The Worst Day

The Worst Day

Luke 23:26-49

April 19, 2019 (Good Friday) • Mount Pleasant UMC

I’ve had a lot of bad days, but none of them compare to this day. I came late to the party, you might say. Being from Cyrene—you might know it as Libya—I had been staying outside the city with some friends and had just come in for the day with my two sons, Alexander and Rufus, to take part in the Passover celebrations. And because we’d been outside the city since yesterday evening, staying with friends, we had no idea how Jerusalem had changed overnight. When we had left the day before, the city was bustling with energy and excitement over the holiday celebrations. I was looking forward to sharing this holiday with my sons. They’ve had a difficult time since their mother died, and I thought the Passover in Jerusalem might be a healing time for them. And so it had been, until this day, because when we came to town this morning, it was an altogether different place than it had been just yesterday.

I should have turned around when I saw the crowd—oh, who am I kidding? A better word for it would be “mob.” There were people crushed in against people, all yelling and screaming, spitting and hurling insults, and it was all directed at this one man. One man out of the three who were carrying crosses to the place outside the city walls where the Romans performed their executions. I should have turned around. I should have left the city. But I stood there too long because I couldn’t help but wonder why in the world they were carrying out crucifixions on this day. This is a holy day for us, one of the highest of holy days for we Jews. Why today? Why now? I mean, crucified men usually took several days to die which meant that, all throughout the festival, we would have to look at these three dying men up on their crosses. That’s not the best mood-setter for a time of celebration.

Well, as I said, I stood there too long, and as I thought about these things, a Roman soldier grabbed me by the wrist. “You! You there! Carry his cross!” What? I looked toward where he was pointing and I saw a man on the ground. Well, I knew it was a man but he didn’t look much like a man anymore. The Romans had nearly beaten the life out of him already. He had obviously been scourged, and his skin was hanging in tatters on his body. Thirty-nine lashes (it’s thought that 40 would kill a man). And, after that punishment, they still expected him to carry his own crossbeam out to Golgotha. You couldn’t even touch his skin without causing incredible pain, and they expected him to carry this wooden beam, with it rubbing up against his raw back the entire time (Wangerin, Reliving the Passion, pg. 118). That beam alone weighed around a hundred pounds (Hamilton, 24 Hours That Changed the World, pg. 96). It wasn’t an easy thing for a healthy man to carry, let alone someone who had been beaten like this man had. I was amazed he had made it this far. “Carry his cross!” the officer shouted again. You see, Roman law says that a soldier can force any of us to carry a burden for a mile. It’s called “the law of impressment” (Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pg. 255), and in order to finish the execution, I was being “impressed” into service. Well, I knew I couldn’t argue with them, so I asked a nearby woman to watch after the boys, and I walked over and picked up the crossbeam.

It was an awful business. There was already blood all over the crossbeam—his blood—and now it was on me. I had no idea what he had done. I just wanted to get the beam out to Golgotha, find my boys again and be done with the whole affair. Quickly. So we walked. Or I walked and he staggered. But there were these moments when he would stop and talk to the crowd. Like the moment when the women were weeping for him. Now, they weren’t necessarily weeping for him directly. They were professional mourners. It was their job to mourn for those who had no one else. And this man certainly seemed to have no one else at the time. But he talked to them. He called them, “Daughters of Jerusalem.” And he told them not to weep for him, but for themselves and for their children, because, he said, a time was coming that would be worse than this (cf. 23:28-31). Very strange. Very odd. What kind of man was this? In his state, why did he care about anyone else? That’s what I kept thinking as we walked, mostly in silence, to the top of the hill where he would be killed.

So we got up there, and my plan was to lay the beam down and get out of there. I didn’t want anything more to do with it. And yet, I couldn’t help myself. I watched as they stretched him out on the beam. I stared as they hammered nails into his wrists and through his feet. They did the same thing to the other two men—revolutionaries, I found out later—but I didn’t watch them. When you carry a man’s crossbeam, you can’t help but wonder how it’s all going to come out. I mean, yeah, I knew how it was going to come out. No one escapes from a crucifixion. And no escapes pain at a crucifixion. Our Roman masters have perfected the art of execution by crucifixion. We all know that their goal is to inflict the maximum amount of pain for the longest period of time (Hamilton 96). Still, I couldn’t help but watch him. So I stood there. And I watched. And I listened.

I heard people mocking him. I heard him called things like, “Messiah.” “Chosen One.” “King of the Jews.” Enough things like that were said that I worked up my courage and I went to talk to one of the women who was standing closest to his cross. “Excuse me,” I said, “can you tell me who that is on that cross? The one in the middle.” She looked at me as if I must have missed something, as if I should have already known. “That’s Jesus,” she said. Well, a lot of people are named Jesus these days. You know, everyone wants their kid to be the Messiah, so they name him, “God saves.” She went on: “It’s Jesus, from Nazareth. The preacher. The healer.” Ah, yes, I had heard rumblings about him during the time we’d been in Jerusalem. I had heard how he had made most of the religious leaders mad, or at least uncomfortable. But Rome doesn’t normally execute preachers or healers. I mean, they might write them off as crazy, but they wouldn’t consider them worth killing. So I asked her, “What did he do to deserve this kind of punishment?”

The woman smiled this sad smile at me. “He didn’t do anything to deserve this,” she said. “He chose this.” Now that really didn’t make any sense. Maybe he was crazy. “Chose crucifixion?” I asked. “Yes,” she said. “Did you hear what he just said?” Well, I had heard him mumble, but to be honest, it’s hard to hear what people say from the cross because it’s so hard for them to talk in the first place, so I shook my head. “He said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’ (23:34). And I don’t understand it all,” she went on, “but somehow, what he’s doing on that cross is providing forgiveness for all of us, for our sin, for everyone who wants it.”

I didn’t ask any more questions at that point. It was all too much for me. But I did think about what I had come to Jerusalem to celebrate in the first place. Passover was a time of salvation, a time of redemption. Every year, whether we were in Jerusalem or at home, we would remember the story of how God sent Moses to rescue our people from slavery. We would remember how there were all these plagues God sent on Egypt and on Pharaoh to try to convince Pharaoh to let the Hebrew people go. And we’d remember how the last one was the worst. God told Pharaoh that the firstborn of every household would die. And that’s exactly what happened, except in the Hebrew homes, because we were told the angel of death would stay away from any home that had lamb’s blood painted over the door frames. Our children had been saved by the blood of a lamb. Passover is the time when we remember how a lamb died in order to save us. Something else gave its life so that we could live. And then I remembered what she had said: Jesus chose this. He chose to die. The lamb couldn’t make that choice, and so we kept having all these sacrifices…but Jesus made that choice. He believed that his death—horrific as it was—could provide forgiveness, that suffering could somehow be redeemed, that somehow love is seen when we give ourselves away for the sake of another.

I don’t know. I’ve not had a lot of time to think through all of this. I just know that I stood there, watching him die, and all of these thoughts just sort of erupted in my mind. He didn’t die like most crucified men—or even like one of the criminals crucified with him. That man was more typical—using his last hours to insult Jesus and the crowds. That man was arrogant and hateful to the last. That’s the way most crucified men died. But not Jesus. Nope. He offered comfort to the other criminal, telling him, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (23:43).

Then came the darkness. It was weird. Darkness at noon? And it just came in all of a sudden. It wasn’t cloud cover. It wasn’t some sort of eclipse. It was…well, it was sort of like the sun just stopped shining (23:45). I can’t explain it, but for three hours, it was dark, at least in Jerusalem. I heard later that it was during this same time the curtain in the Temple—the one that separates the main sanctuary from the Holy of Holies, the throne room of God, the one no one is supposed to go past except for a high priest once a year—that curtain was torn (Hamilton 105). And get this: it was torn from top to bottom (Mark 15:38). That curtain’s huge! It’s as thick as my hand, 60 feet tall and 20 feet wide! No one could have reached up there and torn it from top to bottom. No one on earth, anyway. But I only heard about that a few moments ago. I was focused on the darkness and still trying to see what was going on with Jesus. I guess I didn’t really need to see. I’d seen crucifixions before. I knew what was going on. They were struggling to breathe. They were losing blood. And they were suffering like few people do. And somehow, the one on the cross in the middle was giving his life for my sin.

The woman I’d been talking to, at some point during the darkness, leaned over to me and said, “You know, you did what he said to do.” I sort of looked at her strangely, and she said, “One time he told us, ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me’ (9:23). That’s what you did today.” “I don’t understand,” I confessed. “I just did what I had to do.” “Yes,” she said, “you did. But I watched you. You trusted someone to take care of your boys, and you gave of yourself for the sake of someone else. For the sake of Jesus.” I still didn’t understand, so she continued. “I’ve been thinking as I’ve watched Jesus today that perhaps what he meant by that statement was that to love someone is to give of yourself for them, for their sake. You didn’t know Jesus today, and yet you put aside your own stuff and walked with him and for him. I mean, look, you didn’t have to stay here. Most people would have taken off after they dropped the crossbeam. Back down there at Pilate’s hall, when Barabbas was set free instead of Jesus, he didn’t stick around. He didn’t try to find out if he could help Jesus. He took off. But not you. You stayed here. You’ve watched the whole time. Beyond what was required of you, you gave of yourself. And I think,” she said, “when we do that, maybe we’re living out just a little of what he meant.”

I’m still thinking about that. I think I get it. I think I understand that part of following Jesus, of living like he did, is to put aside what we want so that others can know about him. Yes, I said “we,” because after everything that happened today, after the horrible events of this worst day, I’ve decided I need to find out more about what this Jesus taught and how he lived. I don’t know where that will lead me in the next few days, but I know I want to be more like him.

Did I tell you how he died? At the end of the darkness, just before the sun came out again, we heard him push up on the nails one last time and he called out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (23:46). Then there was one last, long breath, his head dropped down, and he did not breathe again. The other two were still there, but Jesus gave up his spirit. He willingly gave up his life. There was something in that death, something powerful enough to cause a Roman centurion—a battle-hardened soldier—to say, just loud enough for some of us to hear, “Surely this was a righteous man” (23:47). Never thought I’d agree with a Roman soldier, but today I did, at least enough to make me want to find out more about this Jesus.

So that’s where I’m headed right now. I got the boys and instead of going to the Passover meal, we’re headed to meet up with some of those who followed Jesus for the last few years. I want to hear directly from them what he was like, what he taught, how he lived his life. Because if his life is anything like his death, I think he’s someone I would want to follow—or, at least follow his example. I think he’s someone I’d want my boys to know about. So we’re gathering together to remember, to share stories, and, yes, to hide from the Romans. Some of his disciples are afraid that the Romans might come after them next. It’s a good idea to lay low for a couple of days. You know, until the Passover Sabbath is done and the Romans have moved on from this execution. Yeah, it’s probably a good idea to keep quiet for a couple of days. By the time Sabbath is over, it’ll be Sunday, the start of a new week, and you never know what a new week might bring. So I’m going to hurry along. Say, you could come, too. Would you want to? Would you want to get to know more about Jesus? I know it looks like he’s just a crucified man, but I think, somewhere in the midst of this day, I’ve begun to place all my hope in this crucified man. And you can, too. Want to come along?