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THs TijCONGRUITY OF CALVARY John H. Suchenan t
March 31, 1968 Bethany Presbyterian Church !
John 19:17-30

There was nothing very special about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. It
happened every day. Rome ruled with a heavy hand and public executions were official
policy, dramatic demonstrations of swift and terrible justice. There were other ways
of doing it, of course, but crucifixion had certain advantages. For one thing it was
a conspicuous and drawn-out method of execution and therefore a vivid object lesson
for would-be breakers of Roman Law. For another, it was exceptionally crucl, not
only in the terrible humiliation but also in the exquisite pain visited upon its
victims. Having witnessed a crucifixion a man might think twice before running
athwart of the establishment. Finally, it was really very easily and cheaply done.
Two beams were lashed together and used over and over again. The victim was tied
to the cross beam, the upright beam was inserted into a hole in the ground and the
instrument raised vertically. The victim then was suspended by his wrists, in a
position that very quickly caused excruciating pain. A strong man might last for
days ~ depending on how much food and water were given to him. Death came slowly —
usually by suffoc. ation caused by the rearrangement of the internal organs. Occa-
sionally a victim might be nailed to a cross — as was the case with this Jcsus of
Nazareth. In any case, there he would hang, the target of ridicule and rebuke
until life was choked out of him. ‘

It was a common sight, and there was nothing very special about the
crucifixion of Jesus Christ. True - the Temple authorities were somehow mixed up
in this one. He had caused some kind of religious stir and there were more on—
lookers than usual. True, it was the day before the Sabbath and certain measures
had to be taken to insure that death occurred more rapidly. True, the city was
crowded with Passover celebrants and the commotion was greater. But other than
these few minor variables it was a rather routine crucifixion. It happened every
day in Palestine, 33 A.D.

An objective historian, singling out this particular execution for analy-—
sis might come up with some preliminary observations that would sound like this.

The cvent happened at a certain place, on a certain date — like many other similar
events. It was the end of the line for one Jesus of Nazareth. It is a remarkable
demonstration of how inhumanly evil .men can be to their fellow men. I+ shows the
pointlessness and meaninglessness of human life, for obviously this particular
victim had done nothing to warrant taking his life. Life is like that - the inno-
cent often come out on the bottom. I+ implies the non-existence of God, or at the
very least, the powerlessness of God to do much about the human condition. Tor,
if there is a God, how could he permit such a mammoth injustice to be perpetrated
on any man, not to mention the one who claimed to be his son? Finally, the cruci-
fixion proves that whatever Jesus was up to, he failed miserably. In fact, when
one considers the things he said, and the things his friends claimed he did, he
has to go down in the record as one of history's more colossal failures.

This ~ the unbiassed conclusion of an objective man, observing; only the
harsh reality of the crucifixion of Jesus who was called the Christ. You can't
really argue with the logic of it ~ it's all there for any one to see, and the
facts speak for themselves.

And yet the incongruity of it is that this isn't what the event means at
all. The vulgar instrument on which it was performed is remombered, not as an. is¢am
in a wax maseum chamber of horrors, but because there is nowhere you can go on the
face of the earth without seeing it. It's here in this building, and oll over this
city end throughout this nation, in cedar, walnut, bronze and silver, around millions
of necks, over millions of hearts, in cemeterics, on hospitals, even on health in—
surance policies. There is no place in the world ‘without some replica, some reminder,
perhaps hidden away, but probably prominently displayed. There is a certain incon-
gruity in that alone, in the simple fact that the rude instrument of Roman erucifixion
is the one visible symbol which is present in every land.

—2—

But even more illogical is the strange way this particular cross, and this
particular crucifixion, has exerted a compelling force on men for nearly two thousand
years. licn have been moved and touched by this simple execution. Rather than being
repelled by the bestiality of it all, millions upon millions of human beings have been
pulled toward it. The rather common drama of that day long ago has sonchow seemed to
be relevant to all sorts and conditions of men: the cross draws into its drama all who
pause even for a moment to reflect, so that we respond to it terribly emotionally ~-
terribly personally.

The cross is all of that: the analysis of the objective historian is not
complete - logical enough, but no more accurate than an attempt to express the nature
of man in terms of the chemicals in his body. It doesn't make much sense, really,
but thon calvary is full of incongruities. It is to several of these - those logical
inconsistencies that I would draw your attention.

First, there is the incongruity of time and space. I+ happened in the
year 33 A.D. on the eve of the great Passover celebration. It happened outside
the city of Jerusalem, near the garbage dump, on a hill called Golgotha. Je have
the time and place firmly fixed in our minds, and we remember this event’ in much
the same manner as we remember other events in history. And yet, somehow, this
event will not remain just one entry in the historical ledger. Somehow, strangely,
this event transcends time and space and extends into every generation. The bagic
theological assumption of the Roman Catholic Mass is that the crucifixion of Jesus
Christ happens again when Mass is celebrated. His sacrifice is repeated: he keeps
suffering and dying. This is not our theology, but there is at least a great
symbolic truth here, for the expressed feeling of countless Christians over the
centurics has been that even though the crucifixion was a once-and—for—all thing, it
does riso above the confines of history and become contemporary for every passer—by
in evoty age.

The very moving Spiritual poses the question of the ages, “Jere You There
When They Crucified My Lord?". Of course we were not there and it is an incongruity
to even ask that question. Think of the events that altered the course of history —
the campaigne of Alexander the Great, the Assagination of Julius Caesar, the Signing
of the lagna Charta, the French Revolution: in recent times Pearl Harbor and Hiro-
shima. No one ever wrote a song which asked "Were you There when Thy Assassinated
the Emperor?" or "Were you There When They Dropped the Bomb?''. History on a grand
sCale - yes, but not history that transcends time and place. Yet, about the cross
of Jesus Christ, the question has been asked, and always will be asked, “llere you
There.:...?%, because in a very real sense we: were there, and we are there. Harry
Emerson Vosdick, writing about this strangeness in the crucifixion has obsorved
that: “All the major factors in that tragedy involve you and me. The blindness
of religious orders that cannot see a new and larger truth. The selfishness of a
business community that does not want the profitable traffic in the templo courts
disturbed. The disloyalty of Judas...: the political shrewdness of Pilate — the
emotionalism of the crowd'~ the fearfulness of the disciples — who of us was not
there?"

Thus the incongruity. The crowd long ago chose Barrabus, a wurdcrer who
had tried to start a revolution. ‘This man they set free. But Jesus — the one who
taught that it was better to love one's enemies, the one who picked broken lives up
out of the gutter, healing them and making them whole — "Away with this man: erucify
him!" That is not ancient history. You can't confine that event to a lonely hill
outside Jerusalem, nor to a day in the year 33 A.D. That is a current ovent which
happens in our lives, day after day.

The objective historian has observed that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ
is a study of man at his demonic worst. I+ has been called the "towering crime of
history": in the name of religion and patriotism he was executed; soldicrs spat
upon him and humiliated him; common, ordinary people jeered and mocked; one of his
associates betrayed him. He died the loneliest and most pathetic of deaths. And

ely

-3-

he was innocent; given all the forces aligned against him, his hurried and super-
ficial trial still had to be stacked with paid witnesses for the prosecution. In
this drama man comes out looking very badly, just as bad as he does as the deviser
of Auschwitz or Buchenwald. There seems to be no limit to the insidious potential
for evil in the heart of man. To that observation the crucifixion of Jesus Christ
bears cloquent testimony.

And yet incongruity runs strongly here, too. For the cross, points not
so much to the depravity of man as to his dignity and worth. Man, cries the New
Testament, is the brother for whom Christ died. Man —- individual men who hate
and curse and spit and wallow in bigotry - for these men Christ died. As he hung
there, he looked down at a pathetic little group of men, rolling dice for his garments.
One of them had pressed a crown of thorns into his brow, another had driven the
nails through his wrists, together they had bent their shoulders bencath the dead
weight of the cross to put it in place. He looked down on these pathetic little
men, and asked God to forgive them. This is what gives man dignity. In that act of
forgiveness he was looking down on all men - little men caught up in their scheming
and plotting, thoughtless men who know not what they do. He died ~ not for the sake
of martyrdom - but the sake of humble, pitiful men. That is man's dignity. The cross
is the symbol of this - in God's sight, men are worth dying for.

Obviously his friends and associates put a great deal of stock in his claim
to be God's Nessiah. He had come to them as prophet and rabbi, but gradually
they had come to know him as Lord. Vaguely thoy began to sense that in hia presence
they were also in the presence of the Kingdom of God. Peter had blurted it out on
One occasion: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God". On another occasion
he told them that, having seen him, they had already seen the father. In a strange
and mysterious way, he had ignited the hope in their hearts that the promised day
had arrivod, the fullness of time was at hand. The Redeemer had come and his reign
would be “forever and ever".

This deep Messianic Hope lingered also in the hearts of his tormentors.
They, too, prayed for Isracl's Messiah to come. Surely, sOmewhere in the back of
their minds, the hope existed that his claim was authentic. Surely, even as they
sentenced him to death, they mst have hoped that God would send legions of angels
to vindicate him. There is apathetic hope disguised in their jeer - “If you are the
savior, save yourself!" It is obvious that Judas was motivated in what he did by
a desire to provoke God to show his power.

The crucifixion, then, objectively, looms in all its terrible finality
as an illustration that God - if he exists at all — is quite powerless to intercede
in the affairs of men. In that event God was denied, God was rejected, God was
defcated. That is how logic would have it.

In a novel ( Bevis, The Story of a Boy, Richard Jeffries ~ in J.1/. Whale's
Christian Doctrine) - a young boy looks at a picture of the crucifixion and is deeply
affected by the scene - the spear and thorns and cruel nails. In righteous indig-
nation he says: “If God were there — he wouldn't have let them do it."

That is the basic incongruity of calvary. For God was not only there -
the Christian faith has the audacity to claim that it was his intent, his will,
for things to happen like this; that he willingly sacrificed the life of Jesus Christ
for the sake of men. for the Christian the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is not the
demise of God at all, but his ultimate revelation. Some men look for Cod in the
starry grandeur of the heavens: others seek him in the magnificence of the storm:
still others search in the serenity and beauty of a mountaintop. But the Christian —
when he looks for his God- focusses on a cross. Certainly he knows God as the
creator, the life-giving spirit of all nature. But he begins with the cross.
That is God. That is what he is like. . That is how much he loves his vorld and
his children. That is how far he will go for the sake of men, for the sake of
compelling all men to come to him,

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I believe it was Frederick Nietsche, an avowed despiser of Christianity,
who remarked that he doubted whether many professing Christians had over realized
the significance of the statement ="God on a Cross". Realizing the significance of
that: confronting the incongruity of calvary at this level, is basic to the Christian
faith. If I had to designate the point at which my personal struggles and doubts
finally fell into place, it would be that day when I realized that tho crucifixion
is not soe much the story of what men did to Jesus Christ, as it is the story of what

God has done for man.

How, then, do we respond to the crucifixion? I think we would be guilty
of a serious presumption to confine our response to an academic understanding. I
don't know that we can fully "understand". John Milton celebrated tho birth of
Jesus in a beautiful poem: "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity", but a companion
piece on the crucifixion remains incomplete in his published works, along with a
note which reads: "This subject the author finds to be above tho years he had
when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinfished."

If I could presume to borrow the words of John Milton,’ I would say that,
too. tic have spent some time thinking about the incongruities of calvary, and as we
conclude it is left unfinished.

You and I are left without understanding, but perhaps that is not nearly

as important as "standing under" the cross. .We know this much: there are incongrui-
ties about our lives. There is much about life that igs paradoxical and inconsistent:

there is much in our experience that is neither all good nor all bad but a little
of both. We know there is no relevance, no redeeming power, in a gospel that fails
to confront the ambiguity of life.

Our lives are patch-work quilts of suffering and joy, happiness and
unhappiness, goodness and evil. There are incongruities about your life and my life.
And right down in the middle of it all - not on some remote heavenly stage — but
in the middle of the baffling enigma of life we confront a cross. It mocts us
where we are: it transcends time and space and intimately involves you and me.

It is in this cross that we have our dignity: it is in this cross that we dare to
entertain the notion that God cares about us. It is in the humble, dying figure
there that we experience the saving power of our Lord.

Hay we take our stand, today and every day, beneath this cross.

\men.