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.
Comments
Post a Comment