Words 3, 4, and 5 from the cross

Sermon for Holy Tuesday

Last night, we spent a moment thinking about Jesus’ first two words from the cross: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do. And, Assuredly I say to you, Today you will be with Me in Paradise. This evening we’ll give the next three words some attention.

The third word of Jesus is recorded only by the Apostle John. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.

Several believing women were there at the foot of the cross, along with the Apostle John, who often referred to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” He was almost certainly the youngest of the disciples, maybe only a teenager, and possibly also a cousin of Jesus on Joseph’s side. The Romanists insist that Jesus is here giving Mary to the Church, to be a mother for all Christians, and bidding all Christians to pray to His mother for help. But there’s no indication of anything symbolic in these verses, especially given the explanation that John literally took Mary into his own home from that moment. What is Jesus doing here? He’s seeing to it that His earthly mother, the one whom He was charged by His Father to honor in the 4^th Commandment, was taken care of after He was gone by the disciple to whom He was closest in this life and to whom He Himself, as the Lord of the Church, would grant the longest life on earth, to be there to care for Mary for the rest of her earthly life. Truly Christ was an obedient, loving Son, both to His Father in heaven and to His mother on earth. It’s that very obedience, that very righteousness—that genuine love from the heart—that covers all who believe and are baptized, as if we had been perfectly obedient, perfectly righteous sons and daughters in the sight of God.

If Jesus was this devoted to honoring His mother while He was hanging from a cross, what honor will you not show to your father and mother and to your Father in heaven? What honor have you not shown? That’s, again, as we said last night, why you need the atoning death of Christ and His perfect righteousness:  to show you what true love looks like; to show you how you have fallen short of it and earned God’s wrath for yourself; to show how Christ made amends for your sins and makes you acceptable to God through faith in Him; and to show you how to love as your Savior did and does..

Now, the first three words from the cross were all spoken before noon, in the first few hours of Jesus’ crucifixion, which began at about 9 AM. From about noon until 3 on that Good Friday, darkness covered the earth and Jesus suffered in silence. As we heard on Sunday from Zechariah’s prophecy, It shall come to pass in that day that there will be no light; the lights will diminish. It shall be one day which is known to the LORD—neither day nor night. At about 3 PM, the last four words were spoken in quick succession. The fourth word: Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?, that is, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?

These are the first words of Psalm 22, the words of the Messiah at the very end of His suffering, spoken in Aramaic, which was probably Jesus’ first language, the language of the heart. This is the prayer of the innocent Man whom God still causes to suffer, the innocent Man who feels the weight of the injustice of His crucifixion, knowing that He didn’t deserve this, knowing that His Father could have removed it, but didn’t. But it was the Father’s will to crush Him, Isaiah says, that we, who deserve that punishment, might go free.

And yet, you have to know the rest of Psalm 22 to understand: Jesus isn’t whining. He isn’t blaming God for being unjust. On the contrary, the Psalm goes on, You have answered Me! For He has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from Him; But when He cried to Him, He heard! Jesus knows that God is about to deliver His Son from this suffering. God is about to receive His soul in death, and thus seal Him as the Redeemer of the world.

Then it seems that the darkness lifted. As Zechariah prophesied, But at evening time it shall happen that it will be light. The Father heard the cry of His Son. And John is the one who records that Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, I thirst.

Again, continuing with the same Psalm 22, which described ahead of time the Messiah’s anguish, His crucifixion, and the taunts and jeers of His enemies, Jesus is experiencing exactly what the Psalm predicted: My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue clings to My jaws. So, with His fifth word, He called out softly for a drink, I am thirsty, preparing to cry out the sixth and possibly the greatest word in a loud voice, the word we’ll wait till Good Friday to hear. Of course, it wasn’t a drink of cool water they gave Him, but a taste of sour wine, a form of vinegar, lifted up to Him from a sponge on a pole made of hyssop. Even that was in fulfillment of prophecy, a prophecy from Psalm 69, 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. No, Jesus had no one to comfort Him in those final moments. But no matter. He had accomplished His mission. He had fulfilled His Father’s will to the letter.

Let these three words from the cross give you hope. The perfect Son fulfilled everything the Law required of Him and of you, providing you with a perfect robe of righteousness to wear before God by believing in Him. He suffered unjustly and felt the weight of it, but it had to be that way, the Just suffering unjustly for the unjust, to bring you to God. And His cry of thirst sealed the final prophecy that He had to fulfill, so that He could be the source of living waters to all who thirst for righteousness. Amen.