Calvary Lutheran Church

We Were There

O Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world have mercy upon us and grant us your peace. Amen.

Matthew 27:45-46

“From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ –which means, ‘My God my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

My dear Good Friday worshipers:

Have you ever watched someone die? I mean actually be there at the moment of death. It doesn’t happen very often in a person’s life, if ever. Even in my years of ministry it has happened to me only once. But it was an experience I will never forgeI got the phone call at about 3:00 a.m. A member was dying, and would I come right over. So I drove to St. Mary’s Hospital, walked into the room where the family was gathered around the bed of an elderly man. He was unconscious and hardly breathing. You couldn’t tell he was even alive except for the blips on the heart monitor above his head.

After the usual introductions, I told the family that even though he may not be able to hear us, we will have a short devotion. And we did. I had some Scripture readings, said a short prayer, and then concluded with the 23^rd Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.” But when I got to the part, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me,” at that exact moment the heart monitor when flat. For all practical purposes he had died at that moment.

Well, I finished the psalm and ended with a blessing. But when I was through, we all looked at each other and said, “Did you see that! He died when I spoke the words, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” We couldn’t believe it. What comfort that brought to the family. What a meaningful experience that was for me. That was my one and only experience of actually being present at the moment of death, and it was an unforgettable one—except for one other time when I was also present and, I might add, you were too.

It was a death situation that was very different from the one I just described. In this case it was a younger man, in his early thirty’s rather than an older gentleman. And he was fully conscious right up to the very end and communicated with others and with God. He wasn’t lying in a soft hospital bed, but on a bed of hard wood with his body attached by nails. It wasn’t in the middle of the night, the middle of the day, although it seemed like the middle of the night because of a supernatural darkness. He wasn’t surrounded by family and friends, rather, mostly by enemies. And his death was not something that was barely noticed, but things happened that caused everyone for miles around to notice—the earth shock, rocks split, certain bodies rose from the dead, and a curtain was torn in the temple.

You see, this wasn’t just an ordinary death that occurs hundreds of thousands of time every day. This was the death of God himself. And for that reason we can all say.

“WE WERE THERE!”

But how can that be? This happened 2,000 years ago, long before our lifetime. Ah, but wait a minute. Prophets of the Old Testament also talked about being present at Jesus’ suffering and death as well, even though it wouldn’t occur until long after their life time.

For example, the prophet Isaiah wrote 700 years before Christ, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering . . . He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as sheep before her shearers is silent so he did not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53:3,7). Here Isaiah is referring to the Messiah, the Christ, but he says, “He was despised and rejected, he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,” past tense. Technically, Isaiah should have said, “He will be despised and rejected. . . . He will be led like a lamb”—the future tense.

But Isaiah speaks of it as if it had already happened in his lifetime, and that he was there, and not only he, but all his readers as well. For he goes on “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows . . . He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; . . . the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4-6).

“We were there,” Isaiah was saying, because our iniquity, that is, our sin, was there, and you can’t separate the two. You cannot separate sin from the sinner. God doesn’t just condemn sin, he condemns the sinner. God doesn’t just punish sin to hell, he punishes the sinner to hell. Sin is a part of our very nature. Just as we are born with 10 fingers and 10 toes, well, most of us, so also we are born with sin. And that is why God saw to it that you and I were there at the death of Jesus, so that the Lord God could lay on him the iniquity of us all.

As each drop of blood trickled from his body, as darkness covered the land, and Jesus’ agony seemed to reach its peak, our load of sin became lighter and lighter. Our guilt over sin became less and less. The fear we had of God’s punishment began to diminish more and more, until they were completely gone when Jesus spoke those final words, “It is finished."

All of a sudden we were at peace with God. It is was as though someone had set us free. What has happened to us? Paul explains it in his letter to the Romans, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body of sin might be done away” (Romans 6:6,7). You see, Paul knew that he was there too. Our old sinful nature was nailed to the cross with Jesus, and we were given something we never had before—forgiveness. Forgiveness is not a part of our very nature. We weren’t born with forgiveness. We cannot obtain forgiveness on our own. But forgiveness is something that only God gave to us when we were there at Calvary, at the moment of Jesus’ death.

In forgiveness God himself declares us righteous and holy for Jesus’ sake even when we know we are not. It is as though we have stepped into a courtroom. It is an open and shut case. We are obviously guilty, easily condemned. But instead of being sentenced and punished, we are declared by the judge not guilty, righteous and holy. We walk out of the courtroom a free man or woman.

Yes, when Christ was crucified, our sins were crucified with him. When Christ died on that cross, our sins died with him. And when Christ was buried, our sins were buried with him. Our baptism reminds us of that, Paul wrote, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death” (Romans 6:4). What a dramatic change that took place for us there at Calvary! Because with sin removed, it left a huge void in us. A void which was immediately fill as Paul continued, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer life, but Christ lives in.” Christ has now filled the void. And with Christ in me I am a new person, a new man, who is able to live the life God intended for me. Paul wrote, “Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:4).

So not only were we crucified with Christ, not only did we die with Christ, not only were we buried with Christ, but we then also rose with Christ, Our old life of willful sinning is gone. A new life has arisen in which we delight in God’s law. We have a whole new attitude that wants to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Yes, Isaiah knew it, Paul knew it, and now we know it too. Yes, we were there on Calvary. In fact, we can say that the whole world was there. All the people of the world—past, present and future—gathered together on that Good Friday in history where their sins too were crucified, died, and buried with Christ. And yes, they too, whether they know it or not, rose with Christ to be justified, declared not guilty, by God himself. Paul wrote, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19).

There was only one who was not there at Calvary, at least temporarily. And that was God the Father himself. For three hours, those three hours of darkness, the presence of God the Father was removed from his own Son, so that he cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Was Jesus just imagining that God had forsaken him? You know how sometimes when things aren’t going well or we are facing some kind of trouble or tragedy, we feel too that God has forsaken us. But that can never be the case for us. God is an ever present help in time of need. But not in Jesus’ case, he was forsaken. Because remember, Jesus was suffering hell for us on that cross. And the worst agony of hell is not the weeping or the pain or the grinding of teeth, but it is the absence of God’s presence. And that is what Jesus went through on the cross for us, he went through our hell.

So we can thank Jesus for taking us with him to the cross on that first Good Friday, so-called “good” because it was good for us to be there.

The old African-American spiritual from the19th Century that asks three questions, “Where you there when they crucified my Lord?” “Where you there when they nailed him to the tree?” “Where you there when they laid him in the tomb?” The hymn doesn’t answer that question, but we know the answer. Yes, we were there. Our sins were there nailed to the cross. Our forgiveness was there as God declared us not guilty. Our new life in Christ began there. And it is an experience we will never forget.

May we pray:

Dear crucified Lord, thank you for Good Friday. Thank you for going to the cross willingly. Thank you for your suffering, your pain, your agony, your dying, your burial. But thank you especially for seeing to it that we were there with you. Because of your great sacrifice, our sin was paid for, our hell was endured. We are forgiven, we are declared holy for your name’s sake.  O Savior, give us now a new life that delights to live according to your will. In your name we pray. Amen.