This sermon was preached at St Matthew's Lutheran Church, Maryborough, 5.30pm.
Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father,
and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)
Prayer: Dear Lord Jesus, bless all of us with your
Holy Spirit, to me that I may preach well, and to all of us that we may hear
well. Amen.
In Isaiah 50, we read the
following words: I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to
those who pull out the beard; I did not hide my face from disgrace and
spitting. In our sermon tonight, we think about particularly where
Jesus’ physical suffering turns particularly nasty in a way that we haven’t
seen yet in our readings so far. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus anticipated
this great suffering, and was so shaken by the thought of what was to come, he
sweated blood and an angel came to minister to him.
In our
reading tonight, we read about the scourging of Jesus, how the soldiers
gathered around him and clothed him with a purple robe, crowned him with
thorns, put a reed in his hand, mocked him by kneeling before him, spitting at
him, and striking and slapping him. And then after all this, Pilate brings him
out before the crowd, and present him to the them.
So let’s look
at the first part of our reading tonight:
I. The
scourging of Jesus.
In ancient
times, it was a common punishment to flog a criminal. Some countries in the
world today still use this as a punishment. Even in the Old Testament, there
was a law about it in the book of Deuteronomy: If the guilty man
deserves to be beaten, the judge shall cause him to lie down and be beaten in
his presence with a number of stripes in proportion to his offense. Forty
stripes may be given him, but not more, lest, if one should go on to beat him
with more stripes than these, your brother be degraded in your sight. We
even read in St Paul’s letter that he had received this punishment. He writes
in 2 Corinthians: Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the
forty lashes less one. It was common for the Jewish people to give 39
lashes, 40 minus one, just to make sure that the people were not given more
than forty.
But in Jesus’
case, it was something quite different. Notice in the book of Deuteronomy, God
set a limit to the number of lashes—the number 40. And there is a reason
given: Lest, if one should go on to beat him with more stripes than
these, your brother be degraded in your sight.
Jesus was not
flogged by the Jews, but by the Romans—in fact, he received a scourging,
as it called. A Roman scourging called for the prisoner to be naked. There was
no consideration of shame—there was no regard for whether the person would be
degraded. Also, the Romans would use a whip with pieces of metal or bone
embedded in the whip. The purpose was to make a mess of the person. Also, there
was no limit to the number as with the Jews.
This is what
Jesus underwent in our reading. Also, in John, it says that Pilate took
Jesus and flogged him. Pilate would have had someone employed to carry out
this scourging. Think about if we had had such a thing like this in our society
today—who would do it? Who in our country would agree to do this? Only the most
deranged low-life imaginable would be willing to do this. We could imagine
Pilate had got one of his most bloodthirsty soldiers, an “ex-prison guy”, in
other way, a madman to do this job.
This is the
kind of person that Jesus was in the hands of. And strangely enough, not much
is said about it in the Scripture. In John we read that Pilate took
Jesus and flogged him. Matthew and Mark simply say: And having
scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified. And yet this one
word: scourged, or flogged, indicates the fulfilment
of a wonderful prophecy from Isaiah. We read: Upon him was the
chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds [or with
his stripes] we are healed.
This event
teaches us about who we are. It brings us face to face with our sinful nature. Here
we see a man laid bare, like Adam and Eve in the garden. Before the fall, there
was no shame. But now, Jesus is stripped of his clothes—the purpose of this is
to shame him. And in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were clothed with skins.
Because of the sin, payment was required, and an animal, maybe a sheep or a
leopard or something, lost its life in order to cover them. But here, Jesus’
bare skin is not covered up, but it is removed from him, one stripe at a time.
And Jesus reveals to us his true humanity. When Jesus was on the mountain of
the Transfiguration, he showed a glimpse of his divinity: the light of his
divine nature shines through his face and his clothes and lightens up the
night. We learn here that God the Father is his true Father, and that Jesus is
his true Son. As John says: We have seen his glory, the glory as of the
only Son from the Father. However, that same skin which glowed with
all of God’s power and energy, is now stripped to reveal that he had a human
mother, Mary. And he shows to us, by submitting to this tremendous cruelty,
that he underneath his skin, like all members of the human race, we have blood
and flesh and bones.
The shame of
this whole event of Jesus’ scourging is our shame. The innocent Son of God is
stripped and tied in place, and subjected to a beefy pagan madman, and in his
hand with one of the nastiest known weapons know to the human race. Can we even
come to think that this is our human nature? This is our sin being punished.
But also,
Jesus does not want us simply to think about this because he wants to shame us:
no—he does this because he wants to cover over our sin, and forgive it. We
should think about this not about what other people did to Jesus, but what
Jesus himself accomplished and achieved. Psalm 32
says: Blessed is the man whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is
covered. Jesus’ nakedness and flesh is uncovered, you are covered by
him. St John writes in his first letter: The blood of Jesus cleanses us
from all sin. And in Isaiah, we read: Upon him was the
chastisement—not for nothing—but that brought us peace, and with
his wounds we are healed.
So often as a
pastor I have heard people say: If you knew what I had done,
you wouldn’t be so quick to speak about forgiveness. What I’ve done can’t be forgiven.
Yes—you’re right, I might not know what you’ve done. But I know what Jesus has
done. And if only these words about Jesus’ suffering and death for you would
hook into your mind and skin, your heart your flesh, just as that whip did to
Jesus! Hebrews says: The word of God is living and active,
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of
spirit, of joints and marrow. Let it pierce! Let it sink in. You are a
beloved, forgiven, child of God. By his wounds, with his stripes, you
have been healed.
We come to
the next part of our reading:
II. Jesus
receives a mock-coronation.
In Matthew’s
Gospel, we read: Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the
governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And
they stripped him and put scarlet robe on him. Mark calls it a purple
cloak.
When we hear
in our times about someone wearing a certain colour, we don’t often think very
much about it, though we do have some associations. We clothe baby boys in blue
and baby girls in blue. We are used to the police and the navy wearing blue,
the army wearing brown. Pastors often wear black and white. Brides wear white
at their weddings. We might look twice if someone wore a gold or silver suit or
a dress.
However, in
ancient times, purple was a very expensive colour to wear. Purple dye was made
from a particular type of sea-snail, and was hard to come by. Generally, it was
royalty then that wore purple. Even today, if you see an official photograph of
the Queen with her crown, she would often wear a purple robe. In the New
Testament, we read about the businesswoman Lydia who became a Christian. We
read: One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from the city of
Thyatira, a seller of purple goods, who was a worshipper of God. When
Jesus tells the story of Lazarus and the rich man, we read that the rich man
wore purple. This is to say that the man was dressing like a king, when he
wasn’t one. Being rich doesn’t make a person royalty. (This would be like if
wealthy people like Clive Palmer or Rupert Murdoch started to wear gold
crowns!)
Here in our
reading, Jesus is clothed in purple. This is a mock coronation. He is given a
royal, purple robe, not because they recognise him as a king, but because they are
mocking him.
Once again,
if we go back to Genesis, we read that God said: Be fruitful and
multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of
the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that
moves on the earth. God says to his human creatures: have
dominion. In order words: live like kings and queens and royalty,
ruling the world together with me. But Adam and Eve exchange this royal dignity
of having dominion for being the devil’s slaves. They weren’t satisfied with
the dignity they had already received from God, and the devil tempted them by
saying: You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat it you
will be like God! And yet the promise is false.
Now, Jesus,
the true King of glory, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, is treated
like a pretend king, and is clothed with a purple robe.
The next part
of the coronation ceremony is where we read: and twisting together a
crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand.
This is a
mock version of a real crown, and a real sceptre, usually made out of gold,
which were symbols of a king’s authority.
In Genesis we
read: When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant
of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on
the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from
the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—then the LORD God formed
the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life, and the man became a living creature.
Can you
imagine this picture of a perfect serene created world, with a gentle mist
watering everything? But then after the fall into sin, we read where God says
to Adam: Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have
eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, “You shall not eat of it,” cursed
is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your
life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. Here in our
reading tonight we see these thorns and thistles return. The thorns are twisted
into a terrible crown, and a thistle, or a reed, is put into Jesus hand as a
sceptre. The very things which were God’s judgment upon Adam, Jesus now takes
upon himself as he takes that same judgement upon himself.
In Psalm 110,
we read the wonderful words: The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right
hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” The LORD sends forth from Zion
your mighty sceptre. Rule in the midst of your enemies!
Here in the
city of Jerusalem, from Zion, the LORD sends forth his mighty sceptre. Jesus
receives a sceptre in his hand—but not a gold one, but an old stick. And yet
the words are true: Rule in the midst of your enemies! Jesus
is here surrounded by his enemies, and yet he is not being ruled, but he is
ruling. We read in Matthew that the soldiers took the reed and struck
him on the head. Jesus knows what he is doing—he is suffering all of
this to make atonement for the sin of the world.
The next part
of the mock coronation happened like this. We read: And kneeling before
him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Mark says,
they saluted him. Remember here that when Jesus was arrested
in the Garden of Gethsemane, we read: Then Jesus, knowing all that
would happen to him, came forward and said to them, “Whom do you seek?” They
answered him, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus said to them, “I am he”. [In
Greek, the word are simply I AM, just as when he said to Moses, I AM, when he
spoke from the burning bush.] It says: When Jesus said to them, “I AM”,
they drew back and fell to the ground.
Do you see
here that the immense power of Jesus’ words, and the use of the words, “I AM”,
forces the people to the ground—the power is so great, so intense, and so
immense. And the same here: when these soldiers are in the presence of Jesus,
they can do nothing but kneel and hail and salute him. They do it out of
mockery, but we know their actions speak true. This is the very thing that we
should also desire when are face to face with Jesus: to kneel before him, to
hail him, and to salute him as our king. But not in mockery, and God cannot be
mocked. When King David was anointed as a king, God said to Samuel: The
LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD
looks on the heart.
We also read
in Philippians: At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven
and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Here we see
in this mock coronation ceremony, that the soldiers also kneel before God and
confess Jesus as king of the Jews. We can see their outward appearance, but God
sees the heart.
What also is
part of a coronation ceremony? Well—normally if a king or queen is crowned,
there would be a great cheer from the crowd. But what do we read? And
they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. We see
here a fulfilment of the prophecy from Isaiah: I gave my back to those
who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face
from disgrace and spitting.
God would
know what these men ate, what they had for breakfast. God would know when they
had last brushed their teeth, and he would have seen the gingivitis and the
phlegm. In his suffering, Jesus received the filth and the dirt of human spit
upon his face. By contrast, after Jesus had risen from the dead, and had
destroyed death and conquered death, and had no sign or scrap of death anywhere
around him, we read that he breathed on his disciples and said: Receive
the Holy Spirit. This breath would have been even fresher than that
cool gentle mist over the Garden of Eden. That mist was created by God, but
Jesus was God himself.
Just to
finish our sermon tonight, we should also remember that at Jesus’ ascension, we
see the other side of what happened in our reading tonight. Tonight we read
about his mock coronation, but at the ascension we read about his entrance into
heaven, where he sits down at the right hand of the throne of God. Instead of
the sound of mockery, we read in Psalm 47: God has gone up with a
shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet. In stead of the laughing,
the jeering, the fake saluting, we read in the same Psalm: Sing praises
to God, sing praises! Sing praises to our King, sing praises! For God is the
King of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm! God reigns over the nations;
God sits on his holy throne!
Let’s bow the
knee before our Saviour and Redeemer and our Sacrificial Lamb, who, as Isaiah
said, was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for
our inquities. Let’s receive him as our Saviour and our king and our Lord,
and worship him in spirit and in truth. Let our hearts and our
lips speak together, and not in conflict with each other, as Jesus says to the
Pharisees: The people honours me with their lips, but their heart is
far from me.
The famous
hymn says:
O sacred
head, now wounded / With pain and scorn weighed down / In mockery surrounded /
With thorns Thine only crown. / O sacred head, what glory / What bliss, till
now, was Thine! / Yet, though despised and gory, / I joy to call Thee mine.
Lamb of God,
you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us! Amen.
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