1 Corinthians 11:26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

Nearly one-third of each Gospel is devoted to the last week of Jesus’ life.

The violence depicted there is found in the Apostles’ Creed: “He suffered under Pontius Pilate.”  The theme is there in the songs of the church:

·          “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins..”
·          “On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame…”
·          “O sacred head now wounded…”

Jesus Himself told the Jews, “…unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.  He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day.  For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink.  He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (John 6:53, 54-56).This statement began a six month period of conflict which continued until His crucifixion.

·          The Jews’ response was, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” (John 6:52). 
·          John tells us that, because of this statement, some of His disciples “withdrew, and were not walking with Him any more” (John 6:66).

Blood and suffering are married to Christianity, and Mel Gibson doesn’t shy away from it in his movie that portrays Jesus’ death in a graphic and bloody way.  It is the violence in The Passion of the Christ that earned it an “R” rating.  Some Christians have suggested that the violence is too extreme and unnecessary.  But Isaiah, in a prophetic descriptive declared, “…His appearance was marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men” (52:14).

Isaiah’s conqueror is not the attractive figure that so many of the world’s conquerors have been or pretended to be.  His disfigurement is utterly shocking and appalling.  Even more so, when we consider that He gave Himself to this ordeal because He knew it to be the fulfillment of His Father’s will.

On a lower level, we can focus on five young men who wanted so desperately to bring the gospel to the Auca Indians in Ecuador.  Misunderstanding their intentions, the Aucas murdered them all.  Here’s the rub, although the young men had pistols, they refused to use them on their murders. 

If you walk the path back to the place where God established a covenant with Israel, you will get blood on your shoes.  It is a bloody trail.  It is covered with the blood of sacrificial animals. 

The greatest annual covenant event of Israel’s year, the Day of Atonement, focused entirely on blood and animal death as a means to restore favor with God.

The Passover Feast, the womb from which our communion service was birthed, is a time of remembering the deliverance of the firstborn Israelites from death.  This Feast required the death of an innocent victim, a lamb.  The lamb’s blood was placed on the doorframe of every house and it was this blood that protected the firstborn of that house from the death sweeping through Egypt on that night.  It is a bloody trail.

Can you imagine a non-Christian Indonesian visiting a Christian Church and being asked, “Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?”  Can you imagine what she might be thinking and feeling as we partook of the “body and blood” of the Lord Jesus? 

·          Why would any intelligent person laud the bloody sufferings of Jesus? 
·          Why wouldn’t civilized people want to protest such violence? 
·          Why would anyone want to sing about a fountain filled with blood? 
·          Why would non-Christians be amazed at our gushings over a movie that depicts a man who was beaten, shamed, and crucified like a criminal?

     In his book Christianity Among The Religious of the World, Arnold Toynbee tells of an English family that moved to China.  They hired a local woman as a housekeeper.  Soon she became more and more agitated when in their home, and finally she said she had to quit.  When they asked why, she was reluctant to explain, but after some coaxing they managed to extract an explanation from her. 
     “I just don’t understand,” she said.  “You are such good people.  You are kind to me.  You care about your children.  You treat people with respect.  Yet you have a statue of an agonized dying man on your wall.  WHY?” What would this little woman think if you brought her to a screening of The Passion of the Christ?  How would you respond to her questions about the incongruity of “nice Christians” and the horrible bloodiness of the cross?

Is our objection to artful expressions of a suffering Christ on the Cross theological or an attempt to remove the offence of the Cross?  Our Catholic friends display images of a suffering Christ hanging on the Cross.  We object saying, “He is no longer on the Cross,” so we wear Christless crosses of silver and gold.  Who’s right? Is a Christless Cross Christian?  We remember the Cross because it was the instrument on which Jesus died.  The Cross is more than an artifact, it is an event and it was the event that took place on the Cross that gives the Cross its value and meaning. 

Listen to the words of Paul in his first letter to the Church at Corinth.  “And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God.  For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1Cor. 2:1-2).  Earlier, in the same letter, he wrote, “…we preach Christ crucified” (1:23).  In his letter to the Galatians, Paul says that in his ministry to them, Christ “was publicly portrayed as crucified” (Gal. 3:1). 

·          Why was Paul so enamored with a crucified Christ? 
·          Why was this bloody event so central to his ministry and life?

Did God intend for the cross to be a message of extreme love, a love that would drive us to tears in seeing how far one person might go for another?Was the cross meant to an example to be imitated?Perhaps, but the apostle Paul sets the Cross and the Crucified Christ before us as God’s means of delivering sinful men and women from what they justly deserve—

·          hell,
·          eternal separation from God,
·          eternal damnation and
·          so on.

According to Paul…

·          “…the message of the cross is…to us who are being saved…the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1Cor. 1:18, 24).
·          Christ death on the Cross was “for our sins” (1Cor. 15:3).
·          It was the means by which He obtained peace with God for us (Col. 1:20).
·          The Cross event, ratified by Christ’s resurrection, speaks forgiveness to all who faith His grace provision. (See Eph. 1:7.)
·          The Cross event was the means by which God silenced the Law’s just demand for our death.  Paul tells us that Christ Jesus “cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (Col. 2:14).  His death pays our debt.
·          It was via the Cross event that Jesus disarmed, displayed and totally defeated the rulers and authorities that exercised control over us.  The Biblical statement declares, “He spoiled principalities and powers, displayed them as defeated, and triumphed over them in it [the Cross]” (Col. 2:15). If the rulers of this age had understood that the Cross was God’s plan for defeating them, then they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (See 1Cor. 2:8).

Although Mel Gibson has given us a graphic portrayal of Christ’s physical sufferings, he was unable to help us understand Christ’s inner sufferings.

·          In Luke 22:53, Jesus makes an interesting statement.  He says, “…this is your hour, and the power of darkness.”  Perhaps he is saying that their move against them was being done in a concealed way, or He may have been saying that this was an hour when the powers of darkness would have their way.
·          In Psalm 22, the Psalmist gives us a prophetic description of another aspect of Christ’s experience on the Cross. He scripts the words of Christ:  “20Be not far from me, for distress is near; for there is none to help.  12Many bulls have surrounded me; strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me.  13They open wide their mouth at me, as a ravening and a roaring lion.  I am poured out like water…16For dogs have surrounded me; a band of evildoers have encompassed me; they pierced my hands and my feet.” The demon rulers, principalities and powers have come against Him and roar out against Him like a lion protecting its prey against an intruder.  He was being tormented by demons and those men who crucified Him. 
·          Luke tells us that while still in the garden, He was “in agony…and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground” (Luke 22:44).  This is evidence of the inner turmoil He was experiencing.

Without a doubt, Christ redemptive work was agonizingly horrible and horribly violent.  Left to itself, we would have nothing but a pathetically sad story.It is in the last 30 seconds of the movie that Mel Gibson gives power to the brutal crucifixion and death of Jesus. If the Cross and the tomb are the whole story, then it is a sad story indeed. The Cross event is given redemptive power because it is followed by the Resurrection event. It is the resurrection that validates or empowers the work of Christ on the Cross. 

Paul declared, “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching [of the Cross] is empty, and your faith also is meaningless… [and] you are still in your sins” (1Cor. 15:14, 17). He then concludes, “But Christ has been raised from the dead…” (Col. 15:20).  This means that our message is valid—forgiveness is available to faithers.  Because He lives we can declare, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1Cor. 15:55).  God has given us the victory over death, hell, sin and the grave through our Lord Jesus Christ.  (See 1Cor. 15:57).

This brings us back to our text, which says, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” This morning we are here to “proclaim the Lord’s death.”  Why did He die?  For our sins!  This is a meal with a message.  It declares that you and I can have what His death purchased—

·          peace,
·          joy,
·          forgiveness,
·          righteousness,
·          hope,
·          love,
·          wholeness of body, soul and spirit, and
·          so much more. 

For those of us who have believed in Him, it is an expression of anticipation and confidence that He who died and was resurrected is coming again. At His coming those who have died believing in Him will be raised from the dead and we who are alive will be caught up with them to meet the Lord in the air. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

Prayer & Communion