THE PASSION OF JESUS, THE CHRIST
Matthew 26:14-27:66

Matthew 26:14-16
           Judas agrees to betray Jesus. We don’t really know why. Perhaps it was because Jesus wasn’t turning out to be what Judas thought the Messiah should do and be. For the price of thirty pieces of silver, Judas conspires to hand Jesus over to those who want to get rid of him. That is not an arbitrary figure—thirty pieces of silver was the price of a slave in those days. Jesus was sold for the price of a slave. That’s all he was worth, even to one of his own disciples.

Matthew 26:36-46
           Here we see an intimate portrait of the human Jesus. Let us not deceive ourselves into thinking that Jesus really wanted to endure the cross. His words tell us otherwise, “let this cup pass from me”. Even in such a desperate moment, though, Jesus remains completely obedient to God and God’s place. If there had been any other way for the redemption of the world to occur, Jesus was begging for that instead of what lay ahead of him. But there was no other way, and Jesus is betrayed and handed over to those who want to get rid of him.

Matthew 26:57-68
           What an absolute joke of a trial! Lie after lie is told against Jesus, just to give his critics a reason to justify his death. In spite of all the lies, though, there are no two witnesses who can agree on just what he had done. So the High Priest switches to another tactic and demands Jesus to self-incriminate himself. Ironically enough, Jesus speaks the only words of truth in the entire room that night. Those words of truth lead to his condemnation and Jesus is mocked, spat upon, and hustled off to Pilate.

Matthew 27:1-2, 11-23
           The religious leaders have already decided they want nothing to do with Jesus’ kingdom—it threatens their authority and their tradition. So they whip up a crowd and “convince” the crowd that he needed to be gotten rid of. I often wonder how many people were in the crowd that day that were also in the crowd lining the road just a few days earlier when Jesus rode into Jerusalem. Can you hear their cries? CRUCIFY HIM! CRUCIFY HIM! No amount of argument from Pilate would work. Their minds’ were made up.

Matthew 27:23-37
           Jesus is handed over to be flogged and crucified. The gospels don’t really describe what happens; they don’t need to. The early readers would know exactly what a Roman flogging looked like and they would know what a crucifixion entailed. Throughout history, the story has gotten sanitized so much to the point that we say, “Jesus was flogged. Jesus was crucified”. We don’t like to talk or think about the whip, embedded with broken rocks, metal, pottery, essentially anything that would rip and tear the victim, slamming against his body…39 times. We don’t talk about his robe being stripped off of him, likely reopening coagulating wounds. We don’t talk about him being thrown onto the cross and blunt-ended spikes (just to inflict a little more pain) being driven through his wrists and his ankles and heels. After this, his cross is dropped into a pre-dug hole, and Jesus is left hanging, suspended between earth and heaven nailed to a tree.

Matthew 27:45-50
           The King of Glory dies. He is completely separated from God; he is ridiculed by his critics, he is abandoned by his friends. He is utterly alone.

Matthew 27:57-60
           The Hope of the World is sealed away in a tomb. The powers of this world celebrate victory while the followers of Jesus are left to ask, “why”?

           It is perhaps the saddest story in history. In hindsight, we know the outcome is glorious. But before we celebrate, we come face to face with the enormity of what Jesus went through, that you and I might be reconciled to God. The body of Christ was broken…for you. The blood of Christ is shed…for you. AMEN.

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