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.