Ocean View & Frankford Presbyterian Churches (DE) Palm / Passion Sunday (Year A) April 13, 2014 PALM SUNDAY: Psalm 118:1-2,19-29 Matthew 21:1-11 PASSION SUNDAY: Isaiah 50:4-9a Psalm 31:9-16 Philippians 2:5-11 Matthew 26:14 27:66 I. INTRODUCTION A. What Did Jesus Do? We have just read the story of Jesus passion. We have heard what Jesus did. Now we must ask ourselves the question, What, exactly, did Jesus do? What, exactly, did Jesus accomplish? How did Jesus make a difference in our relationship with God? And the answer we are going to explore is found in this baffling incident in the passion story, At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, (Matthew 27:51). B. The Day of Atonement One of the ordinances given to Israel by God was the day of atonement. It was a crucial event, for it dealt with the breach in the relationship between God and Israel due to Israel sin. On the day of atonement, a male goat was slaughtered. The significance was not in the slaughtering, not in the death itself. Rather, significance was found in the blood, for the blood of the goat represented Israel s own life (Leviticus 17:11). Two uses were made of that blood. For one, the high priest sprinkled the blood on the altar, signifying the purification of Israel s sins (Leviticus 16:18-19). The goat has 1
taken our place in death. The death we deserve as a result of sin is borne by the goat. But the really significant thing was this. The high priest also brought that blood into the temple building, and into the innermost room of the temple, the holy of holies (Leviticus 16:15-17). That room was closed off by a curtain. The curtain signified the separation of the holy God from sinful Israel. It was in that room that the ark of the covenant was held. The cover of the ark was called the mercy seat. On the mercy seat God was said to be present in Israel s midst. God is enthroned on the mercy seat. The high priest took the blood of the goat inside the curtain, and sprinkled it upon the mercy seat. Israel, now purged of its sin, is thus brought into the very presence of God, there to know communion with God. The high priest then emerges with the good news that Israel is reconciled to God. Israel can live out its calling now as God s holy people. It is not the priest s action that effects a change in God. This entire liturgical act is prescribed by God. The high priest is simply giving visible witness to an act that can only be God s act: God has forgiven Israel of its sins. God is at work through the covenant to make Israel into God s holy and faithful people, a righteous covenant partner. Atonement is God s action. C. What Did Jesus Do? It is with that ritual in mind that we ask ourselves, What, exactly, did Jesus do? II. BODY A. The Person of Jesus First, we underscore, not what is done, but who does it, the person Jesus. And who is this Jesus? He is God is with us, (Matthew 1:23). He is God present as the human being Jesus. In Jesus we see two things. 2
On the one hand, Jesus is God present in our midst. Jesus is God reaching out to us, revealing God s self to us. Jesus words are not human opinions, but God s own self revelation. Jesus acts are not just acts of human kindness, but God at work in our midst to display steadfast love and mercy. On the other hand, Jesus is a human being. He is a human being who in his own person responds to God and brings the sinful human nature he has taken up into harmony with God and into conformity with God s will. The human response to God is made, then, by Jesus himself. We know from the story of the announcement to Mary that Jesus is solely God s doing. God brings Jesus about by an act of the Holy Spirit. And so, what we see in Jesus is God acting toward humanity, and a human being responding now in complete harmony to God. The crucifixion of Jesus is not some drama played out before God. The crucifixion of Jesus is God doing for us what we can never do for ourselves (Psalm 49:7-9,15). God is offering up God s life for us. God is reconciling us. God is the subject here. Our atonement in Jesus is complete. It is finished. There is nothing we need or can do to complete it. In Jesus we are forgiven. In Jesus we are reconciled. Atonement is made by God alone. Jesus is our atonement. B. The Act of Jesus 1. Jesus Offers up His Entire Life to God Second, this is a story of what Jesus does. But what did Jesus do? It seems all too obvious that Jesus died. But that is not what we see here. We see is Jesus offering up his life. As one person said, We are not saved by the atoning death of Christ... but by Christ himself who in his own person made atonement for us, (Thomas F. Torrance, Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ, 73). 3
From the moment he took on our humanity and was born as the infant child of Mary, throughout his entire ministry, and now in crucifixion, we have seen Jesus offering up his life to God. Jesus responds to the Father as a loving, trusting, and obedient Son. This is precisely what God has sought from us, but which we fail to give. The entire ministry of Jesus is for this purpose of redeeming us so that we join him in the household of God, so that we take our place as God s adopted children. Yet the humanity that Jesus takes up is a broken humanity. It is a human mind and will that are turned in upon themselves, that do not acknowledge God, but that serves their own purposes. The sacrifice of Jesus is in taking up that human mind and in the course of his life sanctifying it, so that it is not a mind and a will set on God. The sacrifice that Jesus makes is the offering up his life in wholehearted love for God, in complete obedience to God, in the total embracing of God s will. It is not that Jesus dies. It is that Jesus lives in the most intimate communion with God. It is that Jesus entire life was one grounded in God and in harmony with God, and offered to God. And what we have just seen is that this oneness with God is so firm that Jesus is willing to submit to human rejection, to humiliation, and even to crucifixion. It is a life that acknowledges God s love, that responds to that love in joyful submission. It is such a life that God desires from all of us. In our story, the supreme affirmation of Jesus person is unwittingly spoken by a Gentile woman. The wife of Pilate warns her husband, Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him, (Matthew 27:19). The word she uses is righteous. Jesus is righteous. Jesus is the one human being who is righteous before God. 2. Jesus Exposes Our Disobedience Jesus, the righteous one, stands in such contrast to us. For it is precisely a mind and a will set on God that we refuse. Our lives are 4
lived apart from God. Our lives are consumed with our own interests, our own power, our own security, our own righteousness. And that is why we gladly give ourselves over to the powers of evil and death, for we assume in our arrogance that we can use these powers to our advantage, as we establish ourselves at the cost of others, at the cost of the planet. What we see in the religious and political authorities here are not malevolent people. We see conscientious religious elders who assume that they are acting on God s behalf, protecting God s honor from the blasphemy of this man (Matthew 26:65). What we see is a person who wishes only to maintain the peace of the Roman Empire by condemning an insurrectionist (Matthew 27:37). What we see are Jews and Gentiles united in opposition to God. What we see and this is most disturbing are members of God s people, who are righteous according to their interpretation of Torah, yet whose righteousness thus grounded blinds them to the true righteousness of Jesus. The result is horrifying. The authorities religious and governmental pronounce judgment on the Son of God. At no other moment in history are we as human beings so exposed, is our sinfulness and our enslavement to evil more apparent. What we have done in the dark has now been exposed to the light of day. Here we see just how we in our self-centeredness stand utterly opposed to God. Here we see just how far we will go to protect ourselves from God. Here we see the lengths we will go to destroy God, once and for all. At last, we will have this world and our own lives to ourselves. At last, we can believe what we want and do what we want. We are free from the God who would limit our freedom. The righteous Jesus exposes us. We must not think that we stand apart from the characters in this story. We ourselves are implicated. If the religious authorities condemn Jesus as a blasphemer and if Pilate condemns him as guilty of sedition, Jesus own disciples are found to betray him (Matthew 5
10:4; 17:22; 20:18-19; 26:2,15-16,21-25,45-46,48; 27:3-4), to deny him (Matthew 16:24; 26:34,35,69-75), and to desert him (Matthew 13:21; 26:31,33). 3. Jesus Self-Offering a. Jesus Takes Our Place in Judgment Jesus, the righteous one, stands rejected and condemned by unrighteous people. What we would expect is that Jesus takes a stand in defiance of us, in opposition to us. But that is precisely what we do not see. On the contrary, we see Jesus who is in complete solidarity with God acting also in complete solidarity with us as sinners. We see Jesus bringing to completion his baptism, his baptism in which he identified with us and confessed our sins as his own (Matthew 3:6). Jesus hears God s judgment on sin. Jesus acknowledges as just God s judgment. Jesus accepts that judgment and endures it his own person. Our death is borne by him. It is a death that is not simply physical, but is experienced in the depths of his soul. It is death as utter alienation from God. Jesus final words are taken from the psalm, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46; Psalm 22:1). What Jesus is offering up to God is the one thing God demands. What God demands is, not death, but life. God demands a response by human beings to God s love and to God s will. That response of righteousness is made by Jesus alone. Jesus offers up to God his life so completely that it is God s even in death. His life is seen in his blood, for as the Scriptures said, the life of the flesh is in the blood... it is the blood that makes atonement, (Leviticus 17:11). And so, it is not Jesus death that is required here, but his life. In life and in death, Jesus belongs to God. Jesus is righteous. b. Jesus Reconciles Us with God If Jesus has endured for us the judgment of sin, so Jesus fulfills for us the righteousness that God requires. Jesus reconciles us to 6
God. Jesus is the true high priest who enters into the holy of holies, not with the blood of some animal, but with his own blood, the symbol of his righteous life. He rips apart the curtain that separates us from God and in himself ushers us into the very presence of God. c. A Redemption in which in the Spirit Jesus Makes Us Living Members of His Body There is no thought here that Jesus has done his part in our redemption, now it is up to us to do our part. Though that idea is popular, it is deadly. For how can we know that we have made ourselves worthy of Jesus death? To take that notion seriously is to burden our conscience with doubt and fear. Jesus alone is righteous before God. In the Holy Spirit, Jesus calls us to life in himself. He calls us to life in his Body. To hear his call to follow him is not simply a summons to follow his lead, his example. Rather, it is to know ourselves as those whom Jesus has called into himself. We live in Jesus. Our minds and our wills are reshaped by Jesus. We look at the world in Jesus, through his eyes. We respond to the world with Jesus compassion. This is not a summons to passivity, but to yield ourselves to Jesus so that his will is accomplished by us. Our atonement is Jesus act. It is an act in which Jesus shares its benefits with us in the Holy Spirit. II. CONCLUSION A. The Curtain Is Torn What we have read this morning is good news. The curtain has been torn in two. Jesus joins us to himself so that we enter the presence of God. And so, we close with the words of the author of Hebrews, Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach 7
with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water, (Hebrews 10:19-22). 8