The King on the Cross
Lenten Season, Wednesday, 9 April 2014.
Rev. Bruce Skelton, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Highlands Ranch, Colorado ☩ www.hclchr.org
Before digging in to tonight’s gospel and our King on the cross it is helpful to look back at Israel’s first king, a man by the name of Saul. The account of his selection and cornation is related in 1 Samuel chapters 9 and 10. In 9:2 it says:
There was not a man among Israel more handsome than he. He was a head taller than any of the others.
Besides being tall and handsome we are told that he was also very strong and came from a wealthy family. Apparently you could tell just by looking at the guy that he was a king. The people of Isreal rejoiced when Saul was selected and at first he was a good and faithful king, but as is the case with most if not all earthly kings, his power went to his head and rather than serving God and God’s people Isreal as he had been chosen to do he began to serve only his own interests.
Saul’s story follows in the way of another king, the world’s first king, Adam. And like Adam, he turned away from God and His Word, therefore God anointed a new king, a man after God’s own heart, the young shepherd David.
But Saul persecuted and reviled the Lord’s newly anointed. He was so jealous of David’s popularity among the people that it sent him into a murderous rage. The mere presence of David so filled Saul’s head with envy that he chased him with his army around the countryside like a mad man. His anger even caused him to try to pin David to the wall with a spear, but David evaded him. In the end, Saul’s exalted kingly head was cut off by the Philistines on Mount Gilboa in disgrace.
Now consider the scene of Jesus, the Greater David, as He is crucified and reviled on Golgotha. What hatred is hurled at the Lord’s Anointed. He is despised by the envious chief priests, scribes, and elders who don’t like His popularity one bit and rail at Him to prove His kingship. The cruel Roman guards beat, torture and mock God’s chosen people’s King crowning him with thorns. The passersby wag their heads at Him and revile Him. Even the two robbers who were being crucified with him initially direct their insults at Jesus’ head until one of them later repents. The whole scene leaves us outraged as we behold the shameful treatment of the man whom we know to be the King of heaven and earth.
But as we consider this scene tonight we must also consider our guilt against the Lord’s Anointed. Haven’t we, too, wagged our heads and stood in judgment of the Lord. Have there not been times when we too have cried out in anger and hatred against Him, judging Him to be “unfair” to us? Consider how often we have turned from the Lord’s Word and demanded that He prove Himself to us? Have there not been occasions when our bitterness drove us to insist that we deserved better, even though we are as guilty before God as any robber? Let us again consider tonight our many resentful and angry thoughts toward Jesus, and consider the judgment that should come down on our heads.
But then consider the bloodied, beaten, and forsaken king on the cross and be glad. Consider the thoughts that were going on inside His sacred head and be exceedingly glad, for His thoughts were not about getting revenge, or getting even, or pushing back the scorn onto the heads of sinners. No, His thoughts toward His enemies were not ones of hatred and disgust. Instead, what was going on in the head of our crucifed king was love, incomprehensible love, toward those who persecuted him and us and everyone else. He was and doing what was necessary to bear our sin and save us.
The sign above his head read, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” And that’s good because we would have never identified Him as God’s Anointed. If fact nobody would have looked at Jesus back then and said, “Now there’s the head of a king.” And yet if you read the Scriptures you know that that is precisely the way God works.
He does his greatest work and selects his greatest leaders from the lowly and downtrodden. He picks second born, momma’s boy, Jacob, over first-born, burly, Esau. He picks Joseph enlaved and forgotten in Egypt, over his older stonger brothers. He picks Moses, not when he was a young, strong, strapping prince of Egypt at the height of his physical and intellectual powers, no, he picks him when he is an 80 year-old-hasbeen, a murderer turned shepherd. Then the Lord speaks to him out of the burning bush.
But the best example of God doing this in our Old Testament lesson this evening, where after the great, handsome, powerful king Saul failed, God sends His prophet Samuel to Jesse’s house to anoint one of his sons. What transpires is quite humorous, Samuel and Jesse are operating on what they can see, while God’s choice was David who was so insignificant he wasn’t even there. He was the one no one expected and perhaps no one even wanted.
And the same could very well be said of Jesus, he’s the King no one wanted and no one thought they needed. Yet, He came to save us. He was not handsome like Saul, and had no beauty that we should desire Him as Isaiah wrote in the 53rd chapter of his book:
Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejectedby men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
Jesus set aside His kingly might to voluntarily die in weakness and disgrace. He was rich, yet for sinners’ sake He became poor, so that we through His poverty might become rich. Placed on the throne of the cross, He was unrecognizable as a king, but was the perfect man to do the job of taking our sins away so that the Father might recognize us forever as the King’s friends and heirs.
Notice that the mouth on Jesus’ sacred head is silent as He bears the persecution, the insults, and the rage. That head lifted up high on a cross now hangs down and is bloody, but it’s a beautiful head to sinners, who know that He bears the wrath as man’s substitute. We can take great comfort in all that is happening in the scene. For our Crucified King is all about crowning us with glory and honor, so that means He must wear our anger at Him like a crown of thorns.
Jesus, our King, was all about lifting that burden of guilt from our shoulders, so He shouldered it all to the cross and destroyed it so that we might be exalted as innocent and holy sons and daughters of God. Those ears on His head heard all the insults and all the bitterness, so that our ears might rejoice as we hear the Word of Absolution.
Our King, the Lord’s Anointed, was persecuted, reviled, rejected, and killed, but also raised again to anoint us in Holy Baptism and adorn us with the regal garments of his holiness and innocence. Our King, the Lord’s Anointed was willing to be hunted and chased all over Israel, that we might be embraced by the Father’s love. Saul may have launched his spear at David and missed, but divine love would not allow Jesus to evade the soldier’s spear, for the King on the cross was dead. But from that dead king on the cross comes a gusher of life-giving water that fills the baptismal font and washes away all sin. And from that dead King on the cross also comes the life-giving blood that fills the chalice along with the wine that we drink, cleansing us from all sin and lifting up our heads in triumph.
He sank to the lowest place, yes, even to death on a cross, so that God could exhalt him to the highest place as St. Paul wrote in our epistle:
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
So what can we do, but give all thanks and praise and glory and honor to Him, our unlikely, unwanted crucified king, Jesus, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.