More to Come

This is the Good Friday message given in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on March 25, 2016.  The Bible verses used are Luke 23:26-49.

            In all of our midweek Lent services, and in last night’s Maundy Thursday service, we’ve been looking at all the times Jesus could have avoided dying on the cross, but chose not to.  Now, it’s his last chance.  Pilate has pronounced sentence.  Jesus is to be crucified.

            It was not a done deal at that point, though.  I mean, it was as far as the law was concerned, but this is Jesus we’re talking about.  And Jesus could work miracles.  Everyone knew that.  Jesus had healed people who had all sorts of diseases.  Jesus had fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish.  Jesus had raised someone from the dead.  Would Jesus work one more miracle now, and save himself?

            It was an open question.  He looked like he was weak—so weak that another guy, Simon of Cyrene, had to carry the cross for him.  But maybe that was just an act.  Maybe that was all part of the plan.  Maybe it was to catch the authorities off guard.  Maybe it was for dramatic effect.  Maybe Jesus was going to spring forth, refreshed and strong.  Maybe he was going to call angels down from heaven and wipe out the people who were trying to kill him.  Maybe he would simply disappear, vanish, without a trace.  After all, this is Jesus we’re talking about.  Anything was possible.

            But, nothing happened.  They come to the place for the crucifixion.  They hang him on the cross.  Jesus says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”  Was that a sign?  Was that a clue?  Did that mean Jesus was about to come down off the cross, take control, and he was asking God to forgive these people and not send them to hell?

            But, again, nothing happened.  People start mocking him, making fun of him.  They say, come on, Jesus.  You’re supposed to be the Savior.  You’re supposed to have all this power.  Come off that cross.  Save yourself.

            We’re told that the people who said that were mocking Jesus, and I’m sure many of them were.  I wonder, though, if there might not have been at least a few who were serious.  I wonder if there might have been a few people there, people who had not given up hope, people who really wanted Jesus to do it.  People who really wanted Jesus to come down off the cross, to save himself, to be the king they wanted him to be.  People who still thought, even now, that Jesus might have one more miracle left.

            But still, nothing happened.  Jesus had a conversation with the two criminals who were being crucified with him, the one who wanted Jesus to save himself and them, the other who knew Jesus did not deserve to die and asked to be remembered when Jesus came into his kingdom.

            And still, nothing happened.  Jesus got weaker and weaker.  The pain got stronger and stronger.  Hours passed.  Each minute probably seemed like an hour, eventually.  Jesus cried out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”  And he stopped breathing.  There would be no miracle.  Jesus was, in fact, dead.

            The crowd really did not know what to do.  Some of them mourned.  Some of them were disappointed.  Some of them were probably relieved.  And after a while, they all left.

            The temptation is to continue the story.  And we will, on Easter Sunday.  But we won’t tonight.  Because on this night, the people involved had no idea how the story was going to continue.  In fact, they had no idea that the story was going to continue at all.  They thought this was all there was.

            Some of them probably thought Jesus was just another false Messiah.  Because Jesus was not the first, you know, to claim to be the Messiah.  There had been others before him.  There’d be others after him, too.  People who’d made fancy speeches and gotten people all excited.  Some of them attracted quite a following, in fact.  But in the end, they’d all failed.  And, they thought, so had Jesus.  Another disappointment.  It had been fun and exciting while it lasted, but now it was over.  It was a nice dream, but that’s all it was.  Time to give up.  Back to real life.

            I think we can understand why they felt that way.  We can understand the disappointment, even the despair.  Some of us may feel that way now.  Not about Jesus, necessarily, but about our world.  We look around at the world, and we see all kinds of things that don’t seem to be going right.  There was another terrorist attack in Belgium just this week.  It seems like every day I see an article about Christians being persecuted around the world.  And it seems like every day I see an article about Christians being mocked and ridiculed for their faith here in the United States, too.  We see the number of people who claim to be Christians declining.  We see church attendance declining, not specifically in our church but all across the country. 

These are just a few examples—we could go on and on, talking about all the things that are going wrong in the world.  And when we do, maybe we start to think that it’s time to give up.  Maybe we start to think the world’s going downhill and nothing’s going to happen to change it.  Maybe we start to hope that Jesus will come again and save us, but some of us have given up on that, too.  After all, it’s been two thousand years, more or less.  And nothing’s happened.  There have been all kinds of times when people thought he might be coming.  But still, nothing’s happened.  So maybe it’s time to realize that our dreams are just that, dreams.  Maybe it’s time to give up.  Back to real life.

But it’s interesting to note that, on the day Jesus died, not everybody gave up.  Not entirely.  There was this centurion there.  A centurion was a Roman officer who was in charge of a platoon of a hundred people.  And he saw what happened, and he praised God for the life of Jesus.  He said, “Surely, this was a righteous man.”

Now, I’m not suggesting this centurion understood who Jesus was.  I don’t think he knew that Jesus was going to rise from the dead.  But still, think about what this verse says.  In fact, let me read it to you.  “The centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God and said, ‘Surely this was a righteous man.’”

The centurion praised God.  A man who the centurion knew, and called, a “righteous man”, had been killed, and yet this centurion praised God.

What that tells me is that the centurion knew the story was not over.  I mean, why else would you praise God for the killing of a righteous man.  That would be something to mourn.  That would be something to about which you’d feel angry, or guilty, or something.  You would not praise God for it.  Unless.  Unless you knew something else was going to happen.

Again, I don’t think the centurion knew what was going to happen.  I don’t think he knew Jesus would rise from the dead.  But he knew something more was going to happen.  He knew the death of Jesus was not the end of the story.  He knew there was more to come.  He knew that somehow, in some way, God was not going to let the story end like this.

And if you get discouraged about our world, if you get discouraged about the state of Christianity, either worldwide or in the United States or even here locally, remember that.  The story is not over.  There is more to come.  Something else is going to happen.  Somehow, in some way, God is not going to let the story end like this.

We are promised that Jesus is going to come again.  I don’t know when that’s going to happen.  It might be tomorrow or it might be a hundred thousand years from now.  I have no idea.  I just know Jesus is going to come again.

But Jesus coming again is not the only way for something more to happen.  God is still active in the world.  God did not just create the world and then stop.  God did not just send Jesus here to die for our sins and then stop.  God is still doing things.  God is doing all kinds of things.  Once in a while, we can see them.  A lot of times, we cannot.  But God is still active.

It’s like when we plant seeds.  We plant the seeds and we fertilize them.  Maybe we water them as well.  And we wait.  And days go by, and we cannot see anything happening.  Sometimes weeks go by and we cannot see anything happening.  But something is happening.  It’s just happening below the ground, where we cannot see it.  Eventually, what’s happening is going to break through the ground and burst forth and be something spectacular.

God is doing all kinds of things in the world right now.  God is doing all kinds of things right here in the Wheatland Parish right now.  A lot of them are happening where we cannot see them.  But eventually they are going to break through and burst forth.  And they are going to be something spectacular.

It looks like everyone else thought the story was over.  They all gave up.  But the centurion did not.  He knew something else was going to happen.  And of course, he was right.

On this Good Friday, I urge us all to be like the centurion.  Don’t give up.  The story is not over.  Something is going to happen.  And it’s going to be spectacular.