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“He Walked for Us the Way of Sorrows
Mark 15:1-39

 

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Pastor Kevin Vogts
Trinity Lutheran Church
Paola, Kansas

Palm Sunday—March 25, 2018

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

There is a street in Jerusalem that since ancient times has been called the “Via Dolorosa,” Latin for “The Way of Sorrows.” It is commonly believed to be the route that Jesus walked from the judgment hall of Pontius Pilate to the place of crucifixion, the mount called Golgatha or Calvary.  I bought this stole on Good Friday in 1980 at a little shop on the “Via Dolorosa.”  It is a narrow street with rough, cobblestone paving.  In length it is just a few city blocks.  But for our Savior, this short journey truly was “The Way of Sorrows.”

It’s not too hard to imagine the scene that Good Friday morning.  The dusty street is lined with people. It is the festival of Passover, and Jerusalem is packed with visitors.  When news gets around that an execution is to take place that day, onlookers crowd along the sides of the road, held back by Roman soldiers. 

Jesus steps from the praetorium into the street.  He must have been a sight to behold.  He was beaten and exhausted from the trial and torture that had lasted all night and into the morning.  His face was streaming blood from the crown of thorns pressed into his forehead.  The skin of his back was in tatters from the flailing of the Roman whip. “Who is it?” a newcomer in the crowd might have asked. “It’s the Teacher, Jesus of Nazareth,” would be whispered back excitedly.  “What did he do? It must have been something terrible, for him to be punished like this!  And he must be guilty, because he’s not even protesting—he’s just going along peacefully!”

And that’s the amazing thing.  Jesus did not struggle or fight, at all, although he had every reason to!  The Sanhedrin had brought trumped-up charges of blasphemy against him and used false witnesses to convict him.  Since the pagan Pontius Pilate could care less about blasphemy, to Pilate the Sanhedrin falsely accuse Jesus of sedition: “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Christ, a king.”

But, Pontius Pilate sees through their ruse.  He finds Jesus NOT guilty and overturns the Sanhedrin’s decision against him.  In the end, however, Pilate buckles under to the pressure of threats that he himself will be accused of treason against Caesar, and he gives in to the demands of an angry mob: “If you let this man go, you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar. . .  ‘Why? What crime has he committed?’ asked Pilate.  But they shouted all the louder, ‘Crucify him!’  When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that instead a riot was starting . . .  he handed Jesus over to be crucified.”

So, even though he was innocent, Jesus was mocked, tortured, and spit upon, and then sent down the “The Way of Sorrows” to be crucified.  It was the greatest injustice of all time!  And what was Jesus’ reaction to the injustice against him?  Anger?  Retaliation?  He could have done what he did in Gethsemane, and caused all the soldiers to fall back to the ground.  He could have done what the Gospels report he did on several occasions in the past when faced with a hostile crowd, somehow blinding them to his presence and simply walking away through their midst.  But he didn’t. Jesus went peacefully.

Why? Why did the almighty Son of God allow himself to be led through the streets like a criminal?  Why did he meekly submit to the taunts of the soldiers and the jeers of the crowd?  Why did he go so peacefully? He went to his death PEACEFULLY in order to bring you PEACE!

Hundreds of years before that day, the scene had all been prophesied by Isaiah: “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”  The picture could hardly be more accurate.  Jesus was, as John the Baptizer called him, the innocent “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  He went peacefully to his own slaughter, willingly laying down his life as a sacrifice for you.

In television shows, the policeman always says to the criminal, “Now come along peacefully, and don’t make any trouble,” but they almost always do make trouble, protest, and resist.  Jesus didn’t.  He did go along peacefully. Isaiah says, “The punishment that brought us peace was upon him.”  That is what kept from him from cutting and running, that is what kept him ON COURSE as he walked out to Calvary: The knowledge that he was laying down his life as a ransom for many, with his sacrifice on the cross bringing peace to a world of lost sinners.

It was love for you that caused him to go peacefully to the cross, so that by his sacrifice you would be transformed from an enemy of God into a beloved child of God!  That was his mission, his goal, his JOY!  Hebrews encourages us, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the JOY set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame.”   He went PEACEFULLY on “The Way of Sorrows” to bring you PEACE!

“Carrying his own cross . . . they led him out to crucify him.”  Jesus is exhausted. He hasn’t slept for perhaps 36 hours. He has already lost a lot of blood. And now he is forced to shoulder the massive weight of the rough-hewn cross. Step by painful step, he struggles down “The Way of Sorrows.” Leading the way is the Roman centurion in charge of the execution detail, holding a small sign that announces his crime: “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”

As they thread their way through the crowds of gawkers, some mock, some weep, some laugh. And all the while, the weight of the heavy cross bites into his wounded shoulder, and strains his ability to go on. Again and again it drives him to his knees, until finally he goes down and can’t get up. Then the cross is placed on the back of a bystander, Simon of Cyrene, and the procession continues on toward Golgotha.

So, Jesus was eventually relieved of the weight of the cross. That, at least was a mercy. But, not much of a mercy, because the heaviest weight our Savior was carrying that day wasn’t the physical burden of that piece of timber. It was the SPIRITUAL burden of guilt. The heaviest weight that our Savior carried down the “Via Dolorosa” that day was the WEIGHT of OUR sins.

It may come as a surprise to you that sins have weight; you might have thought of sin as something ephemeral and weightless, like air. But, even air is not weightless. Weigh a deflated basketball, then pump it up and weigh it again. It will be substantially heavier after it is inflated. Yes, air does have a weight, and so do sins.

In fact, Scripture says that each sin has a TREMENDOUS weight—a single one of them would be enough to drag you down to hell for all eternity. “For the wages of sin is death,” and James says, “Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.”

And each of us is guilty of so many sins every day. Imagine the burden that rested on the back of our Savior as he staggered down “The Way of Sorrows.” He was bearing not only our guilt, but the guilt of the whole world!

Still, he struggled forward, carrying our guilt to Calvary, in order to make us guiltless.  By diverting the flood of God’s wrath on account of our sin directly onto himself, Jesus left us free from guilt. Parents often make great sacrifices so that their children may have a better life. Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice to make YOU the child of GOD, and give you ETERNAL life.  As one of our hymns says:

I lay my sins on Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God.
He bears them all and frees us from the accursed load.
I bring my guilt to Jesus to wash the crimson stains
White in his blood most precious till not a spot remains.

He went peacefully on “The Way of Sorrows” to bring you peace!  He carried a much greater burden than the timber of the cross that day, the burden of your guilt, to make you guiltless! 

“He Walked for Us the Way of Sorrows”

Amen.

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