Good Friday 2018

Welcome, my name is René, one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. I'm so glad, as Mark said earlier, that you braved the traffic and carved time out of your weekend to join us here. The Light in the Darkness is the name of our Lent series. We've been looking at the road to the cross in the Gospel of Mark, and tonight we've been leading up to this moment, up to this weekend. Tonight we're finally here with Jesus at the cross in the dark.

Tonight I want to focus on the darkness at the cross, because before we get to the sunrise of Easter, we need to spend some time with Jesus in the darkness. It's interesting in Mark and all the other Gospels, the writers take extra care to show that all the critical events of Christ's death happened in the dark. The betrayal was in the dark. All the trials were in the dark, and in the exact moment of Jesus' death, total darkness descends even though it's midday.

And so we want to spend some time in the darkness with Jesus, but really experiencing what the Gospel writers are trying to communicate poses a problem for us modern readers, and that's this. It is very difficult in a world that is lit by electricity to really understand the psychological, the emotional, the spiritual landscape that's being painted by the Gospel writers when they talk about the darkness. We rarely, if ever, experience total complete darkness so we don't understand what it feels like anymore.

So maybe to try to help you understand, I want to take you back in time, not 2,000 years yet, but just a hundred years or so back to 1914. Ernest Shackleton, the famous polar explorer, and his crew sail for Antarctica to explore the South Pole, but their ship, the Endurance, is caught in polar ice and it is crushed, and the crew have no other boat and no other way to escape the ice. For months they have to fight just to stay alive, and they're able to keep their spirits up through all the hardships, even through the bitter cold, even through the pangs of hunger.

Nothing seems to faze them except for one thing. One of Shackleton's biographers says, "Of all the difficulties they faced, though worst the most difficult by far, was the darkness. They had no Sun at all for more than two months from May to July, and it was the darkness that they were afraid they could not endure. It was because of the darkness that some of the men actually told Shackleton. They feared they were going insane." Most of us have never really felt that kind of darkness, but to people in a world not lit by electricity, that was a real tangible thing.

One time I was taking a tour of a silver mine in Carson City, Nevada, and when we got all the way down into the depths of the mine, the tour guide turned off all the lights, and I think that was the only time in my life I've ever really experienced total darkness. In that kind of total darkness, you can't see your hand in front of your face. You actually don't know what's happening all around you. You don't know if the people who were with you when the lights went off are still there with you. You don't know which direction is forward, which direction is back. You're completely isolated, completely disoriented, completely alienated, and after just a few seconds you could feel the panic start to well up inside of our little tour group.

And I'll tell you, the tour guide told us, "Now I'm just going to turn off the lights for 60 seconds, but those 60 seconds felt like an eternity. That's what real darkness feels like. That kind of isolation, that kind of disorientation, that kind of terror." And I paint that picture because tonight I want you to feel that same sense of disorientation when we go through the scriptures because that's what Jesus felt.

What I want to do is very simple. Just go through those dark hours verse by verse, and then we'll take communion together. So let's begin our descent into the darkness. In Mark 15:23 it says, "They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha," which means the place of the skull, "and there they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it, and they crucified him." As Tim Keller points out in his book, King's Cross, crucifixion was designed to be the most humiliating and the most gruesome method of execution ever.

But it's intriguing that Mark actually leaves out most of the gory details that you might have seen in a movie or read in another book. So I think it's important to pay close attention to the details he chooses to include because they're very important, like in the next verses. "Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get." The soldiers are doing this. "It was nine in the morning when they crucified him, so the sun is now up. The written notice of the charge against him read, 'The King of the Jews.' They crucified two rebels with him, one on his right and one on his left.

Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, 'So you who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days come down from the cross. Save yourself.' In the same way the chief priests and the teachers of the law mocked him among themselves. He saved others. They said he can't save himself. Let this Messiah, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe. Even those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

Mark's choice of these details makes it clear he is thinking of another scripture that was written a thousand years before this happens. It's in the Old Testament, the Hebrew scriptures, Psalm 22, because every single detail Mark records is in this psalm. And you can feel Mark marveling that this is some kind of a prophecy of what I'm seeing here. For example, Psalm 22 says, "All who see me mock me. They hurl insults shaking their heads. He trusts in the Lord. Let the Lord rescue him. A pack of villains surround me. They pierce my hands and my feet. They divide my clothes among them. They cast lots for my garment." There's a lot more, but look at the first verse of Psalm 22. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" As we will see the cry of Jesus on the cross.

What is Mark doing here? Mark is saying to people who would have been familiar with this scripture, he's saying, "Look, compare these two things, this event." And then this thing prophesied a thousand years before. He's saying what this means is the death of Jesus Christ on the cross is no accident. It's no miscarriage of justice. It was somehow part of God's plan from ages past. His plan to do what? To descend into our darkness.

And it happens in the next verse. "At noon," so middle of the day, "darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon." Now what was this darkness? It could be there was some natural cause, a dust storm or something, or it could be it was supernatural darkness. Mark is not focused on the how, but he is all about the why. What does this mean? This is more than just physical darkness. Again, he's painting a landscape of real emotional and psychological and spiritual lostness.

Because darkness is the way that the Bible consistently describes the state of our souls until God saves us. Just like in that mine, I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. I didn't know if anybody was around me. I didn't know which direction was forward and backward. I was completely disoriented and isolated and alienated and alone. That is what it feels like when we are separated from the light of God in our lives.

And what you see happening here in this moment is Jesus descending into this darkness. It's the deepest moment of this emotional darkness for Jesus Christ. It says, "And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'Elo, Elo, Elo, Elama sabachthani'!" Which means in Aramaic, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Again prophesied in Psalm 22, but Jesus isn't just fulfilling Psalm 22. He's living it. He's feeling the deepest depth of despair and depression and discouragement that you and I could ever feel. Utter isolation, utter disorientation, utter alienation.

Why? He went through our darkness with us and for us to bring us into the light of God. He died the death that we should have died so that we can have life. Well, when some of those standing near heard this, they said, "Listen, he's calling Elijah." Because of the way that Aramaic word sounds, "Eloi." "He's calling Elijah." Somebody ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a staff, and offered it to Jesus to drink. Now leave him alone. Let's see if Elijah comes to take him down.

But with a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Another fascinating detail, because what's happening here is that in the deepest moment of darkness, the ultimate source of light, God is being unleashed into our dark world. That's what Mark intends to convey here. Let me explain this.

In the temple in Jerusalem, if you could see through that building with an x-ray, you'd have seen a tall, thick purple curtain that separated the Holy of Holies where God's glory dwelled. In the Holy of Holies, God's glory was described as brilliant light. In the Hebrew Scriptures, it's called the Shekinah glory of God. But only one man, only the holiest man, the high priest, got to enter. The holiest man from the holiest nation, Israel, got to enter. And only once a year on the holiest day, Yom Kippur, got to enter. And only with a perfect holy sacrifice.

Because this is how holy the Shekinah glory, the bright light of God, how holy that is compared to the darkness and the sin of our world. Well what this is saying is, at the moment Jesus died, in that moment that he came into our darkness, this massive curtain was ripped open. Mark says the tear was from top to bottom, just to make clear who did it. From top to bottom, from God to us.

Then as now, it was Passover weekend, right at the temple Passover lambs had been sacrificed. And in doing this tear, God is saying the ultimate sacrifice to end all sacrifices has been given. The Lamb of God. And now the way is open for anybody, no matter how unholy, to come into the presence of the light. And just to make sure we get that point, that anyone can now come into the presence of God, Mark immediately shows us that the first person to go in was the darkest soul that was there.

And when the centurion who stood there in front of Jesus saw how he died, he said, "Surely this man was the Son of God." And this is an amazing bookend to the very first line in the very first verse, in the very first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, which is this. This is the beginning of the good news about Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God. In other words, Mark's saying, "My whole point is to show you how Jesus was the Son of God, but up to this point, no one in Mark's gospel had really figured that out yet. Not even the disciples, they called him, some of them called him the Messiah, but nobody had recognized him as the Son of God yet.

Until the centurion of all people, the most unlikely person there, because he was the executioner. He was the one in charge of the death of Jesus Christ. Pretty unlikely that he would say this, and even more unlikely because he's a Roman. Every single Roman coin at the time was inscribed with this, "Tiberius Caesar, son of the divine Augustus." So the only person that a Roman would ever call the Son of God was Caesar. But this soldier gives that title to Jesus. Why? All Mark says is when he saw how he died, because he was the one right next to him, when he saw how he died on the cross, up close.

I have only ever actually been right next to one man when he has died. I was holding his hand at the time in the hospital, and I will never forget that moment. But this centurion had seen this happen hundreds of times, maybe thousands, but there was something absolutely unique about the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. What was it? Mark doesn't belabor that, because at some point it's a mystery. At some point it's poetry. At some point it's the Spirit of God coming into your soul, speaking to you when you see how Jesus died on the cross.

But at some point there's something that causes you too to say, "Surely this man was the Son of God." There is something about seeing how Jesus died that just captures your imagination. Probably five times during the singing tonight I just found myself just crying and having to wipe the tears away. There is something about seeing how he died, because it means nothing else. The cross surely means when you're in the dark God gets it. It means he has entered with you into your darkness.

And so tonight if you are discouraged, if you are depressed, if you're in despair, maybe in despair over things that have happened in your life circumstances, or maybe in despair over your own failures and your own sins, I want you to know you are not alone. I know it feels in the dark. You don't know if anybody is there with you, but there's someone right next to you and it's Jesus. And he's there in your dark and he'll stay with you in your dark and then he will lead you into the light.

A woman named Carolyn Cox has been called the British Mother Teresa. She's a scientist and a nurse and a former Speaker of Parliament. She is now constantly on the move, even though she's very elderly, but she's still like Mother Teresa, is always going out reaching out with food, with medicine, to war victims. But she travels to the worst hot spots around the globe to bring her assistance.

And so somebody once asked Carolyn, "In all of your travels, what has been your worst moment and what's been your best moment?" And she said, "Well, the worst without question was a village in the Sudan after soldiers just left a trail of death because when she got there more than a hundred men were dead, their bodies were still on the streets. Huts were still on fire, some of them. Crops were destroyed. That was the worst moment." And what was her best moment? She said, "It came right after the worst because she walked into this village and she saw all this destruction and then from the few remaining huts some women and children began emerging from hiding and in their first act they picked up sticks lying on the ground, made tiny crosses out of them and pushed them into the earth.

And she asked them, "Are you making instant graves?" They said, "No, the graves will come later. These crosses are not graves." They said, "These crosses are symbols of hope." Because they explained to her they pushed these into the ground to remind themselves that as followers of Jesus they served a God who knew pain as they knew pain, a God who was with them in their darkest hour. And in that moment they state their hopes on this belief that Jesus knows and that we are not alone and that he's with us in our dark.

And their hope can be yours too when in the darkness you look up and you see how he died because you'll see Christ Jesus has descended all the way into the darkness with you and will lead you into the light of God. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank you for the amazing truth that you're not a God who is distant and uncaring, for the truth that we don't have to pretend that everything's good all the time, for the truth that you didn't just send messages from above, you entered in and you're still here with us in the dark. So as we take communion help us like the centurion to see how Jesus died so that in a mysterious and spirit-filled and poetic moment of encounter our souls will also say surely this was the Son of God. In his name we pray. Amen.