Sermons

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“Into Your Hands . . .”
April 13, 2003
Pastor Dan Baumgartner
6th in a sermon series on the Seven Last Words of Christ
Luke 23:44-49

Hosanna! Save, us, we pray! That’s what Hosanna means. Hosanna in the highest! Here comes Jesus, the Blessed One of God! That’s what we’re used to on Palm Sunday. Palm branches, kids, singing, celebration.

Crucify him! Crucify him! The words make us cringe to even say them in a responsive reading. Slap him on a cross, and see how long he lasts. Torture him until he is dead.

Part of the church calls this Sunday “Palm Sunday,” and celebrates Jesus’ favorable entry into Jerusalem at the Passover. Part of the church calls this Sunday “Passion Sunday,” and recognizes it as the beginning of the week that ends in Jesus’ betrayal and death.

Hosanna! Crucify him! Hosanna! Crucify Him! Same city. Same week. Same people. Same voices.

Palm Sunday says look at these beautiful pieces of artwork the Bethany artists have created. They celebrate Jesus’ birth, his life, his ministry, his relationships. But Passion Sunday says Look! Look where he ends up…There! On the cross.

Read with me from the gospel of Luke, the 23rd chapter and 44th verse.

In the last year, I have invested a considerable amount of time in reading two authors. One is Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the great Russian novelist of the 19th century. After two previous tries, I finally succeeded in reading The Brothers Karamazov. The other is J.R.R. Tolkien, the suddenly fashionable British fantasy writer whose Lord of the Rings trilogy from the 1940s is so popular right now.

The two writers are an interesting contrast. Dostoyevsky’s grand novel is a study in characters. Virtually everything in the book is the telling of a conversation, a thought process, the dialogue, the emotion, the study of an individual person. The focus is always on people, with virtually nothing about the land, the surroundings, the settings.

Tolkien, on the other hand…writes a broad, sweeping epic that has as extremely detailed description of the land, the history, the ages that have gone before, the geography…so much so that, in fact, people have published books just with the maps explaining the layout of Tolkien’s stories. Tolkien doesn’t ignore people, but the camera always sweeps wide, encompassing the wide open land and ages. It’s one reason the movies have been filmed so beautifully in New Zealand.

This gospel writer Luke…insists that we combine the two. The camera will end up on the face of Jesus…but not before Luke tells us some other details that are important.

a) As Jesus hangs on the cross, darkness comes over the land. It’s only noon, but it is dark. Everything, in other words, is exactly as it should NOT be. At noon, the sun should be the hottest, but it’s covered. It should be totally light, but it is dark. The power of darkness is visibly present. When Jesus was arrested, he said, “Have you come out with swords and clubs as if I were a bandit? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness!” There has never been a darker hour.

b) Luke tells us that the temple curtain was torn in two. Lynne did a nice job last week of explaining this from the gospel of Matthew. In the Jewish temple there in Jerusalem, the large curtain set apart the most sacred place from the less sacred. The curtain separated the dwelling place of the divine…from the human. And now, when that curtain is torn [and the word Luke uses is the word we get “schizophrenia” from]…the curtain is “schizoed,” or “schism-ed…” it is torn in two, so that there is no longer a separation between the heavenly and the earthly. Matthew and Mark get even more specific than Luke and tell us that the curtain was “torn from top to bottom.” I love this detail. That is, the rip came from heaven’s initiative, from God, and made its way down to the bottom, to earth, to human beings.

And so Luke says, BEFORE Jesus dies…notice the sky, notice the curtain. And immediately AFTER Jesus dies, Luke has more details for us. Let your eye sweep the surroundings. Luke says that in essence, the whole world is watching. The centurion (most likely a Roman, a foreigner) bears testimony that Jesus was righteous. The crowd (most likely Jewish) leaves, beating their breasts as a sign of grief and confusion. And the followers and friends of Jesus stand a safe distance away…watching. These watchers include the women from Galilee who followed Jesus, and this little sentence is very important for Luke. It will be THESE woman, the ones who watch Jesus die…who will bear the first and strongest witness to his resurrection on Easter.

And so all of these things are the landscape, the broad sweep of history and geography, that Luke wants us to understand. And yet they are background for the main drama. Jesus speaks again from the cross. In this sermon series it is now the sixth time that we have heard him: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” I entrust my spirit. They are the words of Psalm 31 that Lynne read earlier… “You are indeed my rock and my fortress…Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.” Psalm 31 is a psalm of trust. “Father, into your hands…” Jesus says.

Once again it seems eerily true that Jesus is somehow still in control from the cross. Especially from the cross. Each of the words we have read these last weeks has shown Jesus to be so very intentional. The same is true here. His life is not taken from him, but he hands it over. Jesus is not a victim, or at least, not ONLY a victim…for He has known what would happen. In the ninth chapter of Luke, it says Jesus “set his face toward Jerusalem.” And on at least five different occasions between chapter 9 and 22, Jesus says things like this: “Let these words sink into your ears: the Son of Man is going to be betrayed into human hands.” He will suffer, be rejected, killed and raised…five times he tells his disciples.

But Jesus does not only choose to give up his life, to die. Jesus entrusts Himself into God’s hands. In the darkest hour, the time of the most physical pain, in the agony of betrayal, as he dies a lonely death (remember, friends and followers at a distance), Jesus clearly CHOOSES to trust God. He is releasing himself INTO GOD’s HANDS.

He has already rejected a number of other hands. At the beginning of his ministry, he rejected trusting himself into Satan’s hands, which would have acquired for him great wealth and influence. Along the way he rejected entrusting himself into the hands of people, knowing that so many had agendas for his Messiahship. He had rejected entrusting himself to either the religious establishment or the reigning government. When push comes to shove, Jesus is only willing to entrust himself to one person...his Father, God in heaven.

Think about it. Jesus is staring death squarely in the face, it is only a moment away. Sometimes, because we believe that Jesus was both man and God, fully God and fully human…we think that death was perhaps an easy thing. Jesus came from heaven, but I believe is never more human than here, as he dies. Does he know what it will be like? Does he know he will be again with the father? Is he afraid at all? Does he wonder if he has heard correctly? Jesus is facing the black hole of death, and he must choose. Will he trust God? Can he trust God? And what is he preparing to trust God FOR? If He trusts God, clearly it will not mean that he will not die. It does not mean there will be no pain, it does not mean he will not feel alone, it does not mean that he will not face every single thing that WE face. Jesus stands at the abyss. And I have always wondered…if at that moment, he knew again the voice that had come down from heaven at his baptism: “This is my beloved Son.” YOU…belong to me. In the last moment, Jesus trusts God for EVERYTHING: for God’s presence, for his salvation, for his eternity.

Whose hands do you trust yourself to? If you listen to the commercials, you’ll trust in an insurance company. “You’re in good hands.” When I think of putting myself in someone else’s hands, I think of riding in a car. I actually hate to ride in the passenger seat with almost anyone. I’d always rather be driving. Now that we’re doing Driver’s Ed at our house, the phrase “putting yourself in someone else’s hands” has a whole new meaning! I also think about being on an airplane, taking off. I remember being nervous, the first few times I rode on a plane. You get to that point when the plane is absolutely hurtling down the runway that you realize that even if the pilot wanted to stop safely, he probably couldn’t. You’re absolutely out of control. In fact, I first learned to relax during takeoff by recalling to mind…that I was actually, literally in God’s hands at that moment.

What do WE mean when we say we will trust God? Like Jesus, it will not mean that we will not die. I assure you we will. It doesn’t mean there will not be pain, or relationship problems or betrayal…there have been and will be those things. But it means that whether we sit in an airplane seat barreling at hundreds of miles an hour, or stand on the mountain looking into a bottomless crevasse, or stare into the face of death itself…that we belong to Him. And it makes all the difference.

The Heidelberg Catechism, written way back in 1562 says it so well. This teaching tool starts with the question “What is your only comfort, in life and in death?” And the answer is: “That I belong, body and soul, in life and in death, not to myself but to my faithful savior Jesus Christ…”

Jesus trusted God through the darkness of death itself, and was called and greeted out the other side because God is trustworthy. And because Jesus’ death and resurrection was FOR OUR SAKE, we count God as trustworthy each time we look at the cross.

Because God is trustworthy, we can hear the words of Isaiah 43 speak to us:

“But now, thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you….”

Because God is trustworthy, we can bear witness to the waters of our own baptisms, even as Mig was baptized this morning. Baptism proclaims our statement “I belong to God,” but even more fundamentally God’s statement spoken in Christ to us, “You belong to Me.”

Because God is trustworthy, we can hear Stephen in the book of Acts, a deacon of the early church, mouth these words even as he is stoned to death, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

Because God is trustworthy, we can hear Paul say in 2 Timothy, “For I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him.”

Because God is trustworthy, we can hear the words of Chic Whitehill, a longtime member here at Bethany who died a few months ago. I talked with Chic just a few days before she died, and she knew that she only had a short time to live. I said “Chic, how are you really doing? How are you on the inside?” And I’ll never forget her answer. She said, “Well, Dan, I know this: I don’t have anything to be afraid of.” No, she didn’t. She counted God as trustworthy.

Hosanna! Crucify him! Such a confusing week. And in light of it, I have just one more thing to ask you. What right do we have, we the people who so willingly shout “hosannas” when things go our way, but are just as likely to go our own way, or scream “crucify him”… What right do we have to call upon Him, to entrust ourselves to Jesus Christ? It’s exactly the right question. We have NO right. No right at all. We have only a gift. It’s called grace, given to us by God, seen most clearly in Jesus, the One who died on a cross. The One who says, “You belong to me.” The One who said, “Father, into YOUR hands…I entrust my spirit.” Amen.