[AI translation] It's not really relevant, but I would like to mention something. I am glad that, without any artifice, the move was made so that the discussion of the creed on the crucifixion and death of Christ fell on this Sunday, the so-called carnival Sunday. Let this be a warning that the joyful, free and carefree hours of man's life and the bloody cross of Jesus Christ should not be in conflict with each other! Would that all our joy had something of heaven's seriousness in it, and that all our mirth were sanctified by the tragedy of Calvary! Would that all our recreations might be enfolded in the holiness of redemption! Would that every Christian boy and girl, man and woman, could have fun and carnival without taking their eyes off the crown of thorns! Do you feel how topical it is to talk of the cross on Carnival Sunday?!I would like to mention one other thing by way of introduction. It is interesting how the otherwise terse, discreetly brief Gospel accounts suddenly become so eloquent in describing the circumstances of the death of Jesus Christ! They cover in great detail every detail of the story of the crucifixion. And we see the same thing in the Apostles' Creed, which elsewhere also does not waste words, but here gives a detailed account of the sequence of events of a few hours: 'he was crucified, he died and was buried, he was condemned to hell.' Surely this is not an accident, either in the Gospels or in the Creed, but a sign that the cross of Jesus is the very centre of the Christian faith. Here, at the cross, is the great watershed of souls, the great point of conflict between faith and unbelief, the boundary between salvation and damnation, the turning point of life and death. And so it is today, as Paul experienced and wrote: "For the saying of the cross is foolishness to them that perish; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God." (1 Cor 1:18)
1) Let us first see what "speaking of the cross" is. These are historical facts. Many other people have been crucified, many other people have died, many other people have been buried: this is what happened to Jesus, this is what people did to the man called Jesus of Nazareth. Not particularly cruel, not particularly more merciful than others, but as they punished the evildoers of the time, so they did to Jesus. He too was first mocked, tormented spiritually, humiliated with spit, slaps, taunts, cowardly rudeness. Then he was beaten up. The forty lashes with which Pilate had him scourged were such a terrible punishment among the Romans that they were not even allowed to be inflicted on Roman citizens, only on the people of the conquered country. The strokes of the lead-tipped, five-pronged whip literally peeled the skin from the body of the bound victim. In most cases, the wretched man had already died. Jesus Christ endured.
But what must it have been like afterwards, when Pilate, leading Jesus out again and having him stand before the crying people, said: "Behold the man" (John 19:5), we may get an idea of this from these words of the prophet Isaiah concerning him, "...we looked upon him, but his countenance was not desirable! (Isa 53:2-3) No wonder he collapsed under the heavy cross he had to carry on his shoulders to the place of destruction. They took him down and carried him on with another, not to lighten his load, but to prevent his premature death, which would end his agony too soon. Then they beat him on the cross with nails driven through his hands and feet, so that he might be slowly tortured to death. His blood did not flow, but his death was caused by increasing spasms, muscular fever and finally suffocation, as is usually the case with all crucified men.
After he died, he was buried. This burial is the seal of death. Behold, so truly did he die that he was buried as one who had become superfluous, even a distraction in the world of the living. So it was! You remember him, for he is described in much more detail in the Gospels than I have now tried to tell the well-known story. This is the talk of the cross! So it is, "he was crucified, he died and was buried".
2) But what is "foolish" about it, as Paul says? What is "foolish" in this otherwise tragic historical fact is what our Creed adds to this list: "to the pit of hell". Now with this remark he takes the whole discourse of the cross out of the framework of mere historical events, and makes the whole into an act of divine redemption. For this remark, "into hell", is not the next step in the abyss after crucifixion, death and burial. It does not mean that after he had been crucified, died and was buried, he had to descend somewhere else, into hell, to do something there, but that this "into hell" is a kind of interpretation of the meaning of the three words that precede it. That is to say, that here was not an ordinary crucifixion, death and burial, as there have been so many on this earth, but that here someone went through hell in this crucifixion, death and burial! And that man who is here "crucified, dead, and buried" is that man: the Son of God, that is, in Him God Himself humbles and gives Himself, He descends into hell!
It was therefore by the love of God incarnate in a human life that the terrible thing was done, that He was 'crucified, died and was buried'. Here God has executed a terrible judgment, on Himself, but obviously not for Himself - but for someone else, instead of someone else! He took the judgment, the punishment, from someone else, replaced someone else, substituted someone else when He was crucified, died and was buried. Someone was saved, redeemed by God from the hell that awaited him, from damnation, by this death.
And do you know who that someone is for whom God made such a terrible sacrifice? It is you! And me! In Jesus Christ, God took upon Himself what would be due to us for our sins, for all the wickedness that has accumulated in our lives. "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Is 53:6b). Hence, this crucifixion, death and burial was a descent into hell: that is, a complete separation from God, the full weight of God's wrath, the full weight of God's judgment punishing sin, the destructive curse of the mighty and holy God over sin - damnation itself! But if all this has happened for us and on our behalf, then there is redemption here! Then it was redemption! Then in this death descending into hell something was not finished, but begun; then here a good cause was not lost, but the best cause triumphed; and then in this judgment punishing Jesus there is a judgment acquitting us! The forgiving love of God, the power of God to create new life, is shining on us! Then we here can be cleansed, born again, start a whole new life! Then we are redeemed children of God! Someone has sacrificed his life for us! We can then only live as those whom God has taken for Himself and made His own!
3) And you see: this is folly! This is the folly of talking about the cross! The incomprehensibility of it, the meaning of it, which is incomprehensible to human logic. Is it not foolishness to consider this ancient scene of execution as the centre of the world, where all the sins of men who have ever lived, are living, and will be born again, on the face of the earth, converge, and from which, at the same time, the redeeming love of God is poured out upon these same men? In a world of intercontinental missiles and nuclear power, is it not a very simple-minded and seemingly futile attempt to redeem the world with the bloody drama of Good Friday? Would God not have had something else, something more powerful to save the world than 'just' the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, over which the minds of science, the world-seeing, experienced skulls, smile superiorly? Is it not folly to talk of the cross? Yes, it is! Foolish! To our human logic, the redemptive meaning of Jesus' death on the cross will always be a stumbling block. And this cannot be resolved, modernized, explained... Other tenets of our faith, such as the story of creation under the six days, can be explained in the language of modern science and thus brought closer to the thinking of modern man, but this cannot be done by talking about the cross. Whichever way I look at it, it is definitely illogical, incomprehensible, absurd! Stumbling and foolishness!
But this shows that it was not man who invented salvation. That we have salvation through the death of Jesus Christ is an idea that we human beings could never have grasped on our own, and that is so alien to our logic today because it is not our idea, but God's! And that is why, whoever renounces to grasp the talk of the cross by logic and dares to believe that God grasps him precisely by talking about it, will experience at once what Paul said: that it is indeed the power of God! So, he will experience - not understand, but experience - that speaking of the cross, that Jesus Christ was "crucified, died and was buried, and fell into hell" - this "foolishness" is the power of God! It is wonderful, incomprehensible, but it is so. The more firmly I believe that Jesus Christ was crucified, died and was buried and descended into hell for me, the more powerfully He Himself begins to live, work and reign in me! It is indeed inexplicable, but it is truly the case that whoever looks with his spiritual eyes in faith upon the crucified Jesus, feels at once that the power of God is poured into him, and that in the possession of this power he is no longer at the mercy of the dominion of his own sins. In other words, he becomes better, he is changed, he is sanctified by the power of speaking of the cross!
And one last thing: the same Power will deliver you, me, from eternal death at the Last Judgment! I warn you that you will never feel the indispensability of this death on the cross more deeply than at the hour of your own death! When neither the advancement of technology, nor the power of money, nor the achievement of science can help you, because it has no power to do so, then the power of the word of the cross will be strongest and will not fail those who believe in it! Thus I read. But beware: he who rejects the saying of the cross because it is "foolishness" is tearing up his passport to eternity!
Someone once told me how much spiritual struggle he had waged against talking about the cross. At first he did not understand, he did not understand at all. Then it annoyed him, then bored him. Sometimes he comforted him, and finally he had the thought, "If it is true that Jesus was crucified, died and was buried in this way, and descended into hell, then I am a lost man if I do not continue to believe in him." For the talk of the cross became the basis of his whole renewed life. He found his peace.
You can do the same, today! Here! Now! Let us beg to be so:
Jesus, Savior of the world,
Giver of my salvation,
Son of God crucified,
The pendant of my sin on a tree:
Jesus, let me return to you,
May I die with you, live with you.
(Canticle 342, verse 1)
Amen
Date: 28 February 1960.
Lesson
Ézs 53,1-8