Mark 15:33-39
The Death of Jesus
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!”
It is jarring to think of Jesus on the cross. It is hard to think of a harsher image for the Son of Man, the Savior of the world, God’s own Son, than seeing him suffer an agonizing death of pain and humiliation. And yet, that is the face we are gazing into tonight. This is the voice we hear crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
We would rather think of Jesus as victor, all-powerful, ruler, seated on a throne of glory and honor, with all things under his feet. And of course, Jesus is all these things and more. And of course, we know that Easter is coming, and that death is defeated. But tonight, tonight we pause, and we see what the cost of all this is, and how, somehow, it is in weakness, not strength, that salvation comes.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian and pastor, who was arrested by the Nazis for his role in a plot to overthrow Hitler. He was executed by the gestapo in April of 1945, just as World War Two was ending, and literally hours before the Soviet army moved into the area where he was imprisoned. In the summer of 1944, from prison, he wrote this poem, entitled, “Christians and Heathens.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Letters and Papers from Prison. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2015. Page 449)
People go to God when they’re in need, plead for help, pray for blessing and bread, for rescue from their sickness, guilt, and death. So do they all, all of them, Christians and heathens.
2. People go to God when God’s in need, find God poor, reviled, without shelter or bread, see God devoured by sin, weakness, and death. Christians stand by God in God’s own pain.
3. God goes to all people in their need, fills body and soul with God’s own bread, goes for Christians and heathens to Calvary’s death and forgives them both.
People do indeed go to God when they are in need. Throughout the Bible, there is story after story of how people go to God when they are in need; the blind and leper go to Jesus for healing, the disciples cry out in the midst of a storm on the Sea of Galilee, fathers come to Jesus to heal their children who are close to death, Mary and Martha send word to him when their brother Lazarus is ill.
It is also true that God goes to the people when they are in need: God comes to the Israelites enslaved in Egypt, frees them and brings them to the Promised Land. People came to Jesus to hear him, but then Jesus feeds them loaves and fishes when they are hungry. And Jesus does come to Lazarus, and raises him from the dead.
Right now, there is a lot of need, there is great need for praying to God to bring healing and saving as we go through this time of Covid-19, of worry, of fear, for rescue. And, dear children of God, we have faith, we trust, we believe that God is with us in the midst of all this, that God, in Jesus is a healing, protecting and saving God.
But what about this second stanza of Bonhoeffer’s poem?
"People go to God when God’s in need, find God poor, reviled, without shelter or bread, see God devoured by sin, weakness, and death. Christians stand by God in God’s own pain."
Have you ever paused to think if God could be in need? Have you ever considered God to be poor, homeless, hungry, weak, dying? Hard images to be sure, but just as sure are the images we have of Jesus who is all this.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 25 of how he is, not just with those who are hungry and thirsty, in prison, naked, and ill; HE IS hungry, thirsty, imprisoned, naked, ill.
In John, when Jesus sees where they had buried Lazarus, and when he saw everyone wailing and grieving his death, Jesus himself weeps. Jesus grieves, God grieves just as we all do.
And tonight, we are right there with the other faces at the cross; with Pilate, with the bandits, with Simon of Cyrene, with Mary and Mary and Salome, watching, standing, as Jesus cries out, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”
When Jesus dies, we are told that the curtain in the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
When Jesus was baptized, we were told that the heavens were torn apart. Nothing, at Jesus’ baptism, was left to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ. At Jesus’ baptism, God was and is all in for us. And tonight, as we hear of how the temple curtain is torn in two, we are told that in Jesus’ death, God is still all in with us and all creation. That this death is a death for all.
And as Bonhoeffer tells us: God goes to all people in their need, fills body and soul with God’s own bread, goes for Christians and heathens to Calvary’s death and forgives them both.