What Have We Done?

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins in salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. Our text tonight is taken from the gospel of Matthew chapter 27.

Now, from the sixth hour, there was darkness all over the land until the ninth hour.

And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, that is, my

God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it said, this man is calling

Elijah. And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink.

But the other said, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him. And then Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and he yielded up his spirit.

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.

The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.

And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, truly, this was the

Son of God. In the name of Jesus. What have we done?

You'll note that there at the cross, as soon as Christ dies, then there's an earthquake, the rocks are split, the temple of the curtain is torn in two from top to bottom, meaning only

God himself could have done the tearing. And there, standing at the foot of the cross, there's a centurion as well as others keeping watch over Jesus, and filled with awe, they confess, truly, this was the

Son of God. And this is one of those moments, these words of theirs, this confession,

I think can only properly be understood in the context of what have we done.

Have you ever worked on a project? Maybe you had some do -it -yourself project, you went to Lowe's or the

Home Depot, you got the materials, you bought the kit, you brought it home, and then you started to put the whole thing together and realize that you put the whole thing together backwards.

And you sit there and go, what have I done? And then at that point, you've got to tear the whole thing apart and start over.

But here's the thing. When you have that kind of a revelation, what have I done, you recognize that you've made a mistake.

But in saying that Jesus truly is the Son of God, there's a lot more than, well, a mistake, an oopsie, a slipsie -doopsie.

It's nothing like that. In fact, this is the kind of what have we done, this is truly the

Son of God, you can almost hear guilt in the confession.

Consider how that day began. For the centurions, that morning began like every other morning.

It was just a routine crucifixion, if crucifixions could actually be routine.

You'll note that Luther in the large catechism talks about the fact that in the commandment as it relates to thou shalt not murder, that when the state has found a criminal guilty and deserving of the death penalty, that the one who does the hangman's job is committing no sin when acting on the state's command, they put a person to death.

And so the Roman Empire, well, crucifixion was a standard way that they made examples of those people who were being crucified.

That's what they did, and that's why they did it. And centurions were the ones tasked with the job of actually performing the crucifixions.

They were the hangman's. And so they were just following orders. And in their way of looking at things that Friday morning,

Jesus was just the next person that they were to make an example of. He claimed to be a king, at least that was what they heard.

And well, they were to make an example of any would -be upstart royals who would dare to assert themselves above Caesar.

And so what did the centurions do? They gave Jesus the royal treatment.

And boy, the details on that are brutal. All the while, they were assuming that they were dealing with just another

Jewish zealot. I mean, Jewish zealots apparently were quite a frequent thing.

They were a dime a dozen at the time of Christ. And if you look at Jesus's list of disciples, there's a fellow, not

Simon Peter, Simon the zealot. There was a zealot among Jesus's disciples.

So at the time Jesus was handed over to the centurions, there wasn't even the faintest of thoughts that Jesus was actually a king, or even worse, that he was the son of God.

That thought wasn't even in their mind. In John chapter 19, we learn that Pilate, when he took

Jesus, he had him flogged. And at that point, the soldiers had twisted together a crown of thorns, put it on his head, and arrayed him in a purple robe.

This is the royal treatment. And so they came up to him saying, King of the Jews. And then they struck him with their hands.

Pilate went out again and said to them, see, I'm bringing him out to you so that you may know that I find no guilt in him.

Even Pilate knew that Jesus really hadn't done anything wrong. So they brought

Jesus out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to him, behold, the man, all part of the royal treatment.

So when the chief priests and the officers saw this, they cried out, crucify him. Crucify him.

Pilate said to them, will you take him yourself and you crucify him? For I find no guilt in him.

But we know that they prevailed upon Pilate. Matthew's version then says that the soldiers of the governor then took

Jesus into the governor's headquarters and they gathered the whole pedallion before him. They stripped him, put the scarlet robe on him, twisting together a crown of thorns, put it on his head, put a reed in his right hand, kneeling before him.

They mocked him and they spit on him, took the reed, struck him on the head.

And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe, put his own clothes on him and then led him away to crucify him.

It's just a standard, everyday crucifixion, you know. It's all in a day's work.

Well, it says this, that when Christ got to the cross, the soldiers took Jesus' garments and divide them into four parts, one part for each soldier.

There were four soldiers there responsible to do the work of taking Christ to the cross, nailing him to the cross, taking him and suspending him between heaven and earth.

And once they did that, they took his garments, his tunic, and the tunic though was seamless, woven into one piece from top to bottom.

So they said to one another, let's not tear it, but cast lots to see whose it shall be.

And this was to fulfill the scripture that says, they divided my garments among them and for my clothing, they cast lots.

So the soldiers did these things. Well, once you have your victims happily impaled to a cross, now comes the waiting game.

There is no cell service. There's no Wi -Fi. There's no Instagram or Facebook to check.

So they decided to just do what they always do, wait it out. And of course, you needed soldiers at the foot of the cross because if the people could overpower the soldiers, then they might be able to tear somebody down from the cross and to free them.

And so it was imperative that they stayed there, but it was basically a waiting game. And if the waiting game went too long, they could always hasten things by breaking the legs of the victims because in order to breathe while impaled to a cross, you have to pull yourself up to take a breath and let yourself down.

That's going to take your leg muscles and what's left of what you can use your arms for.

But then things got different. They began to take a turn for the unexpected.

At noon, rather than high noon being that time when everybody tries to shield themselves from the highest power of the sun, at noon, almost like clockwork, at noon, the sun stopped giving its light and darkness overtook the land.

And this wasn't one of those eclipses. You can predict those. There was no eclipse predicted for that day.

And it stayed dark. The sun couldn't even look at its creator being crucified there in Jerusalem.

And so the sun stopped giving its light that afternoon. And you'll note they had to have taken notice of that.

It also tells us in the Gospel of Matthew that when there was darkness over the land, that there were people at the foot of the cross.

And here the soldiers are able to kind of take in all of what's going on. A little bit of a circus atmosphere, if you would.

You've got the two robbers, one of them hurling insults at Jesus.

If you're the son of God, save yourself, save us. And then you have the bystanders saying, if you who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself if you are the son of God, come down from the cross.

And here's the part where you have to put yourself into the sandals of the

Roman centurions and ask the question, did they have any idea that one of the things that was being said, the scuttlebutt about Jesus, was that he was the son of God?

And so with them claiming he's the son of God and with the sun no longer shining, things are, well, not turning out to be a normal day as far as routine crucifixions go.

And then we hear in our Gospel text from tonight that Jesus, that he cried out with a loud voice and Jesus yielded up his spirit.

Six hours into his crucifixion, on the nose, at exactly three in the afternoon, the time of the evening sacrifice, the time when the

Passover lambs are slaughtered, Jesus yielded up his own spirit.

Now, there are a lot of powerful people on planet earth that can do all kinds of things, but none of us has the ability to actively take our own life like this, especially without the aid of some kind of a device in which to end our own life.

Jesus merely yielded up his own spirit. And when he did this, in the temple, the curtain was torn from top to bottom, showing that the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile was now torn down.

God himself tore that thing in half. The earth shook, big earthquake. Rocks were split.

Everybody's going to take notice of that. Tombs are opened. Many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many.

And there you have those four Roman soldiers and what's left of the crowd at the foot of the cross.

And what do you do in this situation? Well, I think it's interesting that when

Jesus yielded up his spirit, you know, we remember his words that he had the power to lay down his own life and he had the power to take it up again.

And he said of himself that I lay it down of my own accord.

And this is a fulfillment of kind of an obscure passage in the Psalms, but in Psalm chapter 64, verses 7 to 9, it says this,

God shoots his arrows at them and they are wounded suddenly. They are brought to ruin with their own tongues turned against them.

All who see them will wag their heads and then all mankind fears and they will tell what

God has brought about and ponder what he has done. And so with Christ laying down his own life, him bringing his life to an end of his own accord, well, this truly got the attention of the soldiers.

In fact, the church father Jerome writes about it in this way. It says in another gospel, this is the gospel of Matthew, demonstrates more clearly that the cause of the centurion's astonishment after the shaking of the earth, it wasn't until after he had seen

Christ give up the spirit that he said truly this was the son of God. For no one has the power to give up the spirit except the he who is the creator of souls himself.

And so here we can understand soul for spirit because the soul animates the body and makes it spiritual.

And because the spirit is the substance of the soul itself, as it is written, you take away their spirits and they cease to be.

And with this then, this revelation that not only was the written charge against Christ true, that he was the king of the

Jews, but further that the scuttlebutt being circulated at the foot of the cross that Jesus was the son of God also was true.

And here comes that aha, almost terrible aha moment, truly this was the son of God.

And now they are left, as the psalmist prophesied, to ponder what God has done. But not only that, to ponder what they have done.

But here's the thing, if we carefully exegete the scriptures, we cannot merely say, what have they done?

We have to ask ourselves, what have we done? Because scripture makes us all guilty of the crucifixion of Christ.

I again always like to make reference to that movie, The Passion of the Christ, put together by Mel Gibson.

Brutal movie, one that I've watched a couple of times, and the first one I had a very difficult time getting through it.

And in that movie, Mel Gibson decided to portray the brutality of crucifixion.

That was really what it was all about, and to show us what it is that our God and Savior suffered as a result of your sin and mine.

And in that movie, very few people really know this anymore because it's been so long since it came out,

Mel Gibson made a cameo appearance. He appeared in the movie once.

His face wasn't seen though. And in the movie, he plays the role of the soldier who nails the spikes into the hands and feet of Jesus.

Those are Mel Gibson's hands wielding the hammer. When asked about this at the time that the movie came out,

Mel Gibson rightly confessed, it was me who put him on the cross. Not talking about in the theatrical sense, but in the truest sense.

And you cannot rightly understand our Lenten responsibility, our daily responsibility as Christians to repent, unless you understand your own culpability.

You put Christ on the cross. So did I. And so in this regard then, we must not despair.

Although this word from the Roman centurion, truly this was the

Son of God, rings across time and comes to us and asks us the question, what have we done?

Scripture gives us some comforting words. And I think of one of the earliest sermons that Peter preaches.

Not the one at Pentecost, but the one right after in chapter three. After Peter had the, well, the privilege by the power of Christ to give healing to a man who was incapable of walking, a paralytic.

In fact, in that account, we all know how that story goes where Peter says to the man, silver and gold we do not have, but what

I do have I give you in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk. And of course, everybody there that saw the miracle knew and recognized the fellow as the one who was always begging at the beautiful gate.

They were astonished and Peter stands up and he addresses the crowd at this time.

And it's important to note that when he addressed them, it wasn't as if Peter had taken a computer tablet and was there when

Jesus was on trial and said, okay, it was Fred and Solomon and Moriel and these other guys.

They were all saying that crucify Jesus and took down their names. It's not what he did.

In fact, what's fascinating here is that the crowd that he addresses, there may have been a few people there who were there when

Pilate brought Christ out and said, behold the man. And there may have been a few of them from that crowd who shouted out crucify him.

But note here, we're talking, we're what, two, three months out from the crucifixion of Christ now?

How many of those people have long since left who cried out crucify him?

They were in town for the Passover, but there was no feast day in Jerusalem that day.

So listen to these words and see if we can find some comfort considering the magnitude of this discovery of what it is that we have done.

So Peter says, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the

God of our fathers, he has glorified his servant Jesus whom you delivered over.

You denied in the presence of Pilate when he had decided to release him, but you denied the holy and the righteous one and you asked for a murderer to be granted to you.

And you, you killed the author of life whom God raised from the dead.

To this we are witnesses. Those are strong words.

The thing is, is that they strike true for me and they strike true for you as well.

It's true. When we read the gospel accounts of Christ's trial, it's each and every one of us who's there, vicariously if you would, shouting crucify him.

We want Barabbas. We, because of our sin, your sin, mine, we've killed the author of life.

What have we done? Peter goes on, and his name,

Jesus's name, by faith in his name has made this man strong whom you see and you know and the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.

And now brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance as did also your rulers and is that not true for us?

We have. And that's the deceit of sin, the darkness of sin, the blackness of it.

It blinds us to the truth. And each and every one of us has learned to love the darkness instead.

But note this, that when you that Friday morning in Jerusalem cried out crucify him,

Peter is speaking the truth that we acted in ignorance, you acted in ignorance, I acted in ignorance, and so did their rulers.

But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer, he thus has fulfilled.

So repent, turn back so that your sins might be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the

Lord and that he may send the Christ who is appointed for you, Jesus.

So brothers and sisters, that's our comfort. That although we acted in ignorance, although we are responsible for putting

Christ on the cross, we again hear these Lenten words, these baptismal words to repent daily, return back to the waters of your baptism, return back so that your sins may be washed away, may be blotted out, and so that the times of refreshing may come from the presence of the

Lord, the times of refreshing that are not promised for this earth, but for the world to come.

And he will send the Christ who is appointed for you on that glorious day when he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.

And having been then forgiven of all of your sins because of what Christ has done for you on the cross, you need not shrink back in fear and say, oh no, what have

I done? But instead can stand before him confident of his grace, his mercy, and his pardon, because he truly is the

King of the Jews, and he truly is the Son of God, and he truly was sent because of God's great love for you, and he was truly the one who bled and died and suffered your penalty on the cross so that you might live.

So repent, and Christ offers you the refreshing words of forgiveness, pardon, and peace.

In the name of Jesus. Amen. If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax -free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

Avenue NW, Oslo, MN 56744 And again that address is

Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

Avenue NW, Oslo, MN 56744 We thank you for your support.

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