AU United Methodist Community

Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
April 14, 2006, Good Friday
Isaiah 52:13-53:12: Mark 15:25-41

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
See, my servant shall prosper;
he shall be exalted and lifted up,
and shall be very high.
Just as there were many who were astonished at him
—so marred was his appearance, beyond human semblance,
and his form beyond that of mortals—
so he shall startle many nations;
kings shall shut their mouths because of him;
for that which had not been told them they shall see,
and that which they had not heard they shall contemplate.
Who has believed what we have heard?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.
Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
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.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked
and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.
When you make his life an offering for sin,
he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days;
through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.
Out of his anguish he shall see light;
he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge.
The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out himself to death,
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

Mark 15: 25-41
It was nine o’clock in the morning 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 noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock 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!’

There were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.

I. BEGINNING

Of all the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion, Mark’s version presents perhaps the starkest account. There is no earthquake upon his death, as there is in Matthew. There is no penitent thief with promises of paradise, as there is in Luke. Nor is there any triumphal statement “Into your hands I commend my spirit” or “It is finished” as found in Luke and John. There is no account of his mother and the beloved disciple standing at the foot of the cross, adopting one another as mother and son at the words of Jesus, as there is in John.

Instead, we find a Jesus who is surrounded on both sides by criminals who taunt him. A Jesus who has no words from the cross by “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” A Jesus left utterly alone on the cross, with not one of The Twelve in sight, and only the women “looking on from a distance.”

II. LOOKING ON FROM A DISTANCE

Looking on from a distance…

It is at times like this that it seems very much that not only are the women looking on from a distance but that God is, too. Jesus’ words betray real anguish: My God, why have you forsaken me? Echoes of Psalm 22, which continues Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
Jesus is not play-acting. He is not crying out for the sake of good form. As one theologian has noted: “On the cross the Father and the Son are so widely separated that the direct relationship between them breaks off. Jesus dies a ‘Godless death.’”

How often we feel that way, that God is looking on from a distance…

We look around at the world…

Elie Wiesel’s book Night describes the hanging of a young boy in one of the concentration camps. Because the child does not weigh much, he takes a long time to die, and suffers as others watch in horror. And someone ask, “Where is God? Where is he? Where is God now?” And Wiesel says that he heard a voice answering, “Where is he? Here he is; he is hanging here on this gallows.”

Perhaps the speaker meant to say that God was dead. Perhaps it was a cynical statement about God’s absence and presumed death. But perhaps it speaks to a deeper truth.

Moltmann goes on to say that even though Father and Son are widely separated: “…yet on the cross the Father and the Son are so much at one that they present a single surrendering movement.”

That is, even as Jesus cries out for God from the cross, God is on the cross. In the suffering of the Son of God, God undergoes the suffering of humanity. There is no brokenness, no pain, no sorrow, no suffering, no death, that God has not experienced through the cross.

What wondrous love is this that God should seek our reconciliation so much that God would share in our suffering through the humiliation of the cross. God declares through the cross solidarity with all those who suffer, who are the victims of injustice, and ultimately with all the dead.

III. END

God does not look on ‘from a distance’. Though there are times when we, like Jesus, cry out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” God is with us in the suffering.

We do not always have answers for why suffering occurs. The cross reminds us that in all our crosses, in all our pain, even in our death, God is there. God is with us. Immanuel. God is with us in the struggle, in the suffering. In solidarity with us, comforting us, and leading us onward from the brokenness of the cross to the glory of the empty tomb.