Some Deaths Mean More than Others

According to Luke 23, they bounced Jesus from one official to another, some Jewish, some Gentile, in a series of fakey trials. Everyone bears part of the blame.

Then they inflicted on him one of the most barbaric methods of execution ever devised, a favorite with the Romans when they wanted to teach some lowlife and his lowlife friends a lesson. The nails went through the wrist bones (not the hands, where they would tear away) and the bones of the feet. Naturally the victim would want to hang from the wrists to save the pain of the feet, but this would lead to suffocation because the hanging would put intense pressure on the lungs. So the victim would have to push up with the feet until the pain became unbearable, then put up with not being able to breathe, until the whole process was repeated.

Thirst was a crucial issue, and sometimes the soldiers below would offer some form of drink, more to keep the poor guy alive to suffer some more, than out of any sense of pity. On a cross, you were alone, doomed, in agony that could scarcely be believed. It could last up to three days before you finally expired.

They all mocked him, except for one thief. Jesus' response is moving. He said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Forgive them? These monsters? Amazing.

But what is more amazing is that no one had identified, in any of his trials, a crime that he had committed. He was truly innocent of all charges. This should not have been happening.

So what did it mean? The Bible says that he was dying for us, paying the penalty we deserved for walking away from God. He volunteered for it.

Some deaths do mean more than others.

No Good Life Goes Unpunished

No good deed goes unpunished. Neither does any good life, especially a life like Jesus lived to perfection. There were enemies, according to the Gospel account in Luke 22. No, I'm not trying to raise some foolish anti-Semitic thing about the Jews attacking Jesus. Jesus was Jewish too, and the same scenario could have been played out if all of them were Swedes.

They felt threatened by him, by the fact that he was more popular than they were, more in control of his life, more revolutionary about changes that needed to be made in his society. So we read that: " The leading priests and teachers of religious law were actively plotting Jesus' murder. " (Luke 22:2).

There was a traitor too, a Judas (because that was his name, Judas Iscariot). I suspect Judas was angry that Jesus wasn't doing what a Messiah was supposed to do - leading a revolution that would overthrow Israel's Roman oppressors and establish a golden age. None of that was in Jesus' plan. He came in peace, ready to accept the hatred against him.

But not as a martyr. We love martyrs, but ultimately they lose. They may be hailed for the cause for which they died, but in the end the cause often dies with them. But Jesus...his actions on this last week of his earthly life as described in Luke 22 are uncanny.

He knew. He knew what was going to happen to him. So he planned for it and explained its meaning to his followers. Then he refused to resist his attackers. He let himself be taken. Why?

When he had that last supper with his followers, he held up a piece of unleavened bread and said, "This is my body, given for you." (Luke 22:19) Given for them. Given for us too?

How could the sacrifice of Jesus be for us? Maybe an ancient prophecy will help:

"All of us have strayed away like sheep. We have left God's paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the guilt and sins of us all. " (Isaiah 53:6)

If the prophecy is about Jesus, it explains a lot. He wasn't dying for himself but to pay the penalty we deserved for wandering from God like sheep.

No One Like Him Ever

If you read Mark 1, the second book in the New Testament of the Bible, you get a snapshot of Jesus that puts him in a class all of his own. It would be nice to see him simply as the greatest human who ever lived, except that comparison's don't work.

First, the Bible announces him as the beginning of the Good News. When has there ever been such good news that it lasts for two centuries? Then we find that prophecies were made about him in the Hebrew Scriptures and that no less than John the Baptist devoted his life to announcing him to the world.

The temptation: Jesus resisted the advances of the same snake who brought Adam and Eve down. Nobody had ever done that before.

He chose simple fishermen as his followers, cast out demons without ever having seen The Exorcist, healed people with impossible diseases and preached his message of good news everywhere, so that he was more famous than anyone in the land.

Of course, you could dismiss it all as mythology, except that even his own followers were flabbergasted. You could strip out all the miraculous stuff and leave yourself with the gentle teacher of peace. But what if this was God's way of reaching us when nothing else would work?

What if Jesus is the path back to what we lost when we abandoned the one who made us?