Please look at your bulletin, on the back page, for the words of our opening hymn for this morning, All Glory, Laud, and Honor.  The first verse declares,

All glory, laud, and honor to thee, Redeemer, King!
to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.
Thou art the King of Israel, thou David’s royal Son,
who in the Lord’s name comest, the King and Blessed One.

Now, please pick up a hymnal and open it to hymn # 89, our concluding hymn for this morning, Hosanna, Loud Hosanna.  That hymn declares,

Hosanna, loud hosanna, the little children sang.
Through pillared court and temple the joyful anthem rang.
To Jesus, who had blessed them, close-folded to his breast,
the children sang their praises, the simplest and the best.

With the “glory, laud, and honor” of our opening hymn and the “hosanna, loud hosanna” of our concluding hymn you and I are celebrating Palm Sunday.  We are joining in with the men, women, and children who were there 2,000 years ago to watch Jesus come down the path from the Mount of Olives and enter Jerusalem.  We read earlier, in the Proclamation of the Entrance Into Jerusalem, from the Gospel of Luke, that as Jesus rode along, “people kept spreading their cloaks on the road,” and “the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!’”  That is what took place at the beginning of the week.  To learn what happened at the end, please turn to hymn #95.

They crucified my Lord, and he never said a mumbalin’ word;
They crucified my Lord, and he never said a mumbalin’ word.
Not a word, not a word, not a word.

This hymn recalls for us not only the crucifixion that Jesus would undergo, but also the silence that he would maintain.  People began remarking upon this silence in the earliest days of the church.  The book of Acts tells us about a day when the apostle Philip overheard an official from the Ethiopian court reading scripture.  The man was reading a passage from the prophet Isaiah that said, “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth,” and the man asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask, does the prophet say this?”  Philip responded by telling the man “the good news about Jesus.”[i]

The full quote from Isaiah, as it has come down to us, reads, “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”[ii]  The earliest Christians heard within this passage an accurate description of the way Jesus responded to his arrest, trial, and crucifixion.  It was not that Jesus was, literally, silent, because all of the gospel writers have recorded comments that Jesus made.  The writer of Mark tells us that when the crowd came out to Gethsemane to arrest Jesus, Jesus said, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit?  Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me.  But let the scriptures be fulfilled.”[iii]  The author also tells us that when the high priest asked Jesus, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” Jesus said, “I am.”  Later, when the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, asked Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews,” Jesus answered him, “You say so.”[iv]  Beyond these comments, though, Jesus had nothing to say.  Jesus had nothing to say to defend himself from the many false accusations people were making against him, nothing to say to change the course of events, nothing to say to change the road that he was on — a road that clearly was leading to a cross.  Jesus had nothing to say in his own defense, and we read that even Pontius Pilate — the military governor put in place by Rome — even Pontius Pilate “was amazed.”

Jesus continued his silence as the Roman soldiers clothed him in a purple cloak and shoved a crown made of thorns down upon his head.  He remained silent as they struck him, spat upon him, then led him out to crucify him.  Jesus was still silent as they brought him to the place called Golgotha, and he refused to accept the drink they offered him — wine mixed with myrrh — which would have served as a narcotic for his pain.  Jesus was silent even as they nailed him to a cross and hoisted it up into place.  They crucified my Lord, and he never said a mumbalin’ word.  They crucified my Lord, and he never said a mumbalin’ word.  Not a word, not a word, not a word.  Our Scripture Lesson:

It was the third hour when they crucified him.  The inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.”  And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left.  Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha!  You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!”  In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself.  Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.”  Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.  When it was the sixth hour, darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour.  And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  When some of the bystanders heard it, they said, “Listen, he is calling for Elijah.”  And someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.”  Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.  And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.  Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.  He descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

That is the ancient affirmation of faith known as the Apostles’ Creed, and theologian Paul Tillich was right when he said that many of us are so accustomed to reciting it and knowing that “the third day he rose again from the dead,” that we barely notice where it says “suffered . . . was crucified, dead, and buried,” and perhaps even omit “He descended into hell.”  You and I already know, when we say “suffered” that soon we will be saying “rose again,” and then will get to the part where Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.[v]  In this and other ways, all too often you and I make the leap from palm branches to Easter lilies without stopping at the cross.  One of the ways we fail to stop and ponder the cross is by denying what Jesus endured.  That comment is not a reference to the physical pain that Jesus underwent in his torture and crucifixion.  The gospel writers do not direct our attention to the physical pain of Jesus’ death, and a tragic fact of human life is that thousands upon thousands of people have undergone worse physical torture and a physically more excruciating death than Jesus did that day.  The most profound misery Jesus endured was not physical, and to begin to comprehend what it did entail, we need to go back to the beginning of the story.

The beginning of the story, for the Gospel of Mark, was when “Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.  And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’  And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.  He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”[vi]  We want to be sure we recognize the various elements of these events.  As soon as John baptized Jesus, the heavens were torn apart.  Next, a voice from heaven declared, “You are my Son.”  Third, the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness, where he was tempted by Satan.  A tearing apart.  A declaration that Jesus is God’s son.  Temptation.  Those were the elements present at the beginning of Jesus’ public life.  At the end of it, those same elements appear again.

The final episode in Jesus’ life on earth began with temptation.  We saw Jesus begin to deal with that temptation this past Sunday, when he was at the place called Gethsemane.  Just as at the beginning of his public life, when he was out in the wilderness being tempted by Satan, Jesus was on his own.  He had asked Peter, James, and John to stay awake and keep watch, but they did not.  And so, alone, Jesus threw himself onto the ground and prayed, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible.  Remove this cup from me.”  Then, Jesus overcame the temptation to avoid what would happen on the cross, telling God, “Yet, not what I want, but what you want.”  We see Jesus continuing to deal with temptation in our Second Lesson for today, as passersby mock and taunt him, shouting, “Save yourself!  . . . Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.”  Back at the beginning of his public life, when Jesus was out in the wilderness, Satan had tempted him to exert his power and thereby demonstrate that he was the Son of God.  Now, the crowd gathered around the cross was telling Jesus that a sure way of convincing them that he truly was the Son of God would be to use his power to take himself off the cross.  This final temptation for Jesus was the temptation to break his silence and respond to his tormentors, to use his power to prevent his own suffering — with the seductive promise that if he did, then they would believe.  But, They crucified my Lord, and he never said a mumbalin’ word.  They crucified my Lord, and he never said a mumbalin’ word.  Not a word, not a word, not a word.

In the end, Jesus did break his silence.  Not in response to his tormentors, not to prevent his own suffering, and not to prove who he was.  Jesus finally broke his silence to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  That is the question from Jesus that we have for today, but it is not a question addressed to us, or to anyone who was there to witness Jesus’ death.  It is a question Jesus posed to his Father, God.  “Why have you forsaken me?”  Other men and women had asked God that question — you will find this exact wording in Psalm 22 — but never before had that question had the same meaning.  This was the only time in history when the person asking the question was the Son of God.  The other people who had asked this question had not enjoyed the same relationship, the same intimacy with God that Jesus did.  For every other man and woman who had asked this question, there had been a distance, a separation between them and God that kept their communion from being complete.  Not so for Jesus and God.  Their relationship had been perfect and complete — until now.  Like all human beings, Jesus was subject to fear and agony and dread, but until this day he had always been able to go to God and feel God’s certain presence, to know God's unqualified support.  Until today.  Until this moment on the cross.  Now, Jesus experienced the tortures of the damned.  Jesus knew what it was to be completely separated from God, to be truly forsaken by God.  Jesus had known this was coming.  Jesus had known, back there at Gethsemane, that this hell is what awaited him on the cross, and that is why he had begged God to “remove this cup from me.”  But, ultimately, Jesus was obedient to God, and his separation from his Father became perfect and complete.  “Then,” we read, “Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.”

A loud cry.  Not what we would expect from a man dying of asphyxiation.  Jesus’ final sound was not a moan of defeat, but a cry of victory from someone who knows he has conquered death.[vii]  And at the moment Jesus voiced that cry, the great curtain within the temple was torn in two.  This was the curtain that had prevented everyone except the high priest from entering the Holy of Holies, the place that God was thought to reside.  Now, that curtain was torn away, recalling the moment at the beginning of Jesus’ public life, when the heavens themselves were torn apart.  The moment when everyone present was able to hear a voice from heaven declare, “You are my Son, the Beloved.”  With the tearing apart of the temple curtain, there were no more barriers.  From this time onward, all people would have access to God.  And, on this day, it was a Roman soldier who was heard to declare that Jesus was the Son of God.

All of those bystanders who had yelled, “Save yourself!” — they had told Jesus that if he could get himself off the cross, then they would believe.  Instead, Jesus stayed on the cross and endured abandonment by God, and that led the Roman soldier to believe.[viii]  May it lead all of us to know and believe, as well, that “Truly this man was God’s son!”  Amen.

 

 

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