Good Friday: The Difference the Cross Makes (Mark 15:33-39) Mark’s gospel is the shortest and simplest of the four gospels. It’s the one they use for Christianity Explained, the one you give to someone to read if they’re investigating Christianity. It’s the gospel where there are very few long, extended discourses of Jesus teaching; it’s a gospel of actions more than of words; it’s a gospel that moves along at some speed from event to event to event - the favourite word in Mark’s gospel is ‘immediately’. And yet it’s also a gospel of mysteries and secrets. It’s Mark’s gospel that keeps telling us how Jesus would heal someone and then tell them not to go and spread the word about him and about the fact that he is the Messiah; it’s Mark’s gospel that emphasises the way that the parables of Jesus not only reveal the truth but also conceal it, and that this is something that Jesus does deliberately; it’s Mark’s gospel that continually reminds us of the way that even Jesus’ own disciples were continually confused and baffled about who he was and what he was saying; it’s Mark’s gospel that tells us the story of the blind man who is healed, and to start with he sees but he still doesn’t see really - he says “I see people, but they look like trees walking”; it’s Mark’s gospel, as we’ll see on Sunday morning, that tells the Easter story in just eight verses, as a frightening, bewildering, mysterious event. And so the whole gospel of Mark concludes: “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” When you read Mark’s gospel, you are continually being reminded that this is the kind of story where there’s more going on than meets the eye. And as much as anywhere, that’s true at the climax of the story, in Mark’s account of the death of Jesus on the cross. As Mark narrates the story of the crucifixion, he records for us three events surrounding the death of Jesus, each of them somewhat cryptic and mysterious, but each of them - when you draw close and take the time to ponder - each of them taking us right to the heart of the meaning of Jesus’ death. The darkness (v.33; cf. Amos 8:7-10) The first, in verse 33, is the darkness. Mark writes: “At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour.” For three hours, in the middle of the day, from midday to three in the afternoon - for three hours as Jesus hung there dying on the cross there was darkness. Now various people have speculated about how it was that the darkness actually happened. Perhaps it was heavy black cloud; perhaps it was some sort of eclipse - we can speculate all day about what it might have been, but whatever it was there is not much doubt, I think, that we are intended to see that it was a supernatural darkness. It was a darkness caused by God, and it was no coincidence that it happened at the same time that Jesus was hanging there on the cross. We’re told about how long the darkness lasted for; we’re also told about how far it spread - that it was darkness that covered the whole land, the land of Israel, darkness at noon across the whole land of Israel. The meaning of the darkness is something that had been written about eight hundred years earlier, in the book of the prophet Amos. Amos chapter 8 verse 9: “In that day,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. 10 I will turn your religious feasts into mourning and all your singing into weeping. I will make all of you wear sackcloth and shave your heads. I will make that time like mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.” The picture is of a day of judgement for Israel; a day when God brings upon her the punishment for all her sins; a day that will be like the mourning for an only son, like the plagues that came upon the land of Egypt at the time of the Exodus. And in one sense, that is exactly what the death of Jesus represents. It is the judgment day of God’s people Israel; it is the day when they murder the last messenger that God sent to them, his own son, and throw away their last chance to repent, and bring themselves under the wrath and the curse of God. That is why there is darkness over the whole land of Israel. But there is something else going on in those three hours of darkness, something that means it’s not quite as simple as that. Because the only son who is being mourned for is the Son of God; and the curse that God put upon Israel is being carried by him; and the judgment that God’s people deserved is being endured by his own Son. So in those three hours of darkness, simultaneously, there is the hour of condemnation for God’s people Israel; and there is the means of their forgiveness - the death of God’s servant, the death of his own Son, as the payment for his people’s sin, so that those who repent; those who turn and place their trust in Jesus; those people find not wrath but forgiveness, not darkness but light. That’s what the darkness is about. The cry (v. 34; cf. Psalm 22:1) In the second place, verse 34, there are the words that Jesus cries out on the cross. Mark records, verse 34: And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Calling Elijah? There have been a number of theories over the years about what those words of Jesus mean. The first theory, and the oldest one, is the one that Mark records right here in verse 35: When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.” 36 One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said. There was a custom amongst pious Israelites at the time to cry out to Elijah in times of desperate trouble, and a kind of popular belief that God would send his prophet to come and help them. The reason, I guess, was the many stories of miracles connected with Elijah, and the many times that God sent someone to save him; along with the fact that Elijah had never died, but had been taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire and a whirlwind. And so some of the people standing near the cross hear Jesus calling out something that sounds a bit like ‘Elijah’, and they wonder if maybe that is what he is saying. A cry of despair? A second theory that some people have held to over the years is that Jesus died in despair - that he went to the cross expecting that God would somehow rescue him, and that he died having given up hope. It’s a theory that certainly picks up on some of the anguish and the heartache in Jesus’ words, and it takes seriously how awful the cross must have been. But then, it’s hard to go with that theory when you know that Jesus kept predicting to his disciples his suffering and death and resurrection, and when he had resolved for certain the previous night in Gethsemane that there was no other way. And it also misses the fact that Jesus would have known the ending of Psalm 22, and the fact that even that psalm is not about complete despair in the end. In the end, even in Psalm 22, there is salvation for the man who trusts in God. A feeling of forsakenness? There’s a third theory - that Jesus said those words on the cross, not because he literally meant them, but because they kind of expressed the way he was feeling. A lot of people find it hard to accept that Jesus could possibly have meant that he really was literally forsaken by God on the cross; and so they say, he says those words more as an outpouring of emotion, rather than an expression of what was actually happening between him and his Father on the cross. God forsaking God... But when you put the story of the death of Jesus into the context of the whole Bible, and when you think back to Jesus in the garden at Gethsemane the night before, and the meaning of the cup that he said that he would drink, when you put all that together, I think it becomes clear that what Jesus said on the cross was exactly what he meant. As he hung there on the cross, the cup that he drank for us was not just the physical agony that he suffered; nor was it just that he was up there exposed to all the shame and ridicule and the insults that they threw at him; it wasn’t just those things. The cup that he drank was the cup of God’s anger against all the evil of the world; it was the judgment of God that we deserved - God’s judgment on every sin of yours and mine and every other person since the beginning of the world. It was a bit like when you take a magnifying glass and you focus in the heat of all the rays of the sun onto one little leaf or piece of paper; God’s wrath against the sins of yours and mine and millions of others was focused in onto one point - it was focused in onto Jesus on the cross, and the heat of that judgement was burned into him. What was going on there on the cross was God going to hell for us, in the person of his son; it was God forsaking God; God the Father suffering the agony of the judgment of his Son - seeing his own Son dying in shame and agony on the cross and holding back his hand to let it happen; God the Son bearing the pain not only of our anger against God but also of God’s anger against our sin. That was what was going on there on the cross - God forsaking God. There’s a story of Martin Luther preparing a sermon on this passage, sitting at his desk for hours, not touching food or drink, trying to come to terms with this one verse. Those who saw him said that he appeared like a corpse. Finally, the story goes, he got up from his chair and was heard to say: “God forsaking God; no man can understand that.” It’s incomprehensible, isn’t it; and yet for those hours on the cross, that is exactly what took place. That was the heart of the meaning of the cross - it was what took place between Jesus and the Father; and it paid for our forgiveness. The curtain (v.38) There’s a third thing that Mark records as he tells the story of the death of Jesus, and it’s in verse 38. Mark writes verse 37, “With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.” And at that moment, it seems, verse 38: “The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” It could have been the curtain right inside the temple, between the Holy Place and the most holy place, but it’s hard to see that being a big public sign, that people saw and knew when it happened. More likely, it was not that curtain but the much larger curtain at the entrance from the temple court into the sanctuary itself. At Jesus’ trial they had brought false witnesses to testify that he had said: ‘I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man.’ And now, as they destroy the temple of his body, the curtain of the Jerusalem temple tears apart from top to bottom. It was a sign that pointed to God’s judgment on the whole temple and the end of the temple system; within a generation the Roman army would flatten the Jerusalem temple, just as Jesus had prophesied; and it was also a sign that from now on Jesus was the true temple, and his body was the place where earth and heaven meet, and where we come into the presence of God. The centurion (v.39) And so, verse 39, we are told about the Roman centurion, who sees all this - he would have been in charge of the whole operation from start to finish - he sees all this, and he sees how Jesus dies, and he says: “Surely this man was the Son of God.” He mightn’t have known much about Jesus before this day, but he had seen enough just in the way that Jesus died to convince him that this was someone pretty special. Normally, a crucifixion was accompanied by shrieks of rage and anger and hatred, and the calling out of wild curses; Jesus dies differently from that. And the centurion would have seen him all the way through the mocking and the scourging and the trial; and he puts all that together and draws the same conclusion that we started with in the opening sentence of the whole gospel of Mark - “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” If this is true... What difference does it make if this is all true? What difference does it make to our lives if this story of the cross of Christ is at the very centre of how we think and live? Our sin In the first place, it makes a difference to our sin. When we put the cross at the centre, and when we place all our trust in the Jesus who died there on that cross, it washes our guilty, anxious consciences clean. It tells us that our sin had been forgiven and our guilt has been fully paid for. It means that we are off the treadmill of trying to pay for our own sin, and free from the anxiety of whether God will accept us. It means that we can know for sure that we are pardoned by God, because the death of Jesus has fully paid for all our sin. Our hope It makes a difference, secondly, to our hope. When we stand before God we won’t be pleading for his pardon on the judgment day on the basis of the merit that we have stacked up in our own good works - as if that would ever get us there. It means that our hope is a strong hope, a real assurance. Paul writes in Romans chapter 8: “28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. 31 What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Our life And finally, it makes all the difference in the way we live out our lives here and now. If the cross is at the centre, then we know that we owe everything to that day, and to the Jesus who died there. So it’s Paul once again who writes in 2 Cor chapter 5: “14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”. That is the kind of difference that it makes...