Pastor Muri's message from Sunday (part 2)

And while they coolly profit from their base lottery, these women are quietly grieving, [end of track 1, 4:56] with really no hope because they don’t understand the concept of the resurrection at this point. So, here’s the grief, the absolute, heart-wrenching, soul-rending grief of these who love Jesus and understand that He’s absolutely innocent and pure, and here’s these calloused soldiers who care nothing but what they can take away to add to their little inventory of stuff.

But out of this, and in the midst of all this, Jesus speaks to Mary. He focuses attention, as He is dying, as He is suffering the most indescribable agonies, not simply because of the horrific pain of the event of crucifixion, designed by the Romans for among other reasons -- and this wasn’t the only reason for crucifixion -- but one of the reasons was that it would be a lingering, painful death. The other was that it was a absolutely, publicly certifiable death. And we’ll not go there this morning, but they designed this thing for its brutality and its pain, its suffering, the suffering that was inflicted in it.

But that was not the whole sum of His suffering. The major sum of His suffering is expressed when Jesus said, “My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?” And in the heart-breaking, soul-searing agony of bearing the guilt of our sin and all humanity’s sin, as He hung on the cross, Jesus, through those eyes and that shattered soul, looks down and sees His mother at the foot of the cross, weeping for Him. And He speaks to her.

Let me pick it up in verse 16, in the middle of verse 16 of chapter 19, the paragraph starts this way: “So they took Jesus...”

17 and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.

19 Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. 20 Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. 21 So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, Do not write, The King of the Jews, but rather, This man said, I am King of the Jews. 22 Pilate answered, What I have written I have written.

There’s no love at all between those two groups.

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom, 24 so they said to one another, Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see [who will get it -- who is going to get this robe]. This was to fulfill the Scripture which says, They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

Don’t you just have to be impressed with the power and the completeness of this revelation that we hold in our hands?

So the soldiers did these things, 25 but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved [namely John] standing nearby, he said to his mother, Woman, behold, your son! 27 Then he said to the disciple, Behold, your mother! And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

What do we know about Mary that makes these words particularly comforting? You’ve got to crawl into this scene. You always have to get into the context of Scripture. You have to somehow find yourself transported back twenty generations, twenty centuries, and you’ve got to get back into that first-century context. You have to become a Jew in a Roman culture. You have to find yourself at the foot of the cross and you have to climb inside Mary and understand what is it like to be a woman who has risked her life and reputation to follow her son, who is being executed as a Roman felon, to a cross. And what is it like to be there and to watch your son die this horrific death and hear Him say what He says from that cross.

Like her Son, Mary herself was no stranger to grief. [end of track 2, 5:02] But before we go there, you’ve got to remember something about Mary.