Traveling the Prayer Paths: At the Cross

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 23:26-34:

Today we conclude our path in looking at the prayer’s that Jesus prayed, and how he prayed and what he prayed, by looking at Jesus’ prayer from the cross of offering forgiveness. Now it could probably argued that Jesus actually offers three prayers from the cross. One is “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” and we could look at that as a prayer of learning to turn our lives over to God, except in this case it is literally his life that is being turned over. That’s an important prayer, and perhaps one we could place with the prayers of going to a quiet place to pray, but one which we are not going to discuss, at least not today. The second is “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” a quote from psalm 22, and one of my favorite scripture passages, which is a cry of despair, which for simple classification of prayers I am going to put with Jesus’ prayer asking God to take the cup from him, which we discussed last week. And so, although it’s a really important passage, we are not going to discuss it, although I was supposed to give a short message on this passage for the community Good Friday service, but which probably won’t happen this year. I would encourage you to go read the 22nd Psalm which moves from a cry of despair to one of God’s triumph, which I think is attached to Jesus’ cry. But again, another message for another day. And so today, for prayers, we are going to be looking at the prayer of forgiveness, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

But before we do that, a quick recap of the other things we learn from Jesus’ prayers. The first is that just as Jesus often went and spent time by himself in prayer, that we are to do the same thing, whether it’s just a few moments, or a few hours, or even a few days, or maybe even 40 days, but we need that time to talk with God, but even more importantly to listen to God. Second was to be in prayer throughout the day in everything that we do, most especially to be in prayer for others, a great thing always, but especially now, and also to pray for God’s help with those things that seem impossible, that we need God’s help to accomplish. Third is to make sure to give prayers of thanksgiving, not just in good times, but also in troubling times, most especially in troubling times so that we can be reminded of the blessings we receive and the fact that God is always with us. Then the prayer for last week was Jesus lamentation, or cry of asking the cup to be taken from him, which had us talking about embodied prayer, that is our bodies being engaged with the words that we are saying, about, again, going to a quiet place, about listening to God when we pray, and also about asking God for things, like help in times of despair. But also knowing that merely because what we ask for doesn’t happen, doesn’t mean it is the will of God, or that God isn’t there for us or doesn’t care, because every time we go to God in prayer we receive the Holy Spirit and God’s assurance that we are not alone. And so that then leads us into the last prayer.

At the Cross

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 23:26, 32-34,39-56:

Today we begin a new sermon series for the season of Lent, which is the 40 days, plus Sundays, that lead us to Easter, and we are going to be looking at the people we find in the passion story.  Rather than starting at the beginning and making our way to the cross, we are instead going to start today at the foot of the cross and make our way backwards next week to the trial, then to look separately at Peter and then Judas and conclude with the preparations for the last week of Jesus’ life. Then on Palm Sunday we reverse the story through Holy Week making our way again to the cross and then to the celebration of Easter.

There were many people who were there when Jesus was executed, some we know something about, some we know nothing about, some we can speculate about, and I think we can learn something from them, or at least I hope I do or this is a wasted time for us.  But I think it’s also important to pay attention to who is not there, and what we can learn from that as well.  Today’s passage begins after Jesus has been flogged and is being forced to carry the cross to the site of the execution, known in Greek as Golgotha, or the place of the skulls, but which when translates into Latin became Calvary. Even though popular imagery has Jesus carrying the entire cross, the likelihood here is that Jesus is not carrying the whole cross, but instead was only carrying the top cross bar, known as the patibulum.  Evidence indicates that the center poles, known as the simplex, were permanently in place just outside the city gates, especially in major cities like Jerusalem, and so the victim would carry the cross bar out which would then be placed on the center bar already there.

Now would probably be a good time to give some background on crucifixion.  Crucifixion was a punishment that was reserved for people the Romans wanted to make a special example of, and this will be important next week when we look at Jesus’ trial, only Romans could order crucifixion, and they were the only ones who used crucifixion at the time.  Although Luke refers to the two men crucified with Jesus as thieves, these were not just people who were caught stealing something. They would have been punished in another way.  In Mark, they are referred to as bandits, and that’s probably more likely because, the Romans reserved crucifixion for special cases, like runaway slaves, those who were subverting public order, and most especially those who threatened or challenged Roman imperial authority. Crucifixion was slow, painful, gruesome and very, very public in order to try and dissuade others from trying the same thing.