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In 1933 Bishop Fulton J. Sheen published a little book on the seven words of Jesus from the cross. Sheen begins his Good Friday sermon with a story about Adam.

When Adam had been driven from the Garden of Paradise, and the penalty of labor imposed upon him, he went out in quest of the bread he was to earn by the sweat of his brow. In the course of that search, he stumbled upon the limp form of his son, Abel, picked him up, carried him upon his shoulders, and laid him on the lap of Eve. They spoke to him, but Abel did not answer. He had never been so silent before. They lifted his hand, but it fell back limp; it had never acted that way before. They looked into his eyes, cold, glassy, mysteriously elusive; they had never been so unresponsive before. They wondered, and as they wondered, their wonder grew. Then they remembered: "For in what day soever thou shalt eat of the tree, thou shalt die the death." It was the first death in the world.1


Sheen goes on to a similar imaginative story about Mary receiving the body of her grown son, Jesus, as it is taken down from the cross. The moment has been the subject of artists through the ages, notably the famous Pieta sculpture of Michaelangelo. And I don't want to belabor the sadness of the moment, which was surely there.

Jesus died on the cross. You've heard that so often you may lose the reality of it. "They spoke to him, but [Jesus] did not answer. He had never been so silent before. They lifted his hand, but it fell back limp; it had never acted that way before. They looked into his eyes, cold, glassy, mysteriously elusive; they had never been so unresponsive before. They wondered, and as they wondered, their wonder grew. Then they remembered: 'For in what day soever thou shalt eat of the tree, thou shalt die the death.' "

It is important that we have this fact firmly in mind: Jesus died. He was really human, and like all of us, he died.

But to go on to Sheen's main point: In this death, death is destroyed.

Today's reading from Isaiah is the fourth servant song written by an anonymous author in Isaiah's school during the Babylonian Exile, sixth century B.C. If the New Testament was a sermon, this would be its text. The servant of God is one who, sent by God, suffers, not as a punishment, but as an offering for others.

The servant of God may represent Israel, or maybe Isaiah the prophet, or a disciple of his, or the remnant of Israel that shall return to be faithful after the exile. The remnant that shall return is so important to Isaiah's message that Isaiah named his son "Remnant." Or failing even a small group as a faithful remnant, the suffering servant may be one true believer, who remains dedicated, who stands firm even in the face of persecution. Just one, willing to undergo punishment and death for the love of God, is enough. Christians know the servant songs are fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ.

Movie producer Cecil B. DeMille told about filming the crucifixion scene in his version of King Of Kings. He was trying for realism in every detail. He picked his soldiers from among people who were defeated, who were derelicts of society, who had rejected what most of us call good. He got these thrown--away people not from casting lists submitted by theatrical agents, but from roaming the streets himself looking for faces he could show leaning into the whip over Jesus and hands he could show swinging the hammer driving the nails into his flesh. Ironically, they were filming the Good Friday event the day before Christmas.

As a director, DeMille was the quiet type. But at this moment he chose to do a very rare thing. "Here we were on a bare ugly hill with three crosses telling of his death when it was the very eve of his birthday," he wrote. He said to the cast and crew and everyone on the set, "In honor of Christ the King, we will take five minutes for meditation and prayer."

He didn't know how to read the faces looking back up at him. He feared he had made a mistake. He said to himself, "They will just saunter off during the five minutes and get a drink or take a smoke and do cheap talk."

But he kept his silence, bowed his head, and closed his eyes.

He opened them again in surprise when he heard a few voices among the sundry crowd on the set begin to sing, "It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old," and soon more tentative voices joined in. What he saw when he opened his eyes gave him a still bigger surprise. The crowd was on its knees before those three crosses on the hillside. Some of those lined faces also bore tears - tears of emerging memory of the story of the Babe of Christmas, the Lamb of Calvary, the resurrected Lord of Easter! DeMille said it was "the greatest moment of his life."

Even those who take the easy way in life recognize the meaning of the hard way which so few take. The way of the cross, that Jesus took before us, and took for us. The rocky way those bare, scarred, bleeding feet would lead us, and give us strength for. For that way may appear to be the way of the defeated, the way of death, the way of loss, but it is the way the victor leads, the path to life, the road to the eternal prize.

Isaiah says it this way, "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed."

Our Lenten road is complete, and it tells us how narrow is the gate and how complete the commitment needed for those who would travel it. And it ends here, at the foot of the cross. Jesus is dead, and we know what no one knew at the time: He will live again.

If you saw the movie, The Greatest Story Ever Told, you might have noticed the gnomish old man in the cave in the mountains, who represents Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness. It's very clever of the director, and fitting symbolism to show the same old man in the crowd at Jesus' trial, shouting loudest, as if that's the easiest thing to do, and it is at least the most popular, and so the least embarrassing, and that's the way Satan tempts us. It is obviously the way he succeeds in convincing Pilate, who wanted to avoid a mob riot, to execute a man in whom he could find no crime.

Isn't that the best excuse to do something? Everybody's doing it. But just because it's popular doesn't make it right.

They outlawed Galileo for saying that Copernicus was right to say the earth moves around the sun. The wanted to string up Alexander Graham Bell (instead of stringing up wire) for saying that you could send the sound of a voice over wire, when everybody knew that Samuel Morse only barely succeeded in getting dots and dashes through one.

And everybody wanted to nail up Jesus. Why? He's only saying what the prophets have said before him: Repent and believe and God will be with you to work salvation in your life and bring you his kingdom. Those who joined the shouts of "Crucify!" and "Give us Barabbas!" were those who had not tasted the life of faith. They demanded proof but were not willing to take Jesus at his word and try faith in their own lives. There is no better proof than this: To live by faith works, and not to live by faith doesn't work.

Yet, even to those of us with the proof, the way is still narrow, and Satan's power to tempt us from it is great, while we let our little human self ride high on the throne of our hearts. Jesus lived to demonstrate that sinking to the depths for sin was the way to God, because God had gone that way before, and did it without sinning, giving his all for the love that is God. By that sinking, by his Passion, his suffering, death, and resurrection, won for us the victory that would show us the way, the truth, and the life.

The servant of God is one who, sent by God, suffers, not as a punishment, but as an offering for others. He died, and in this death, death is destroyed.

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1. Fulton J. Sheen, The Last Seven Words (Garden City, New York: Garden City Books, 1933), p. 57.