"Paradoxes of His Passion"

The readings for this Palm Sunday don’t have us watching from the sidelines as Jesus rides triumphantly into Jerusalem on a donkey. We don’t hear any crowds shouting hosanna. Instead, we take a trip with Jesus through the Roman court system, on to Calvary, and then to the grave. The Last Supper and Gethsemane are past, and Jesus, with His face set like a flint, makes His way to the cross.

Since our readings for today have taken a different turn from what we might consider the "normal" lessons of Palm Sunday, let us then take a different approach as well. Let’s step back from whatever absorbs our daily lives, and go with our Savior down this road of sorrow. The trip we will take with Jesus this morning will require our full attention. Jesus was fully committed, so let’s give him our full attention. The suffering of Jesus unfolds in ways that are unusual. The events of our text unfold in paradoxes that yield the meaning that we seek this Holy Week.

It won’t be an easy journey this morning, but it will be interesting. Hopefully, it will strengthen your faith. Maybe even something in the words of our text will have a special meaning just for you.

As I just said, the passion of Christ unfolds in paradox. A paradox, by the way, is a contradiction – something that opposes common sense, but is in fact true.

The first of these paradoxes was our Lord’s coming from heaven above. Immanuel, God with us, was born in humble squalor, in a Bethlehem cave where farm animals stayed, to a teenage girl. What a place to find the world’s Prince of Peace. Fast forward to Palm Sunday. Our text has us right in the middle of the first Good Friday. So look down the road that Jesus is traveling today. All along the way in the words of our text are signposts, signposts that mark the paradoxes that strengthen us as they show us the Lord’s passion.

Our story begins at a new mile post, a turn of page of sorts, in the journey Jesus had begun the night before. The temple guard, led by the traitor Judas had "captured" Jesus. There is a paradox in that! Those of us who truly know Jesus and know the Scriptures know that Jesus allowed himself to be captured. Binding our Lords hands, his captors led him away into the night to face the abuse and injustice that would be imposed by the Sanhedrin.

In contrast, the events of the night have another meaning. They show us the paradox of our Lord’s commitment to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of sinful men. That doesn’t make sense, but we know it is true.

Our text begins with Jesus before Pilate. Here we find another paradox. Though he was only a minor player in Rome’s grand arena of conquest and occupation, Pontius Pilate was a figure symbolic of Rome’s system of justice. But we see Pilate rendering a great injustice upon Jesus.

Just look at the proceedings. Before this minor official of the great and powerful Roman Empire system of justice, before Pilate who cynically asks "what is truth?" stands the One who is the truth, the one by whom the heavens and the earth and everything in creation was made.

Jesus’ few and well chosen words made it clear that not even the mighty Roman Empire nor this puppet Pontius Pilate would have any power unless it were given them from above. Yet, Pilate, this insignificant provincial official, will presume to judge his divine benefactor. The paradox, the contradiction, the injustice, the shame of it all – why it’s enough to make angels blush.

Through it all, Jesus is calm. He is in control. He remains steady in the face of all the charges shouted against him in Pilate’s courtyard. On the other hand, Pilate is nervous and uncomfortable, frustrated, hesitant and even cowardly. His wife was troubled in a dream about this man. Her pleas to Pilate not to have anything to do with Jesus add to his discomfort. Pilate looks for ways to escape this dilemma. He is caught between his reluctance to condemn an innocent Jesus and the pressure of an unruly, bloodthirsty mob that wants Jesus to be crucified.

The crowd grows louder and more restless. Pilate thinks they will cool down when he offers them a choice between Jesus and the robbing, murderous Barabbas. Jesus, placed on the same platform with a figurehead of our fallen world, lowered to comparison with gross sin and sinners, and then abused by the leaders of the Jews when they persuaded the people to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus is a paradox typical of our age today.

Ask yourselves, do we make better choices? Where he choice is clear between the right and the good and the true, we find ourselves falling to the evil, the wrong and the false. We have another paradox as we see the robber and murderer go free and the innocent Jesus is condemned and goes to the

The mob sealed its choice with a curse that stands to this day. After Pilate went through the hand washing charade, as if he could cleanse his own conscience and his soul, all the people answered, "Let his blood be on us and on our children." They clamored for his blood, eager to bear the guilt of Jesus’ death on themselves. Nowhere do we find the people of Christ’s day giving expression to a more frenzied, more fanatical hatred for Jesus than in this passage.

The scourging Pilate had put on Jesus broke down his body and left him severely weakened. After the scourging Jesus was mocked by the soldiers, an old dirty cloak on his back, a crown of thorns on his head, and a stick in his hand for a scepter.

With mocking words, with spitting and hitting, they demean our Lord. Is this too not a paradox? It is, because these very soldiers, and everyone else who mocks Christ will one day honor the Lord. The legs and feet that kicked him and hurt him will one day bend and kneel low and honor him. The voices that belittled him will confess his name as Lord and God.

After a while, the soldiers’ games end. They pull the cloak off of Jesus’ bloodied back and put his own clothes back on him. They place the heavy burden of the cross on Jesus’ shoulder. Already physically spent and exhausted, already burdened with our sins, he must carry the burden of his cross to the place of execution.

Here, the paradox is abounding. The body of the God-man folds under the weight that he must carry. The procession stops and a man from the crowd is conscripted to carry the cross the rest of the way for Jesus. But Jesus still carries our sins. The man from Cyrene carries the heavy piece of wood, but Jesus bears the weight of the sin and grief and sorrow of the entire human race.

Arriving at the place of the skull, Jesus is crucified. The King of Glory nailed to a cross. His suffering and death exercised a power like no other force in the world. This is the ultimate paradox. The mob, his own people, the might of ancient Rome had the power to crucify him, but no army that ever marched or navy that ever sailed ever accomplished what the beleaguered figure of the dying Jesus accomplished for us.

All our sin, our hatred, our hostilities, all the sin that has been common to every generation since the fall of man, all the things on satans agenda against God were carried to that cross. But when the Son of God died, he defeated the power of death. And there we have another paradox.

The hours of Jesus’ passion are filled with a host of paradoxes that bless all who look to Him. The cynical sign Pilate had posted on top of Jesus’ cross, is contradicted by his glory now. Hanging, dying on the cross, he didn’t look like the king of anything. Now He is King of the Jews and the gentiles, and Caesar, and the whole universe.

Darkness fell as Jesus died. It was high noon, and we have yet another paradox. In his death, Jesus shined brightly as the light of the world. Jesus defeated the grip that sin held on humanity. Placed in the tomb, he would also defeat the power of death, and when Jesus emerged three days later, the hope of everlasting life was born.

Some would argue that the eagerness of the Jews for Jesus to be crucified did turn out to be a curse on them and their children. The paradox is that they got what they wanted. They were willing to accept the consequences of Jesus’ murder. But it didn’t work out it in the way that you might think. The blood of Jesus is on them, but not in vengeance. Jesus shed his blood for the sins of the whole world, and they are like the rest of us. They too are part of this world filled with sinners.

The blood of Christ is on us and on our children just as the blood of the Passover Lamb was on the doorposts of the houses of the Israelites prior to their Exodus from Egypt. The benefits of Christ’s blood are on us and on our children. The wonderful blessings of eternal salvation in heaven are available to all people of all generations, including those Jews who meant something different when they creamed "his blood be on us and on our children."

Peter says that we are redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. Paul says that we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins. John said that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

All the biblical writers testify to the blessings that come to us from Christ’s blood. His blood is on us and our children – in the very best sense of the phrase. That is the central truth of the Christian religion. Paradoxically, a frenzied, fanatical mob may have unintentionally given voice to this truth on a Friday morning long ago. Such are the paradoxes of Christ’s passion. Amen.