Luke 23:47-56 - Homiletics

Friday night until Sunday morning.

" It is finished ! " But there are witnesses to the solemnity of the moment and the significance of the word, whose testimony gives weight to the voice of conscience. The rumble and reel of the earth-quake are felt. When "the loud voice" is uttered, the veil which separates the most holy from the holy place is torn in two; an ominous darkness covers the city; there is a crash as of rending rocks and opening tombs, and strange forms, as of those who were dead, flit before the vision. Three hours are marked by portents ( Luke 23:44 , Luke 23:45 ), beneath whose impression even the officer in charge of the Roman soldiery exclaims ( Luke 23:47 ), "Certainly this was a righteous Man. He must have been a Son of God." And when, besides, the multitude, hushed and solemnized, gazes on the countenance now calm and still in the repose of death, and the recollection of the life so pure and noble becomes vivid in the mind, the reaction from intense excitement sets in, and ( Luke 23:48 ) smiting on their breasts in unavailing sorrow, they steal away from the scene of death. Only two groups remain—the soldiers, who must watch until the crucified are dead, and their bodies are removed; and "the acquaintance of Jesus, and the women who had followed him from Galilee, far off, in speechless amazement beholding these things" ( Luke 23:49 ). All that remains is the burial. He whose cross was erected between the malefactors is dead. The priests and scribes had begged that the closing act of the death by crucifixion, that called the crucifragium —the smiting or breaking of the legs—might be hastened and the corpses removed, so that no offence to decency might be felt on the high day, "the double sabbath," at hand. Pilate had acceded to the request; and the forms of the two malefactors had been smitten. Not the form of Jesus. No spark of life, it was said, remained. Only, to make assurance sure, a spear is thrust into the side; the spear, it may be, pierced the pericardium of the heart, or that had already been ruptured; anyhow, a mixture of blood and water flows out. St. John is emphatic as to this, no doubt to silence the suggestion that Jesus had only seemed to die, or that the seeming death had been only a swoon. [No, says the evangelist ( John 19:35 ), "I saw it myself." It is the symbolic meaning of that effusion which we set before us when we sing—

"Let the water and the blood,

From thy riven side which flowed,

Be of sin the double cure—

Cleanse me from its guilt and power."

Is the Lord buried in the sepulchre reserved for those who had been doomed to capital punishment? No. Here there comes into view the beautiful and striking incident recorded in verses 50-53. And, in connection with it, we light on a word which is used at the hour when we should least have expected to find it. One of the Sanhedrists—a man universally esteemed for piety and prudence—Joseph of Arimathaea—had not consented to the counsel and deed of his colleagues. Hitherto he had never dared to avow the attraction which he felt. Why should he now risk his reputation, it may be his life, by an acknowledgment which he had withheld in his eat liar days? Every dictate of worldly wisdom bade him be wholly silent. What do we read in Mark 15:43 ? It is the death of Christ that dispels the fear, that at last prompts to decision. He goes in boldly to Pilate, and craves the body of Jesus. And the demand of the senator is granted. And as he bears away the sacred frame, he is joined by another ( John 19:39 ), the Nicodemus of whom we read at the beginning of the ministry ( John 3:1-36 .), who brings with him a princely offering of myrrh and aloes. The reverent and loving hands thus joined together wrap the body (verse 53) in linen, and hastily and partially embalm it, laying it in the tomb which Joseph had scooped out for himself as his own last resting-place. What happened between this time and the third, the appointed day? Let us ask, first, What, as it concerns our Lord ? secondly, What, as it concerns the disciples ? and, thirdly, What, as it concerns the world which crucified him ?

I. WHAT HAPPENED AS IT CONCERNS OUR LORD ? Two or three words give us some hints concerning our Lord after his death and before the Resurrection. First, his own assurance given to Mary on the resurrection-day ( John 20:17 ), "I am not yet ascended to my Father." The place and condition into which he passed, in dying, were intermediate between the life on earth and the life in glory. He was not then, as the Man Jesus, in the glory of the Father. And, as bearing on this, we further recall the promise to the dying malefactor ( Mark 15:43 ). "Lord, remember me," he had said, "when thou comest into thy kingdom." "To-day," was the reply, "shall thou be with me in Paradise. Paradise, then, received the soul of Christ. Thither he bore with him the one who, in penitence and faith, had cast himself on his mercy. And Paradise meant the region in the under-world of the dead set apart for the faithful as their rest until the resurrection—a blessedness real, though incomplete; a garden with the tree of life in it, but not the full enjoyment of the beatific vision. This is the meaning of the clause in the Apostles' Creed, "He descended into hell," i.e. into Hades, the state of the dead. It is true that this clause has not the antiquity which may be claimed for other clauses; but it expresses the belief of all times that our Lord submitted to the conditions of the holy dead—that he was truly and verily numbered among them. The soul was actually in Hades, or Sheol. What part in the great redemptive work was fulfilled by this descent? Had he a ministry in this short but significant period? There is a passage in 1 Peter too obscure to allow of being pressed as an answer to this question, but suggestive of interesting lines of thought ( 1 Peter 3:18-20 ). To many it has seemed that the preaching to the spirits in prison mentioned there was the work of the Hades-state; that he proclaimed his gospel to those who were kept in ward—not the righteous only, but those who were disobedient, e.g . the antediluvian generations to which Noah had preached in vain. And the inference drawn from this view of the passage has appeared "to throw light on one of the darkest enigmas of Divine justice—the cases where the final doom seems infinitely out of proportion to the lapse which has incurred it." No argument can be built on a passage whose interpretation is doubtful; but the exposition hinted at falls in with convictions which have been cherished from the time of the apostles. We are, at all events, on solid Scripture ground when we suppose that, in the world of the dead, the triumph over him that had the power of death, i.e. the devil, was completed. The descent was the following of the enemy into his innermost citadel; it was the spoiling of the principalities and power of darkness; it was the opening of the way through death into life by him who has the keys of Hades. Is not Paradise all the sweeter that Christ has been there? Is not the inheritance all the surer that through death he went to the Father? Is not this the symbol of our faith and hope—that "the Lord has set his cross in the midst of Hades, which is the sign of victory that will remain to eternity "?

II. WHAT HAPPENED AS IT CONCERNS THE DISCIPLES . But what of those who weep and lament whilst the world is rejoicing—the sorrow-stricken, orphaned company of disciples? The last to leave the place where the body of Jesus was laid, as the first to hasten to the tomb when the sabbath is past, are the holy women (verses 55, 56). We see them on Friday evening watching the tomb, and observing how the lifeless form was attended to, end then hastening into the city, that they may make ready the spices and ointments for embalming before the sabbath began. Their love is stronger than their faith. The heart's yearning is sometimes more than the heart's believing. A very dreary sabbath that was to all the disciples. "They rested according to the commandment'' (verse 56). A commandment—rest, and nothing more. What conflicts of thought and affection! What desolation of spirit! Peter—what a strange sabbath it must have been to him! Only one thing for all. The sense of relation to the crucified Jesus can never be effaced; but it has no glow of hope, it has only the darkness of a memory, the gloom of a despair. "They rested on the sabbath; but " (the first word of the twenty-fourth chapter should be "but" rather than "now"); but the running of the spirit, the movement of the love, is only towards the garden and its sepulchre. Is it not the type of Church, of Christian, wanting the power of the Holy Ghost? Work for Christ, loyal but cheerless, without sight of his glory, or waiting for his advent—this is suggested by the preparation of the spices and ointments, and the sabbath-keeping but without the true spiritual sabbath, the joy of the Lord; ordinances observed, but with no inner alacrity, only because of the commandment. This is suggested by the unrestful resting on that seventh day. Not yet is there the anointing of the Holy Ghost, the power of the Resurrection.

III. WHAT HAPPENED AS IT CONCERNS THE WORLD WHICH CRUCIFIED HIM . Is it not strange that what was absent from faith as a hope was present to unbelief as a fear? Those who had crucified the Lord have their memory wonderfully quickened. They recall ( Matthew 27:62-64 ) some words which he uttered nearly three years before, about a temple which he would raise in three days, and their dread gives a force to these words. Sabbath though it be, the chief priests and Pharisees seek an audience of Pilate, and beg him to "make the sepulchre sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say to the people, He is risen from the dead: and so the last error be worse than the first." They are told to go their way and do as they choose; and hence the sealing of the great stone and the setting of the watch. Is not all now secure? Have they not for ever dispelled the illusions as to the Deceiver? So thought the Jewish authorities; so men think still. They are always crying out that the Christian religion is effete, that the Christian's Christ has been slain. "Are there any Christians still?" asked a notable sceptic some years ago. O purblind souls! What avail your watch and seal? He whom you call Deceiver is yet alive; and there are compunctions of heart, convictions of guilt and wrong-doing. and needs of spiritual restoration and inward rectitude, which will assert themselves against all your philosophies! Pentecost days are never far distant days when a mighty remorse rolls over the minds of men, and the cry which never can be silenced, because it is the cry of the human soul in its most solemn hours, and with reference to its deepest wants, bursts through lips which are quivering with a genuine earnestness, "What shall we do to be saved?" On that sabbath the world religious and irreligious holds its rest. It cannot altogether forget; but it holds its Paschal feasts, and complies with all the etiquette of these feasts, as if there were no Calvary, as if no Jesus had lived and died. And is not this the feature of all times? Do not men push their ambitious projects, scheme and toil, spend their strength, and hold their sabbaths without the living consciousness of the Christ who died for their sins? May not we ourselves say—

"I sin; and heaven and earth go round

As if no dreadful deed were done,

As if Christ's blood had never flowed

To hinder sin or to atone"?

There is no word more solemn than that ( Hebrews 6:4-6 ) in which the sacred writer reminds us that if those who have tasted the Word of God. and the powers of the world to come fall away, they pass from the fold of the Church into the ranks of Christ's enemies, seeing "they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame."