Readings:
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God the Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
We love to have a scapegoat. A kicker misses a last second field goal, and all everyone remembers is that moment, and forgets all the shortfalls and mistakes that led up to it. Humanity gets to the end of the second world war and we can pin everything on Hitler, as a demonic terror, and forget about all of the individual human decisions and actions that led the world to that dark place.
Even today, depending on where you turn for your news, you see people placing the blame for this pandemic and all of its death-toll and economic destruction on Trump, or on China, or this or that state governor or those kids out partying. We ignore that so much of our trouble stems from the systems of economy that we actively participating in, demanding low-prices always and that someone else do the work. We enjoy the benefits of globalism even while it threatens our lives and our local economies.
Even that, though, is just an earthly example of the point I’m trying to make. We lay the blame somewhere else. This woman you gave me gave me some fruit and I ate. The serpent tempted me and I ate.
Scripture does not let us go. It does not let us get away that easy. When the seed of sin is planted, and it grows, and bears fruit, its fruit is bitter and black with the taste of death. When death comes, it carries its accusation with it: “I am the wages of your sin. I am what you deserve. You were taken from the dust. And to dust I will return you.”
We look for someone to pin everything on so that we can escape. It doesn’t work. Death will get its man.
We can’t pin our sins on anyone else. But someone else willingly had them nailed into Him. A scapegoat will not work, so we are given the Lamb of God.
Listen to the sounds of the hammer driving the nails through flesh, shattering bone, and finally sinking into the wood. Each stroke of that hammer is our sin, having its wages paid out. Every time you worshipped yourself instead of your God. Every lie you told to keep people from seeing your failures. Every sexual act that defiled your marriage bed. Every time you yelled at your parents. Every time you wished for different children than those God had given you. Every time you saw someone in need and kept right on going. All your hatred. All your pride. All your greed. All your gossip and back-biting. All your selfishness. All your doubting of God. All your hatred and neglect of His Holy Word and your disregard of His Sacrament. Every single last one.
Can you imagine being one of those who tortured Jesus in His final hours? Who hit Him, spat in His blessed face, hurled insults and wagged their heads, pressed the thorns into His temples, drove the nails, lifted the cross, pierced His side? To be one of those, and to see His eyes. His anguish, His pain, His love. That must’ve been the most haunting of all, to look on Him with hate and see the love in His eyes.
Love stretched out His arms and received everything our sin deserved. Stroke by stroke. And then the cross was lifted, the would creaked and He cried out as the weight of the world, the weight of your sin wrenched the ligaments in His shoulders and collapsed His diaphragm. He who knew no sin became sin. He took the weight. And in that moment feel it now. The weight is gone from you. He cried out to His Father. He gave up His Spirit. He breathed His last. He closed His eyes in darkness. He has taken your sin so that you might become the righteousness of God.
The love of Christ shown in its fullness on the cross controls us. One has died. And because He has died, we have all died. And now in Him we live. Go from the cross new men and women. Forgiven. Free. Free from the slavery of living for yourself, free to live for Jesus who for your sake died and was raised. Amen.