Holy Week Thoughts

Tonight is Maundy Thursday. On Tuesday, while housecleaning, a friend found an original manuscript of Meet Me at the Cross. Because God touched her through it, she inspired me to revisit the book. I was surprised to see Jesus in new ways on pages I’d written long ago. I felt His Spirit wanting me to revise and share these short excerpts with my friends during Passion Week.

 

Gethsemane

The gnarled trees,
with memories trapped
In sap long dried,
Knowing holy blood
Once fed their soil
Live on to testify
To that night’s cries.

It was a horrible night
Beneath young trees.
Halloween, late night spook shows,
Pogroms, massacres
And satan’s darkest secrets
Burst with a blast of hatred
Upon an innocent head.

But He held on,
In faith, hope, and love
He looked above
And saw beyond
and through our dark.

Lord, Give Your Gethsemane strength to me.
Those old surviving trees,
Their memories held
In sap long dried
Live on to testify
That death has died—
And so, in faith and hope and love,
Would I.

 

A Crucified Man

He was physically strong, yet sensitive, gentle, and lowly. He was spiritually amazing, with authority over man, nature, and the supernatural realm. His soul was mature and complete. His mind unquestionably brilliant, He confounded every scholar who questioned Him. His emotions were pure. He took advantage of none.

His love for His Father was unbounded and ruled His life; He was motivated by God’s own merciful loving kindness. He did only what He saw His Father doing. His compassion for man broke all human limits for giving. He fed the hungry, healed the sick, restored sanity to the demented and delivered the demonized. He gave hope hope and purpose to the lost and broken, brought the dead back to life, remained loyal to faithless friends and forgave sinners. He loved this world and every man and woman He met. With tough love, He confronted the greedy and wicked. Speaking only truth, He kept all of His Father’s rules. He Himself was all mercy, meekness, joy, peace, truth, faith, hope and love. He did nothing wrong. Religious men accused Him falsely. A crowd cried, “Crucify Him!”

He has been given at least 200 names or titles. But God directed His mother to name Him Jesus or Yeshua or Joshua. During His lifetime, He was called Rabbi or teacher, a prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, the Son of Man, and the only Son of God. He called Himself the good shepherd, the true light of the world, the true vine, the Word made flesh, and the resurrection and the life. His Father once spoke into our universe to call Him, “My Beloved Son.” He returned His Father’s love and He sought His Father’s glory, not His own. He fulfilled the laws of His Father’s Kingdom and lived by His Father’s ways. Although He was Creator of the Universe and a King above all kings, His kingdom was not of this world. Fully God, He was also fully man.

The religious and political leaders of His time rejected His Kingdom for Caesar’s. They felt threatened by his popularity and power and jealously planned to get rid of Him. His own disciple betrayed Him, Roman soldiers arrested him. They dressed Him up in royal robes like a king of this world and mocked Him. They spat upon Him and their spit stuck to Him. They placed a crown of thorns upon His head, scratching and jabbing His scalp with pain. Men hit His head until it was tender with welts. Hardened men struck Him with their hands, stinging and bruising His body. They lashed Him, slashing and digging down to the bone, gouging hunks of flesh from His back with leather thongs laced with metal or bone.

When He was weakened, wounded, and weary from watching and waiting without sleep, a heavy wooden cross was put upon His shoulders and He was commanded to carry it through the city to a place called Golgotha, the place of the skull. He stumbled and fell. Another man was called to carry His cross, but there is no record that any man reached out a hand to give Him help. His clothes were stripped off His body; He watched as men gambled to get them. His captors offered drugs to dull His pain and His mind, but He refused.

His lacerated back was pressed into the hard wood of the cross. Blood ran. His body was stretched, without support. Nails were driven through the flesh of His hands and feet to hold Him fast to the cross. Strangers stared at Him. Death by excruciating suffocation began. While suspended upon the cross, He bore insults and jeers, daring Him to prove that He was God. The chief priests, religious men, had reproached Him. They were derisive and mocked Him with scorn. His mother and His closest friend watched His humiliation. Worst of all, His Father, His beloved Father who had been His constant companion abandoned Him. Then, when every prophesy of Old Testament Scripture about Him was fulfilled, He cried out with a loud voice, “It is finished” and He died.

In the most horrible form of capital punishment under Roman law, men of our human race killed their own Creator. We killed Him. In His death, no evil thought of blame, retaliation or accusation came to His mind or entered His soul. He forgave us. In death as in life, He entrusted His Spirit into His Father’s hands. He loved. He obeyed.

His faith did not falter through those agonizing minutes and seconds on the cross when Jesus knowingly accepted His Father’s will and offered Himself as the sinless sacrificial Passover Lamb. He carried our human sin upon that cross and took upon Himself our human separation from a Holy God.  He gave His life to cancel the consequences of humanity’s refusal to accept God’s love, to love God in return and to believe in God with obedient trust.

Because Jesus steadfastly continued to love, because His trust in His Father-God’s goodness never failed, He overcame sin and death. He died and three days later rose again to new life. His separation from God and in Him all mankind’s separation from a Holy God was brought to an end by His perfect love and obedience unto death. His resurrection life, by faith, through the power of the Holy Spirit, is now available to all who believe in Him. As Paul wrote,

. . . if One died for all, then all died;  and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.

Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new . . . God . . . has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ . . . that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them . . . we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.  For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
2 Corinthians 5:14- 21

 

We Believe

We believe He died
In love with you and me.
Yielded, determined, and unafraid
He hung upon a shame cursed tree.

We believe He took our guilt.
He bore our grief, our pain, our sin.
He took our selfish flesh to die
Upon that cross of love with Him.

We believe He lives.
He reigns, omnipotent and free
Full of joy His Spirit comes
Giving Life to you and me.