Sample of Thoughts at the Cross
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Sample of Thoughts at the Cross
Services will be sent on diskette or CD or as email attachments for your editing as desired and your printing -- formatted to your Word Processor and to fit on the four sides of a folded 8.5x14 sheet of paper.
THOUGHTS AT THE CROSS
Sermons for
Midweek Lenten Devotions
by
Rev. Chip Winter, Pastor of Peace with Christ, Fort Collins, CO
4. I N R I.
John
19:19-20
I
N R I – what does it mean? In the world of Nebraska it could stand for In Nebraska
Red’s In. It could stand for I’m Not Really Interested, or it could say Invest Now; Rewards Immediately! In church usage, I N R I
appears in Christian art and sculpture to speak to us of the statement of
charges against Jesus that Governor Pilate ordered to be posted on his
cross. In Latin, the legal language of
the Romans, it stated: Iesus Nazarenus Rex
Iudaeorum. And since in Latin there was
no J, but I was used instead, it appears as I N R I. John’s Gospel
tells us: “Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read:
JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Many read the sign, for it was written in Aramaic, Latin, and
Greek.”
Pilate, no doubt, saw the notice as
delicious sarcasm – but there was more truth to it than sarcasm. For centuries Israel had been longing for the arrival of the
promised Lion of the Tribe of Judah.
The Jews figured that one like the king of the jungle coming as King of
God’s people would surely be King of the whole world! This promised King was to bring justice and righteousness and
their by-products, peace, confidence, and compassion. Remarkably, it was foreigners from a distant country who were the
first to hail this King. They were the
Magi, who traveled many miles to find him.
They came to Jerusalem, the city of the King, and asked, "Where is the one who has been born
king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship
him."
The King the Magi finally were led
to, and whom they worshiped in Bethlehem, had indeed been born of the royal
line of David. As an extra sign to
point up that truth, they found him, not in the Herod's royal city, Jerusalem,
but in David’s town, Bethlehem – as the sacred Scriptures had prophesied.
From the relative obscurity of
Bethlehem’s stable and later of Nazareth in Galilee this King would arise, not
with royal fanfare, but in humble service to God’s people. As a teacher and healer, as a prophet and
priest, he would become known throughout the land of the Jews. He would be loved by His disciples and
revered by the multitudes. And he would
be seen as a threat to “the system” by the religious hierarchy – one they saw
as someone to be removed from the scene.
The Jews' religious leaders had no
real grounds for getting rid of
Jesus. His perfect life and spotless
reputation provided the chief priests, the Pharisees and their scribes no real
crimes with which to charge him. Their
only option was to manufacture evidence against him. They arrested him, brought false witness against him, all to no
avail – until the high priest put Jesus under oath and insisted that he tell
them if he was the Christ, the Son of God.
When Jesus replied, “Yes, it is as
you say,” they knew they had him!
They immediately sentenced him to death for his “blasphemy”.
The next step was to get Roman
authorization for the death penalty.
They knew that the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, would laugh and
dismiss any religious charges, so they came up with political charges. In Pilate’s court they said, “We have found this man subverting our
nation. He opposes payment of taxes to
Caesar and claims to be Christ, a king.”
They knew Pilate would have to listen to that. They knew that for Pilate, as Rome's
official representative, the Procurator of Palestine, there could be no other
king but Caesar.
They were right. Pilate had already got himself in trouble
with Rome because of these people. They
had raised a stink that was smelled even in Rome concerning “the affair of the
Roman standards”. His troops carried standards that featured medallions
that bore Caesar’s image, and it had provoked a five-day demonstration by the
Jews in protest of their parading idolatrous images through Jerusalem. On another occasion the Jews’ leaders had
officially objected to Pilate's “liberating” funds from the Temple treasury to
pay for an aqueduct’s construction.
Still another time he had ordered that golden shields bearing the name
of Emperor Tiberias be displayed prominently beside the entry to the Temple. In
that instance, King Herod himself had raised a ruckus in Rome, and Pilate had
been given a very politically-damaging reprimand. The Jews’ religious leaders knew – and they knew Pilate knew –
that politically he was walking on eggs.
When Pilate heard their charge he took Jesus into his
chambers and asked, "Are you the
king of the Jews?"
And Jesus
replied, "You are right in saying I am a king, but my kingdom is not of
this world."
Jesus told Pilate, “I
was born and came into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to
me.”
To which the jaded pagan said
only, “What is truth?”
Still, Pilate knew
the Jews had handed Jesus over to him out of envy. He was convinced that Jesus was innocent, and tried to work from
that base. He went out to the Jews and said, “I find no basis for a charge against
him.” He offered them a deal.
“It is
your custom,” he said, “for me to release to you one prisoner at the time of
the Passover. Do you want me to release
‘the king of the Jews’?” But their
response was, “No, not him! Give us
Barabbas!”
The callous Roman then tried another
ploy. He ordered that his innocent
prisoner be flogged, and turned him over to his soldiers for mockery and
abuse. John tells us, “They twisted together a crown of thorns and
put it on his head. They clothed him in
a purple robe and went up to him again and again, saying, ‘Hail, king of the
Jews!’ And they struck him in the face.”
Once
more Pilate came out and said to the Jews,
“Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a
charge against him.” He pointed to
the pathetic figure of Jesus and said, “Here
is the man.” As soon as the chief
priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “‘Crucify! Crucify!” “Shall I crucify your king?” Pilate
asked. The chief priests uttered their
own blasphemy: “We have no king but Caesar.” Finally,
seeing that he could not placate their thirst for Jesus’ blood, Pilate handed Jesus
over to them to be crucified.
There was nothing else that Pilate
could do – except stand up and be counted as a man and act justly. But he was either unwilling or unable to do
that. And so it happened that in God’s
sovereign will and ordering of circumstances, our Lord was crucified, and there
was nothing left for God to do but to forgive our sins for Jesus’ sake – which
was his divine plan all along.
Upon the placard over Jesus’ head,
where the crime of the one on the cross was customarily recorded for all to see
– as sort of a visual deterrent and a warning label all rolled into one –
Pilate played his last joke, at Jesus’ expense. He tweaked the noses of the religious leaders. He ordered that the placard state:
JESUS
OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.
John went on to explain that the
chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate and asked him to have the notice
say rather that Jesus just claimed to be king of the Jews. But Pilate, who earlier had caved in to their
pressure and had ordered that Jesus be crucified, suddenly was stubbornly
resistant. He told them, “What I have written, I have written.” He meant the placard in jest, a jibe at the
Jewish leaders. But in this action the
one who earlier had asked “What is truth?” unwittingly pronounced the greatest
of truths.
The one suffering and dying on the
cross was not just the King of the Jews but was the King of the world. Look at the determination and the
faithfulness and the love of that king!
The chief priests and teachers of the law mocked him. “He
saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! Let this Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the
cross, that we may see and believe.”
One of the criminals who were crucified with him hurled insults at
him: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us.” But Jesus stayed there, under the death
sentence of the false religious leaders, under the death sentence of the
cowardly Roman official, because he knew he was also under the death sentence
of his Father in heaven. He was
carrying our sins in his body on the cross.
In God’s saving will, he had come for the specific purpose of being
God’s atoning sacrifice for human sin.
He was ready to face the consequences of human sin for us – suffering
the pangs of hell when, for an eternal moment, his Father turned from him and
forsook him.
It is precisely because he chose not
to save himself but rather to save us all that we revere him as our Lord and
King tonight. Because he bore our sins
we are forever free to live under God’s forgiveness. Into this grace, this forgiveness, the Holy Spirit has called us.
He has enabled us to acknowledge and trust and proclaim the truth that slipped
into Pilate’s mocking sign: JESUS OF
NAZARETH is the KING OF THE JEWS.
Actually, we know that the Good News
embodied in the suffering and death of Jesus takes the statement on Pilate's
placard well beyond what he had written.
Jesus is the promised King of the Jews – but he is much, much
more than that. If we were to
write the I N R I of Pilate's
placard on a banner for the Church to wave with full meaning to passersby in
our society, we would write it in English, and the I N R I would become J C S W
– Jesus Christ, Savior of the World!
Yes, we can even take it another
step further. In this Lenten Season we
can engrave its message on our hearts and lives, to be blessed by it
daily. Only there it would be J C M S: JESUS
CHRIST, MY SAVIOR.
Take the message that started as a joke, a way to get even, and ended up proclaiming God's own truth, and wear it in faith on your heart – not only throughout this season, but all your life. I N R I was a true statement – but J C M S, Jesus Christ, My Savior, is God's saving statement for you.
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