He Saved Others

Matthew 27:39-44

February 18, 2024 • Mount Pleasant UMC

When I take groups to the Holy Land, we always go to two different sites for the crucifixion and the resurrection in Jerusalem. One, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, has the weight of tradition behind it. For centuries, it has been regarded as the place where Jesus died and was raised. The church itself was built centuries ago and is a significant monument in the Old City. The other, commonly called the Garden Tomb or Gordon’s Calvary (because it was discovered by British General Charles Gordon), is newer, has no church building, and is usually the one people prefer. It’s the place where we always have Holy Communion, usually on one of our last days in Jerusalem. People prefer it because it’s beautiful. It looks more like a garden, more like the place that is described in the Gospel as to where Jesus was buried and raised. Even the rocky outcropping looks like a skull, or it used to. From when I first went in 1995 to the last time I was there in 2023, Skull Hill, which today has a bus stop below it, has lost a lot of its shape due to erosion and human intervention. Still, pilgrims to the Holy Land tend to fall in love with the Garden Tomb, and I am among them. I love going there.

I also love going to the church but—let’s just be honest about it. It’s ugly The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is owned by six different Christian traditions, and in order to do anything to the building, all six have to agree. Needless to say, not much is done to the building. There is a ladder on a ledge above the doors that has been there since the 18th century because no one can agree on if it can be moved. It’s a dark, somber place, built in many ways right into the rock that once filled the area. The actual tomb is no longer there; what you have instead is a monument built over the traditional site of the empty tomb. And the last time we were there, a rude priest guarded it, pulling anyone out of line who made any small infraction. One of our folks got pulled out of line. So it’s not a comforting place. It’s not a beautiful place. It doesn't look like a garden or even a hillside. And yet, the more I have studied and pondered Jesus’ death, I’ve come to think that the church is a more appropriate place to remember those events. What happened on Calvary was not pretty, not gentle. It was ugly, brutal, and dark. And so were many of the words that were spoken in and around that cross.

Today is the first Sunday of Lent, and as we talked about on Wednesday night, we are going to spend this season of the year getting ready for the cross by listening to those who gathered around it. Often we listen to the words Jesus spoke from the cross, as we should, but there are also things we can learn from the things people are saying who are close to the cross. And while we may find comfort in Jesus’ final sayings, those who gathered near him to watch him die challenge us in other ways. Things like scorn, which is what we find in this first word to the cross.

First, though, let’s get the setting in mind. Crucifixions were public events, so the Romans crucified criminals along main roadways. The idea was that if people saw such executions, it would deter crime. Whether or not that was a logical assumption is up for debate. But nevertheless, Jesus was hung up in a public setting, a place well known for crucifixions. Here’s how one author described it: “Jesus was not crucified in a Cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage heap; on a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and Latin and in Greek” (qtd. in Kalas, Seven Words to the Cross, pg. 12). So who is gathered there at the foot of the cross? Matthew tells us there were, of course, the two “rebels” who were crucified on either side of him, and on the ground there were chief priests, teachers of the law, elders, and people passing by. “Some rich, some poor, some generally kind, and some inclined to baseness. Call it a full cross-section of humanity, representative enough to satisfy modern polling experts” (Kalas 13). It’s a large group, and some would have stayed to watch while others probably shrouded their eyes and hurried past, going on to whatever business brought them this way. But some took the time to, as Matthew says, “hurl insults” at Jesus (27:39). Because a brutal, ghastly death wasn’t enough. They had to add scorn on top of everything else.

The first group Matthew mentions is “those who passed by” (27:39). These are the folks who are either on their way into Jerusalem or on their way out. These are the gapers—you know, the ones who can’t help but slow down on the interstate to stare at a car accident. These are the folks who love the spectacle; Matthew says they were “shaking their heads” at those on the cross. What Matthew is describing was, in those days, an obscene gesture, sort of like “flipping someone off” today, if you can forgive my crassness. “It was a dramatic way to show contempt” and scorn (Kalas 13). So they look up at the cross, and there they see a man who is dying, who has been beaten and abused, who is bleeding from every place in his body, and what they think they should do is to insult him and make obscene gestures toward him? Is that how we treat a dying fellow human being? I mean, what is his crime? Is it murder or molestation? Is it treason or kidnapping? What crime has brought on this reaction? Well, his crime is listed in the title above his head, something we will look at more next week. But here it is: “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews” (27:37). That’s it. That’s his crime. That is what has brought out such hatred from the passers-by.

They give voice to their hatred by making fun of him, using his own words against him. “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God” (27:40). If you are the Son of God. You see, they knew what the title “King of the Jews” referred to. He claimed to be the Messiah, the Savior, and more than that, he claimed to have a special relationship with God the Father. Surely someone with such unique qualities should be able to just get off of the cross. Surely someone like that should’t have to die like this. Obviously, they believe, Jesus is not who he and others said he was, if he’s dying like this. And so they make fun of him.

Sometimes we get caught up in the crucifixion drama and we forget that this is the same accusation the devil made against Jesus way back in chapter 4 of Matthew’s Gospel. When Jesus went to the wilderness, the devil comes to him to tempt him. “If you are the Son of God,” the devil says, “tell these stones to become bread…If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down” from the highest point of the Temple (4:3, 6, emphasis mine). The devil had tempted Jesus to prove himself in ways that were spectacular, noticeable. Get attention, Jesus! And now the crowd joins the demonic chorus: “If you are the Son of God, prove it. Do something only a Son of God could do. Come down off the cross; we’ve never seen that happen. I mean, surely God doesn’t want his Son to die, does he? If you are God’s son…prove it” (cf. Wright, Matthew For Everyone—Part Two, pg. 186).

Or maybe their voices sound more like this: if you are the Son of God, if you are who you say you are, then make sure I get this job, or that spouse. Fix my problems. Make my day go better and put my boss in a good mood. Maybe the voices sound like our own, demanding that Jesus prove himself and then we will trust in him, we will believe in him. Do what I want, Jesus. Answer my prayers the way I want them to be answered, Jesus. Prove yourself and I will believe in you. And sometimes we pray those prayers because we want to understand. We want to know why Jesus does what he does, why he does things the way he does them. We don’t understand, any more than the people at the foot of the cross understood what he was doing up there. But do you know what? A God we could completely understand and explain wouldn’t be worth worshipping. He wouldn’t be God. Isaiah put it this way: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). When we demand Jesus to do whatever it is our way, we are joining the passers-by who heap scorn upon the Son of God.

But there’s a second group there at the foot of the cross, and from what Matthew seems to tell us, they are not passing by. They are hanging out at the cross, making sure that the man in the middle actually dies. They are there because they were ones who made she he was put on that cross in the first place, and in fact they’ve been trying to get rid of him for some time now. They are the religious leaders; Matthew calls them the “chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders” (27:41). These are important people in Jewish life. The chief priests were the ones who presided over the sacrifices; in other words, they were responsible for Israel’s worship life. And, most notably, they presided over the rituals of the Day of Atonement each year, when all of the people’s sins for the previous year were pronounced forgiven (New Interpreter’s Dictionary, Vol. 1, pg. 588). Put a pin in that; it’s important. The teachers of the law were exactly what they sound like: they helped the people understand the Jewish law and to apply it to their lives. You might think of them as Sunday School teachers or Bible study leaders. And the elders were not just old men; they were men who were well-respected in the community. They weren’t ordained as priests or rabbis, but they were people to whom you turned if you needed direction or advice. Influential, yes, but they had no official standing in the religious orders (New Interpreter’s Dictionary, Vol. 2, pgs. 231-232). So these folks, the pastors, the Bible study leaders and the matriarchs and patriarchs of the church had come together, had helped Jesus get crucified, and now were spending the time at the cross mocking him.

As Matthew tells it, they have been doing that throughout his ministry, ever since chapter 4. They’ve accused him of breaking the Jewish law. They’ve said he was in league with the devil. They debated with him and openly doubted that he had anything worthwhile to say about the kingdom of God. N. T. Wright puts it this way: “It was madness. They knew how God’s kingdom ought to come. Jesus’ alternative way held no attraction for them, even though he backed up his invitation with so many remarkable deeds of power” (187). Now, they’ve finally ended him, they believe, and they can’t help themselves. They have to make fun of him.

Listen to what they say: “He saved others, but he can’t save himself! He’s the king of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God’” (27:42-43). Could they be filled with any more contempt? I get sarcasm; I’m fluent in it. But this is beyond that. This is hatred; this is ugly. “Let God rescue him if he wants him.” They, too, join in with the devil’s chorus: “If you are the Son of God.”

And here’s Jesus’ chance. I mean, if he wants influential people to believe in him, to spread his word, this is his chance. So far the only people who have stuck with him are fishermen, a tax collector, a revolutionary, and some women whose voices and word would not be listened to anyway. The only so-called decent man who followed him has sold him out for a few silver coins. Jesus has no one among his followers who have that much influence. If he would just come down from the cross, do a miracle, do something no one has ever done or seen before, they say they would believe. They would entrust their lives to him. With a simple miracle, one Jesus is no doubt capable of, he could win over the whole religious establishment of Israel. Why doesn’t he do it?

Because if he did, their faith, their belief would be in the miracle and not in him. And we know from his ministry that one miracle would not suffice. As soon as he was done with that one, they would want another one. Jesus would become the latest spectacle and the kingdom of God, which he came to bring, would be left aside. And besides all of that, his mission would not be complete. The religious leaders say, “He saved others, but he can’t save himself!” (27:42). They don’t realize really what they are saying, because the truth is this: he can only save others by not saving himself. The cross is God’s eternal love letter to the world. It is the reminder that there is nothing he will not do to show his heart. He can only save us if he refuses to save himself (cf. Kalas 16). The religious leaders tell him he will come down from the cross if he is the Son of God, but the truth is it’s because he is the Son of God that he must stay on the cross (cf. Wright 188). That’s how he will accomplish what he came to do.

In saying what they do, they are missing the point entirely. They have no idea what he is really doing up on that cross. You would think that priests, of all people, ones who presided over the Day of Atonement that included sacrifices for the people’s sin, would recognize a sacrifice when they saw it. Only this was the Son of God giving himself as a sacrifice for the sake of the people. He is up there on the cross, fulfilling his calling, bearing on that cross in some way I don’t completely understand the full weight of all of our sin—yours, mine, and the sin of everyone who has ever lived.

And because of this, the crowds who don’t know what’s happening and the religious leaders who know exactly what’s happening both heap their scorn and ridicule on this man in the middle. And as he hangs there between heaven and earth, taking what the crowd is throwing his way, he becomes for all time something else in addition to savior. He becomes the friend to the one who is an unjust victim of prejudice or hatred or abuse or, yes, scorn. He becomes the one who understands when you are loved and then rejected, when you are on the receiving end of contempt, when you have been left out of the circle that contains all the important people, or when that friend turns their back on you and leaves you alone. We should have known he would experience this. Isaiah had described it centuries before: “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain…he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds are healed” (Isaiah 53:3-5). This one who was so gentle he would not break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick (cf. Isaiah 42:3) was himself bruised, snuffed out, and ridiculed so that we would have a refuge when we find ourselves in a similar place. The disinherited, the rejected and the despised of the earth find in him a kindred spirit (cf. Kalas 15). He is the friend to the wounded hear, one who didn’t save himself so that he could save others.

When you first enter the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, you make a right turn and go up a steep set of stairs to the top of what is said to be the remnants of Calvary. You go through a series of small chapels that lead you to the place where, many believe, Jesus was crucified. You can’t actually see the rock of the mountain; it is beneath the building and under a large altar. So you stand in line and you wait for your chance to approach the place where the cross once stood. It is a quiet and somber place, and in fact one time Rachel and I were whispering to each other in the line and we got shushed by the woman in front of us. Probably rightly so. Because it’s not a place for mockers. It’s not a place for those who have no respect for what happened here. It is, instead, a place where you bow down, kneel under the altar and reach in to touch the stone. You can only approach this place on your knees. But here’s the other side of that: everyone is welcome to come if they come on their knees. What happened in that place opened the way so that all could come into the kingdom of God. The religious leaders gathered there on that day lived as if they were the gatekeepers; they tried to determine who was in and who was out. But the man on the middle cross said, “No more. You can pour all your scorn and hatred out on me, and I will take it. But you can no longer hurt my followers. I’ve taken it for them.” Jesus made it possible, in that place, for all to come, to be welcomed, to find a refuge. You only have to come on your knees. Let’s pray.