I have a terrible confession to make. Ever since I started in the ministry, I have found Easter Sunday to be the most difficult time to deliver a sermon. The main reason is this: I am convinced that Easter can truly happen only to those who have first gone through and faced the tragedy, degradation, hopelessness, and suffering of Good Friday. This year instead of preaching a nice little Easter sermon which is 99% cotton candy and 1% gospel, I have decided to try the unthinkable—to bring us to Easter morning only after looking long and hard at a crucified peasant named Jesus Bar Joseph. Now what I will say this morning is not all that can be said about the resurrection of Jesus. Indeed, it is not even all that I would say. But I believe it is something that needs saying and hearing.
I grew up hearing that black spiritual “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” The older I become, the more that spiritual speaks to me. Sometimes it causes me to tremble to think of what happened to this just and compassionate man. Let us refresh our memory on the horror of what happened.
Crucifixion was the most degrading and dehumanizing form of execution within the Roman Empire and was reserved for two groups: slaves and rebels. (One reading the Gospels may question this statement since we are told that Jesus was crucified between two thieves. But the word translated “thieves” in many versions of the Bible means what we would call today guerilla warriors who in addition to violent rebellion also stole to survive in their hideouts.) Crucifixion was the manner of execution chosen by the Romans because it prolonged the torture and agony of the victims in a most savage way. The aim was to inflict the most pain over the longest period of time. Each Roman legion had a detachment skilled in torture and execution, and these “experts” in inflicting pain were very skilled in their job. And because crucifixions were public events, the indignity and suffering witnessed by passers-by were to serve as deterrents to revolt. Rome was saying to all of its subjects, “Don’t even think about rebelling against Caesar. If you rebel, this will be your fate.” Usually the body of the one crucified was left on the cross as a rotting corpse for the vultures and wild animals to devour so that even the courtesy of a burial was denied.
The Gospel accounts of what happened to Jesus the night of his arrest and the day of execution are filled with theological interpretations and affirmations of the later church. But when we get to the actual execution, the words are sparse. All four Gospels simply say, “They crucified him.” That was enough information for the ancient world, for most people had witnessed crucifixions. Nothing needed to be said beyond those stark words. But for those for whom the cross has become a mere symbol if not a holy trinket, the horror of the cross is overlooked.
Throughout his ordeal, Jesus suffered the vulnerability of a peasant with no rights whatsoever. He was a peregrinus, the term used by the Romans for non-Roman citizens who could be tortured or killed without any chance of appeal or any right to a fair hearing. Such people were totally at the mercy of the Roman officials.
From what scholars know of crucifixion, this is what we can say with a high degree of certainty. Jesus was arrested and manhandled by temple police and Roman soldiers, some of whom perhaps couldn’t even speak his language. Many of the Roman soldiers had no doubt lost colleagues and friends who had died at the hands of Jewish rebels. Jesus was condemned as a rebel. On the top of the cross was a sign which read, “The King of the Jews” indicating that Rome saw Jesus as a royal pretender to the throne held by the Herodian family and ultimately by Caesar. We can only imagine the animosity and hatred the soldiers assigned the task of executing Jesus had for this “rebel.” They would have assumed he was a violent guerilla warrior possibly responsible for the deaths of some of their colleagues as well as a potential threat to their own lives if he were set free. They no doubt took sadistic pleasure as they inflicted horrible pain on “the Prince of Peace.” Among other tortures, they placed a helmet made from a thorn bush on his head forcing the thorns, several inches in length, to pierce his skull and forehead.
Among the indignities and torture Jesus had to endure was a scourging. The word used for “scourging” refers to a particular type of beating. The whip used for this beating was made of leather strips on the end of which were embedded pieces of metal shaped like tiny barbells. As the whip struck the victim it literally tore the flesh from the body. It would not take many strokes to tear through skin and muscle and even reach organs and bone. Many people who suffered this kind of beating died or, if they survived, never recovered physically, mentally or emotionally. If the Shroud of Turin is the authentic shroud of Jesus, we know that he received at least 120 wounds from this scouring and was beaten by two soldiers, one on each side, who alternated administering the blows. After this scourging, Jesus would have been in shock–traumatized and exhausted. That’s why he was not able to carry the horizontal beam of the cross all the way to Golgotha. That’s also why he died so quickly compared to some who were executed in like manner. Sometimes victims of crucifixion lingered for days before death mercifully took them. But Jesus, who had already endured a scourging which often killed its victims, lasted only six hours.
After the scourging, Jesus was forced by whips and fists to carry the upper beam of the cross weighing some forty to fifty pounds to the place of execution. When he could no longer carry the cross, a bystander was forced to carry it for him. When he reached Golgotha, he was stripped of every article of clothing. Such nakedness was to increase his shame and further strip him of his dignity. His arms were then tied to the upper beam while four-inch spikes were nailed into his wrists. With an elaborate system of ropes, he was lifted with the cross beam to the vertical portion of the cross. Once that crossbeam was dropped into place over the peg on the top of the vertical portion of the cross, four-inch spikes were driven through the top of one foot and the heel of the other into the vertical beam. At hip level there may have been a small piece of wood (called a sidicula) nailed to the front of the vertical cross on which the victim could, with great effort and discomfort, rest one of his buttocks. Without the sidicula the body of the victim would suffer a gravitational pull which would make breathing very difficult if not impossible. We can only imagine the horrible pain involved when Jesus had to pull himself up to sit on the sidicula in order to breathe if there even was a sidicula. And there suspended just a few inches from the ground, Jesus endured the pain of his muscles tearing and cramping, the heat of the Palestinian sun, the torment of insects, the balancing act of staying on and falling off the sidicula if he had been blessed with such a piece of wood, the horrific thirst and dehydration accompanying exposure to the sun, the lack of nourishment, the mockery of the crowd, and a sense of hopelessness echoed in that disturbing cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” After six hours it was over. His mangled, tortured, bleeding body was removed from the cross.
What I want us to realize today is that it was this Jesus who was raised from the dead. A peasant who had no rights—who may not have even been able to communicate with his tormentors—who was abused and mistreated in the most horrible and cruel of ways. Like millions before him and millions after him, he was expendable and disposable. He was a nobody, a peasant with no claims to wealth or power, no recognition, and no dignity assumed or granted. He was just one of the hundreds of millions of helpless, hapless victims of the principalities and powers of this world. But with one difference—God raised him from the dead. The one Rome declared a nobody, God declared the Son of God. The one Rome denied dignity and rights, God enthroned as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. The one discarded like a piece of meat became the Savior of the world.
Those early disciples were not expecting Jesus’ resurrection. All of them expected a general resurrection at the end of time, but no one expected any individual to be resurrected before that eschatological event. Once it occurred and they witnessed the Risen Christ, they tried to make sense of the biggest surprise in history. In our passage today Paul tried to make sense of Jesus’ resurrection. He says that Jesus was the “first fruits” of the resurrection—an anticipation of a future resurrection which would include everyone.
This morning I want us to think of what it means for Jesus to be the first victim of all victims to be resurrected and granted justice and vindication by God.
- Think of the victims of the Holocaust. Steven Spielberg’s movie “Schindler’s List” is a powerful movie about perhaps the greatest inhumanity ever perpetrated in history. The enormity of this tragedy defies anyone’s imagination. The movie, other than its very beginning and end, is in black and white—with one exception. There is a little Jewish girl in a red coat who manages to escape from the line of Jews being marched to trucks which will take them to trains headed to death camps. Throughout the movie we catch glimpses of this red coat and the little girl wearing it as she attempts to hide and is finally captured by the Nazis. The last time we see the red coat it is on an enormous pile of clothes at one of the death camps. The little girl has perished in the Holocaust. I think this is Spielberg’s way of letting us know that each victim of Nazi hatred was an individual with hopes and dreams, with fears and struggles. The Jewish victims of the Holocaust were not just “six million Jews.” They were each individual Jews who together numbered six million. And they were all brothers and sisters to a Jew named Jesus.
- And then there are the slaves across human history. As citizens of the Unites States we have yet to recognize the significance and tragedy that this nation was founded on the annihilation of one race and the enslavement of another. And the consequences AND THE RESPONSIBILITY of those collective sins still plague our society today. The millions upon millions of slaves throughout history were as helpless as Jesus was when he faced his execution. They had no rights. They were accorded no dignity. They were “property” to be treated and mistreated in whatever way their owners chose. They too knew what it was to be whipped until their flesh turned to a bloody mass of quivering gelatin.
- Consider those throughout history who have had severe mental and physical challenges. I remember at seminary an arrogant professor talking about hope after death. He commented that only people who were mentally capable would enjoy the joys of heaven. The mentally “retarded” (that was the word used back then) would just cease to exist at the point of death. In that class was a man with a beloved son who was severely mentally challenged. In my mind’s eye I can still see the tears rolling down his cheeks as he listened to such cruel and heartless talk. The first victims of the Nazis in their attempt to create a “pure Aryan race” were those with severe physical and mental challenges. Like Jesus, they too were the “nobodies” and expendables of a culture lacking compassion.
- And we should not forget the LGBTQIA community who are persecuted for what I call “crimes of being”—for their simply being who they are and who God created them to be. They too know the pain of rejection and being misunderstood. And too many of them have also suffered violent beatings. At least one was fixed to a fence which became his Golgotha.
- Neither should we overlook the starving child with vultures patiently waiting close by. In a world that could easily feed every person on earth at minimal expense, such a child is not deemed worthy to live. She too (like Jesus) is an expendable.
The resurrection reminds us—indeed, slaps us in the face with the truth that God will be faithful—that justice and compassion, truth and mercy are the final determinants for this cosmic story. In Christ God has embraced all the victims of human history and has claimed them as God’s precious own. And just as God was faithful to the victim Jesus, so God will be faithful to all the victims of this world. The resurrection is a terrible judgment on the principalities and powers of this world for whom greed, arrogance, hatred, prejudice, and violence are determining values. What most people don’t know is that in the Jewish faith, resurrection was always about God setting right all the wrongs of history. Resurrection is God’s great reversal of the injustices and tragedies of the human story. Resurrection was never meant to be understood as some “pie in the sky” when you die. It was always about the victory of God’s justice and compassion over all injustice and hatred.
Now we can respond to this aspect of the resurrection in one of two ways. We can say, “God will take care of the victims. Isn’t that nice!” But that would be like watching some courageous gentile save a Jew during the Holocaust and say, “Isn’t that special,” and then going our merry way. The resurrection calls us to become participants in God’s victory of truth, compassion, and mercy. If God validates the victims of this world through Christ, then we who live in the dawn of God’s new creation must validate them too. The church who worships a crucified Lord can best express that worship by embracing and identifying with those victims wherever they may be—the hungry, the persecuted, the mentally and physically challenged, the oppressed. These are the ones included in Jesus’ resurrection. He is God’s representative of all the helpless victims of this world’s injustice. My response to Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, and all the others who would distort the gospel and pander to the base desires, fears, and prejudices of humanity is this: Look carefully at whom you call Lord, for that Crucified Jew will come back to haunt every hate-filled word you speak and every hate-filled deed you inspire.
And my word to us—and especially to myself — is this: If Jesus has been raised from the dead, then what we see in him is a hint of the final justice and mercy of God. When are we going to start acting as though Jesus the victim was raised from the dead and is identified forever in the heart of God with all the victims of history? A church believing in that kind of Easter might just make a difference in this world.
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[For those who are interested in pursuing the ideas in this sermon further, I recommend Jurgen Moltmann’s book entitled Jesus Christ for Today’s World. For those who want to go deeper and have some theological background, I recommend The Way of Jesus Christ. It will take your breath away. And for those still not convinced of Jesus’ identity with all the victims of this world, I recommend you read Matthew 25: 31-46. Here you will find the only detailed description by Jesus of “the Last Judgment.” Not a single theological question is asked. (Of course, what is assumed is that if we know anything about the God of Jesus Christ, compassion will guide our interactions with others, especially those in need.) So there is that theological underpinning to the passage. But other than that indirect assumption, not a single theological question is raised. What is asked is whether we fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, ministered to the sick, and visited those in prison. And then the punchline—“When you did it unto the LEAST OF THESE, you did it unto ME.” Jesus declares his solidarity with all of suffering humanity. What part of that does the church still not get?]
