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Title: Jesus Approaches Golgotha
As a minister, Easter and Christmas can be two of the hardest sermons to write each year…for several reasons: Can anyone guess why?
- Everyone knows the accounts of Jesus’s birth and resurrection.
- We hear what seems like the same sermon preached every year.
- On these two holidays there are a lot of visitors in our church and you don’t want to “scare them off” with some crazy non-traditional message. (Although I will note that Jay and Koren visited our church for the first time on easter about 10 years ago and they are still here…I don’t know if that says more about us or them.)
- There are two schools of thought (both within most congregations, and within ME as well)
- “Just give me that good old Easter Message, Jesus ROSE, hallelujah! (Now let’s get to Shoney’s before the buffet is picked clean…)
- Pastor, Give me something NEW, something I HAVEN’T heard before about these stories…challenge me!
And, most of you already know this, but my nature is to attempt to rise to the challenge of that second argument
I may be wrong, and I don’t’ want to be overly presumptive this morning, but most of us have a good understanding of the process of Jesus’s crucifixion and subsequent resurrection. All four gospels cover the event in great detail.
Therefore, what I’d like to do this morning is a bit different. At Heritage, we preach through books of the Bible, chapter by chapter, verse by verse. And we take our time. We started the Gospel of Matthew SEVEN years ago, in May of 2010. And, it just so happens, that we are now in chapter 27, covering the crucifixion of Christ.
So what I’d like to try to do, rather than take a “break” from where we are in Matthew and move ahead just a tiny bit to the resurrection, is to focus on Jesus actually going to the cross, look deeply at some details and their meaning, so that we might have more appreciation for what we are actually celebrating when we recognize the resurrection.
Who was Simon?
In reality, we know very little of the man who bears Jesus’s cross. Mark’s gospel gives a little more information, but not much:
Mark 15:21 Then they compelled a certain man, Simon a Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming out of the country and passing by, to bear His cross.
Simon of Cyrene is mentioned in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Matthew only records his name and place of origin (27:32), but Mark and Luke say that he was “on his way in from the country” (Luke 23:26).
Mark, uncharacteristically, provides the most information about Simon, adding that he was “the father of Alexander and Rufus” (Mark 15:21), men obviously well known to Mark’s readers.
It is speculated that the Rufus mentioned here may be the same man Paul greets in his letter to Rome, whom he calls “chosen in the Lord” and whose mother “has been a mother to me, too” (Romans 16:13). Paul’s knowledge of Rufus’s family indicates that at some point they lived further east.
I think the best question here for our understanding is not necessarily WHO was Simon of Cyrene, but rather:
Why did someone need to bear the cross of Jesus? (take answers)
Remember a couple weeks ago when we talked about the scourging that Jesus suffered. The whip with several tail ends that bits of bone sewn into it? We noted that many people did not even survive the scourging to get to the cross.
(And again, for those of you who have seen the film “The Passion of the Christ” the scene where Jesus is scourged is particularly brutal to watch.)
Well at this point, Jesus is barely able to walk, to bear his own weight, let alone carry a cross up a hill, so the necessity for someone to bear the cross for him was there.
Some teachers have tried to make much of Simon “The Helper of Jesus” almost turning him into a mythical figure…but I tend to resist that line of thinking. If Simon was a great importance to us, scripture would have given us more information about him and his cause. I think the message here is much more about the fact that Jesus was so physically beaten at this point that there was no way he was going to be able to carry the cross up the hill to Golgotha. And there was no way a Roman soldier was going to do it for him, so they found a Jew, visiting Jerusalem from his home country for the Passover feast, and made this scene even more of a mockery.
“Look, the KING OF THE JEWS has a servant bearing his cross!”
What was “Golgotha” The Place of a Skull?
In Luke 23:33 of the King James Version, the word Calvary is used in reference to the same location. In modern translations, the more literal term “the place that is called The Skull” (ESV) is generally used. The word Calvary is derived from the Latin phrase for this location, Calvariae Locus. Counting this reference, all four Gospels make specific reference to this particular hill as the place of Jesus’ death.
According to early church fathers, the location was called “The Place of the Skull” due to the shape of the hill that apparently reminded people of a human skull.
What’s the story with the Wine, and why did Jesus refuse it?
There are main two schools of thought on this question, I will share both with you, and then I will do you the courtesy of telling you which of these two ideas I tend to side with.
Option One: “Gall” is a general term for bitter herbs. Mark’s gospel specifically mentions “myrrh”. Scholars over the years have noted that myrrh mixed with wine is a painkiller. So the first theory is that the “they” in verse 34 refers to the disciples who were trying to help Jesus dull the pain, and Jesus refuses it because he doesn’t want to “cheat” in his suffering. (For any fellow film nerds in the audience today is a similar scene at the end of the film “Braveheart” where William Wallace is about to be executed and also refuses to take a painkiller to dull the experience.)
Option Two: This is not an act of compassion but rather one of mockery. The “they” in verse 34 is not the disciples, but rather the mocking Roman soldiers who know how dehydrated and miserable Jesus is at that very moment, so they offer what looks to be a refreshing drink, only for Jesus to sip it, and discover it’s immensely bitter taste, making it undrinkable.
Now I tend to side with the second option, and I want to show you why. We have been in Matthew for quite some time and something that becomes very clear when reading Matthew is that it is written by a Jew, for a Jewish audience.
Matthew is including as much O.T. scriptural reference as he can in an effort to demonstrate how Jesus of Nazareth MUST have been the Jewish Messiah. In that vain, consider what we see prophesied in
Psalm 69:19-21
You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor;
My adversaries are all before You.
Reproach has broken my heart,
And I am full of heaviness;
I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none;
And for comforters, but I found none.
They also gave me gall for my food,
And for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
Close:
Now it is Easter, and what we are recognizing today is that we serve a RISEN savior. Despite what was done to him, he endured. He endured the cross for the sake of a people who did not recognize him as their king.
He did this fulfill the promise of the bath of human redemption that God declares way back in Genesis chapter 3.
He does this so that we might have eternal life through the sacrifice of Jesus’s blood.
And so I want to close with a question: How do you show appreciation? (How does the giver KNOW the gift is celebrated?)
My answer: Celebration.
(Video of Silas with “Steep”)