Is It Nothing to You?
In Handel's Messiah there is a short Arioso surrounding the crucifixion where the composer quotes Jeremiah "Behold and see, if there be any sorrow like my sorrow." The full text (in the ESV) goes like this:
“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Look and see
if there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
which was brought upon me,
which the LORD inflicted
on the day of his fierce anger.
Lamentations 1:12
Jeremiah is speaking of the desolation of Jerusalem, but surely these words find their fulfillment in the one who embodies all of the sorrows of the Israelites; our Lord and Savior. Is there any sorrow like his sorrow?
It is good for us on this day to pause for a moment and try to think about the horrors of the cross. It really is difficult for us to comprehend due to the cultural distance and the way images of the cross have become part of the wallpaper of our lives, hanging around our necks and decorating our homes and churches. There is NOTHING attractive about crosses and crucifixions. It was a particularly brutal form of punishment aimed at not only death, but through shame and degradation sought to eradicate the recipient from the human race. "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?"
As brutal and as shameful as crucifixion was, the particular depth of suffering that our Savior experienced had as its focal point the hours of darkness from 12-3 when all of the just wrath of God was poured out on the innocent Christ, who willingly stepped forward as our substitute (cf. Mark 10:45). It was this torment that evoked the cry of dereliction, "My, God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34) It was the only time that Jesus addresses God the Father as "God" and not as his "Father", so deep was his affliction on the day of the Lord's fierce anger.
Why the crucifixion? Why go to such extremes? Couldn't the purposes of redemption have been accomplished in another way? Rudolf Bultmann, a 20th Century German Theologian had this to say about the cross, "The way to God leads not to hell but through hell, or, in Christian terms through the cross. It leads us not to hopelessness but to a hope which transcends all human hope; and we must silence all human hope, if that divine hope is to dawn for us." Surely this is the answer. The cross of Christ is the gateway to hope. He was forsaken in order that we might be forgiven. He bore the crown of thorns, that we might receive a crown of glory. As you pass by the cross today, may it not be nothing to you. Rather pause and drink in the love of God displayed in sorrow.