.
Name a sin…and our participation in that sin hammered the spike through the flesh and bone of Jesus into the cross.  Every sin that has ever happened or ever will happen drove the spikes deeper and deeper.
It is only because our sin put Jesus on that cross that His death offers us forgiveness of those sins.  Jesus died as a result of all our sin, for all of our sin, to put sin to death once and for all. As we come before God confessing that we cannot save ourselves from sin, and that we are in need of a Savior, the blood of Christ cleanses us of our sin.  We hold on to the promise that when we come before God, confessing our sins and asking for forgiveness, that we find it already there.
Yet, sometimes that is easier said than fully accepted.  Let me ask a difficult question.  How many here have been haunted by their sins of the past?  I mean we have come before God and confessed our sin and asked for forgiveness and we are promised that we receive forgiveness, “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”[ii] And we might feel forgiven for that moment, a temporary reprieve from the guilt that burdens us when we have sinned, but then our thoughts and dreams become weighed down by doubt and fear.
It may be 24 hours later or 24 years later, but that sin and guilt come creeping back into our consciousness.  We begin to be concerned that we have not been forgiven.  We may think that the forgiveness we originally felt was just an illusion. We may think that what we have done is just too terrible to be forgiven by God. We may think that we are so bad that God has turned a deaf ear to our confession, and so God, not hearing our confession, holds that sin against us.  We may even have someone else tell us that there is no way God can forgive what we have done.  Yet those thoughts or ideas, or even the words of condemnation by someone else, are not the words of God.  They are the words of satan, words of the adversary, words of the serpent, calling us to doubt who we are.  The adversary wants us to think we are unloved, unworthy, unforgivable, abandoned.  Just as the serpent did in the garden, he wants to do now, and make us forget who God has declared us to be.  Because of those spikes, God has declared just the opposite.  God has declared that we are the forgivable and forgiven, worthy and valuable, lovable and loved sons and daughters of the King.
Those sins we were forgiven of, those sins we will be forgiven of, are nailed to the cross and left there, set aside forever.  “…as far as the east is from the west, so far [God] removes our transgressions from us.”[iii] Having removed those sins from us, God declares, “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”[iv]
This is the gift of the nails, my brothers and sisters, God has nailed those sins, the sins we committed a decade ago, the sins we will commit a decade from now, and He left them there.  While I forget most of what was on the list on I left on the refrigerator, God promises that when our sins are left nailed on the cross, He remembers them no more.
Yes, our sins nailed Jesus to the cross…but my brothers and sisters, don’t let those sins haunt you, because if God left our sins nailed to the cross instead of holding on to them, we need to let go of them and receive the mercy, grace, forgiveness, and love God offers.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.



[i] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335345/trivia
[ii] 1st John 1:9
[iii] Psalm 103:12
[iv] Jeremiah 31:34

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Life Between The Trees: The Cedar Tree - Ezekiel 17:22-24

Women of Faith: Lydia - Acts 16:11-15

Experiencing The Spirit: Unifier - Ephesians 4:1-6