March Reading from The Message
We start from resurrection. If we are followers of Christ, we believe He did the unthinkable- he rose from the dead. If true, everything about how we live changes. When Jesus defeated death, suddenly the detailed prophecies and big, God-sized story of the Bible were infused with life! We simply cannot ignore the reality and implications of Jesus’ extraordinary existence.
There was a man walking by, coming from work, Simon from Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus. They made him carry Jesus’ cross.
22-24 The soldiers brought Jesus to Golgotha, meaning “Skull Hill.” They offered him a mild painkiller (wine mixed with myrrh), but he wouldn’t take it. And they nailed him to the cross. They divided up his clothes and threw dice to see who would get them.
25-30 They nailed him up at nine o’clock in the morning. The charge against him—the king of the jews—was scrawled across a sign. Along with him, they crucified two criminals, one to his right, the other to his left. People passing along the road jeered, shaking their heads in mock lament: “You bragged that you could tear down the Temple and then rebuild it in three days—so show us your stuff! Save yourself! If you’re really God’s Son, come down from that cross!”
31-32 The high priests, along with the religion scholars, were right there mixing it up with the rest of them, having a great time poking fun at him: “He saved others—but he can’t save himself! Messiah, is he? King of Israel? Then let him climb down from that cross. We’ll all become believers then!” Even the men crucified alongside him joined in the mockery.
33-34 At noon the sky became extremely dark. The darkness lasted three hours. At three o’clock, Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”
35-36 Some of the bystanders who heard him said, “Listen, he’s calling for Elijah.” Someone ran off, soaked a sponge in sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down.”
37-39 But Jesus, with a loud cry, gave his last breath. At that moment the Temple curtain ripped right down the middle. When the Roman captain standing guard in front of him saw that he had quit breathing, he said, “This has to be the Son of God!”
Scripture Insight
We Start from Resurrection
The death of Jesus on the cross can be understood and accounted for easily enough on a physical and historical level. But the salvation Jesus accomplished on the cross cannot be. And it is this accomplished salvation, not a coroner’s autopsy of the death, that brings us back to the cross over and over again. Revisiting Jesus’ death is different from visits we make to a cemetery, bringing flowers, keeping the memory of our beloved dead in focus. We are not at the cross to remember or do homage. We are here to probe the meaning of our daily dying in the company of Jesus’ dying for us.
Meditating and praying with Jesus as he dies on the cross is not an invitation to morbidity. We begin all our prayers, and most emphatically when repeating his prayer from the cross, at the empty tomb, the place of resurrection. We start from resurrection. Our basic approach to the cross is gratitude.
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