The Institute on Religion and Democracy was pleased to host Joseph Moss, Pastor of the Dranesville Church of the Brethren, to deliver the Wednesday Worship sermon for the month of January.
Interested readers in the DC area should contact Collin Bastian at cbastian@theird.org for more information on how to attend a Wednesday Worship service.
You can view the worship service from January 18 below.
Transcript of Joseph Moss’ sermon (transcript provided by Pastor Joseph Moss):
“On the screen is a stone rubbing of the oldest known picture of the crucifixion of Jesus. It’s dated to sometime in the second century AD, and it was found scratched on a wall as graffiti during an excavation of the Palatine Hill in Rome in 1857. What’s interesting about it is that it very clearly was not made by a Christian. The inscription is in Greek, in really bad grammar that makes you think it was made by a schoolboy. The inscription says “Alexamenos worships his God.” So basically, the guy on the left is Alexamenos, and he’s worshiping Jesus on the Cross. Of course, whoever made this really makes clear that he’s mocking Alexamenos by replacing Jesus’ head with the head of a donkey.
So, the first picture of the crucifixion that we have ever seen is one probably made by a little child mocking a Christian named Alexamenos. What’s interesting is just how easily someone very early in the history of Christianity could really get to the heart of why they aren’t Christian. This image was probably made by a schoolboy, and he’s not making a very complex intellectual argument, but for most people that same argument was potent. Everyone knew what this child meant. All he had to say was basically “look at the God you serve, he looks ridiculous, it would be shameful to worship a God like that,” and maybe swap out his head with the head of a donkey for effect.
The cross isn’t naturally something to be proud of, it’s the place of greatest shame in Roman society, and it also is meant to show that Rome has dominated the crucified person and the whole ethnicity they represent. There might be an implicit “actually you should worship these Roman gods that crucified your god” in there. I mean apparently the Roman gods are more powerful! They won, didn’t they? They killed your god! Like a good philosopher, this child really does a good job of attacking the heart of what it means to be Christian. He’s not attacking the small things on the edges of Christianity, but he’s showing that the whole thing is patently ridiculous. And it wasn’t hard!
So, if even a schoolboy could point out how absurd Christianity was with some graffiti on a wall, what in the world possessed so many people to become Christians? How did it spread so quickly all the way from Judea to the seat of power in Rome so that the artist could mock Alexamenos? How was it that less than 200 years after this graffiti was made, the Roman empire which the artist was apparently so proud of – actually adopted Christianity as its official religion? How could a Christian like Paul say, “Far be it from me to boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ?”
How could Christians possibly be so proud of the Cross? I mean did you ever think how weird it is that so many of us wear a symbol of brutal execution around our necks? But I think if we can read how Christians described the crucifixion, we can begin to understand a little more what was going through their heads.
When we are reading this passage in John, the first thing that I think needs to be recognized is that it is absolutely dripping with irony. It’s really easy to read it at face value, that Jesus is being tortured and suffering on our behalf, and that’s totally true. But if you read it a couple times, there’s an incredibly ironic pattern that begins to emerge. And that’s that practically every word that Pilate, the soldiers, and the religious leaders say is true. Everything that the ones who are crucifying the Son of God are saying is 100% true. In fact, the words they say are far more explicit in saying the truth about Jesus than any other character in the entire book, practically including Jesus.
When the soldiers crown Jesus’ head and they say, “Hail King of the Jews,” obviously they’re mocking him. There’s even an added bite against the Jews like “look this is what the king of the Jews looks like. How pathetic. Silly Jews.” but at the same time Jesus really is the king of the Jews! And here the king of the Jews is starting to receive worship, if only ironically, from Gentiles, just like the Old Testament prophesied! It was the fulfillment of so many passages like Psalm 2 which anyone in their right mind would have doubted, about how the hostile gentile nations would be pacified and bow down and worship God and his king.
And then when the Jewish leaders say, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God,” what they’re saying is true! The Old Testament prophesied that the Son of God, namely Israel, would suffer on the behalf of all people. They think that it’s because Jesus broke the Law, which he didn’t. No, he has to suffer because he is fulfilling the Law. He’s fulfilling the intended role of Israel and setting the whole world right through his pain and exile from his Father. It’s just the same way that Isaiah said in the exile Israel would be suffering for the sins of the whole world, not just their own. In Christ, God is recreating the world through his own suffering, bearing the sins and guilt of the world, just like the Bible said he would.
Then Pilate takes Jesus in front of the Jews and says, “behold the man!” And he speaks far better than he knows. Jesus is actually “the man,” ha’adam. He is the genuine human being, the one who is innocent and perfectly in line with God’s good intention. The name “Adam” which God gave to the prototypical human, just means “man” in Hebrew. Pilate happens to accidentally introduce Jesus as the prototypical human, the second Adam, who is everything humanity was ever supposed to be. Which is exactly what he is.
Pilate says, “behold your king.” And he was right to say that. Jesus was the king of the Jews, and he was far more successful in bringing the reign of God to Earth, like the king was meant to do, than any of the kings of Israel. John acknowledges this too, every Psalm he quotes here is a Psalm of David, meant to be spoken from the mouth of the King of Israel.
It’s a little hard to see at first, but John has actually been training us to read this passage like this the entire book. He wants you to read this account of the shameful and lonely death of the last remaining hope for the world, and to actually see something glorious and beautiful and honorable. He wants you to read it practically upside down. For instance, especially in John 3 and elsewhere in the book of John, Jesus describes his death as being “lifted up,” upsoo, which can also mean being “praised” or “exalted.”
Of course, it’s a bit of a pun, because Jesus was physically lifted up on the cross. But everyone who would have heard Jesus talking would have thought that Jesus was saying that he would be praised or exalted when he dies. Maybe they would have imagined a whole heavenly chorus of angels singing or at the very least that he would have a really nice funeral.
But what John wants you to do when you’re reading this is say that, in a sense, they were right. Jesus was praised and exalted by going to the Cross. Because fundamentally what it means to be a genuine human being. It was completely consistent with his teaching. Jesus taught that whoever “loses his life will find it.” As C. S. Lewis summarized, self exists to be given up, and in giving up yourself, you become more truly yourself, so that you can give yourself up better, and so on forever. You can see it in the most fulfilling parts of your lives, when you felt like you could give yourself fully to a spouse, a child, your Church family, or even just a really important part of your life like school or your job or some important cause.
Meanwhile, those times people are least fulfilled you often have no one to give yourself to. Maybe you lost a loved one and you don’t know what to do with yourself, or the cause you worked so hard for failed, or even succeeded, and you don’t know what to do next. The most miserable people tend to be the ones who never give themselves to something or someone else, who just sit in the basement and pursue whatever pleasures come to mind.
You have to give yourself up for others or you will slowly lose yourself. We know that because so often your identity even comes from what you give yourself up to. Someone who gives themselves up for their child is called a mother or a father, someone who gives themselves up for their spouse is a husband or wife, someone who gives themselves up for Jesus is called a Christian, someone who gives themselves up to their studies is called a scholar. Who you give yourself up for genuinely defines who you are, and it’s the most fulfilling part of life.
Looking at it through the lens of Jesus’ teaching, his self-sacrifice on the cross for the sake of all of us was the most fulfilling act. On the cross, God demonstrated his glory and honor and power. John says that the Christian is someone who looks at the Crown of Thorns and says, yes, that’s a real crown. In fact, it’s the most glorious crown that’s ever existed, because it was won by total self-sacrifice in service of his people. Every other crown worn by some pretentious king, oligarch, or president who only serves himself is shameful and pathetic by comparison.
John says that the world is so completely blind to what it looks like to live a good life that it’s like they’re living in an alternate reality. It’s so bad that all the words people say in this passage are a dim shadow of the true reality, which is that Jesus is king and that he is saving the world through the cross. But what they actually mean is totally wrong and fake. They’re concerned with things that aren’t really real.
Maybe you’ve seen the Netflix show Stranger Things. In that show, you see the world as we experience it, complete with all kinds of 80’s nostalgia, but there’s also a parallel world that exists as a shadow of our world. That shadow world is awful, it’s dark and twisted and cold and there’s all kinds of terrible and dangerous creatures there. But you can tell it kind of looks like the world we live in, just dark and dangerous and ugly. You could walk through that world and see your house and recognize it as your house, but it’s not a place you’d want to live in. They call that parallel world “the upside down,” and there’s portals that are being opened between the upside-down and our world.
The big plot point in the show is that the upside down is breaking into the world we experience and it’s causing all kinds of problems. There are forces that are trying to invade this world and slowly turn it into the upside down.
What John has set up here is a lot like what happens in Stranger Things. On the Cross, a different world is invading. But that world is so real that instead the world we live in looks like a dark, dangerous, and ugly shadow of the real world. And you can hear it in the words of the people who crucify Jesus. You recognize that what they say has some dim truth to it, just like you would be able to recognize your house in the upside down. But it’s totally twisted around to the point that it’s about as wrong as it can be.
A new world is breaking into ours, but instead of calling it “the upside down” John calls it “the kingdom of heaven.” The kingdom of heaven is breaking into the world through Jesus and invading it and turning it into something that more and more resembles the justice and goodness and beauty of heaven. Jesus says that that world is the real world, and we’re the real ones who are stuck in the upside down. Through Jesus’ death on the Cross, the kingdom of heaven is coming to earth.
At its core, Christianity is bearing witness to an alternate reality, which is that the powers of sin, death, and evil are not the true rulers of the universe. The world isn’t just a power game, with everyone scrambling to get to the top, where selfishness rules all. When you see something absolutely awful happen in the world, that’s actually the last gasps of a dying order which is so pathetically weak compared to the hard moral reality of the self-sacrifice of the crucified God.
Those awful things are trying to destroy goodness and light and make the world more fake and wrong, but they’re not going to win. One day God will abolish our upside-down world and turn it right-side up. He’ll come in wrath and confront that order and force it to see the truth of the kingdom of God through the cross. When we look at the cross through these eyes, we realize that we have been living in the upside-down the entire time. Sin has completely blinded us so that we don’t see that the order of our world is so totally broken, and we just cannot recognize what true goodness and beauty looks like.
So, when the sign over Jesus’ head says “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” if you know about the kingdom of Heaven invading the Earth, you are thinking, “Oh look he really is the King of the Jews.” Everyone present at the crucifixion has no idea what is really happening here, even as they participate in it. And if you recognize that he really is the king of the Jews, then you know that he’s the one that’s really in charge. Even though he’s hanging there from the Cross. It makes the power struggle that’s going on around him look incredibly pointless, fake, and wrong.
You see a lot of this passage is about the question “who is in charge here?” You have the Romans making an intentionally insulting image, insisting that Jesus be called the King of the Jews while they crucify him. Pilate puts up a sign over his head saying, “this is the king of the Jews.” And he writes it in Aramaic, the language of the Jews, in Latin, the language of the Romans, and in Greek, the language of everybody else. In other words, they are saying “behold your king, O Jews, this is what we have done to him. And we’re translating it into as many languages as possible so that everyone who passes by knows that we are in charge. This is what happens when you cross us.”
Meanwhile the Jews are holding Caesar over Pilate’s head, saying they’ll go tattle to daddy Emperor if Pilate doesn’t do what they want. They’re exercising their power to get rid of Jesus, who they see as an existential threat to their own power. They think they’re in charge. And finally, the Christian reads this whole passage and says, “yeah, the one that’s in charge is actually the guy on the cross.” Read what Jesus says in verse 11 – “you would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given to you from above.” He’s the one practically sitting on the electric chair, while Pilate’s hand is over the switch, and he dares to say “actually I’m the one who’s in charge here.” Because that’s what power looks like in the kingdom of Heaven as it’s breaking into our world. It looks like joyful and triumphant self-sacrifice from the first lashes until the cry “it is finished.”
In the Cross, all the powers of evil and chaos, everything that works to unmake the world, the evil political leaders, God’s disobedient people, and everything demonic that Jesus fought against his whole ministry, all came together to finally destroy the presence of God on Earth. And they did so by speaking the only language they know: raw, violent power. But on the Cross Jesus conquered these powers by allowing them to kill him in love for his people. And in killing Jesus, they killed themselves, because Jesus completely disarmed their logic.
The world’s evil political leaders, God’s disobedient people, and the demonic powers see the entire world as a selfish power struggle. There is no good or bad, only strong and weak. It’s a world we’re all too tempted to enter into when we get angry or when we’re afraid to inconvenience ourselves for the sake of others or we fear shame for doing the right thing. When we tell ourselves the ends justify the means and cut corners for our own sake. But all it takes is one person to bear witness to this alternate reality by sacrificing himself — to show that the world ultimately isn’t just a selfish power struggle. If it were, then how could this person sacrifice himself for the good of others?
There is good and bad, not just strong and weak, because the absolute moral good of Christ has come to Earth. And so the powers of the world had no idea that when they meant to destroy Jesus they were actually destroying themselves. Jesus broke their power. “Take heart, I have overcome the world.”
When God created the world, he triumphed over chaos. But in one act of disobedience in the Garden of Eden Adam allowed chaos and death to return. But Jesus passed the test of obedience in the Garden of Gethsemane and completely defeated the chaos again on the Cross. And then he defeated death itself by being raised from the dead, and his resurrected body became the first taste of God’s New Heavens and New Earth. In Christ’s resurrected body, heaven and Earth became one. And just like chaos spread when Adam sinned, so the love of God and the beauty of the New Creation began to spread when Christ was raised. To the point that now the kingdom of God includes billions of living members.
You see it once again when John says “not one of his bones shall be broken” in verse 36. John is referencing the instructions for how Israel was supposed to prepare a lamb to celebrate the Passover, which is the holiday about when God liberated the Jews from slavery in Egypt. The Passover was Israel’s perfect example of God’s victory over evil and oppressive forces like Pharaoh and bringing them out of slavery. It was the marriage ceremony which basically created God’s people, Israel. Just like that, through the Cross, God was liberating a people from slavery to the upside down, evil powers and allowing them to enter into the kingdom of Heaven.
Far from the place of Jesus’ greatest shame, this chapter is Jesus’ greatest victory. On the Cross, he triumphed over the powers of evil and chaos. If you know to look for it, Jesus behaves like a king the whole time. He wears a crown, he is hailed as king, he quotes royal psalms, and he even gives his dying will when he says, “woman behold your son” and “behold your mother.” This isn’t just a crucifixion, it’s a coronation. On the Cross, Jesus truly becomes not only King of the Jews, but King of the World, in accordance with all the Old Testament prophecies about the exaltation of Israel and Jerusalem. The cross is where Jesus suffered for us but it’s also where Jesus sat down on his throne.
Like Paul says, “Jesus made a public mockery of the powers of evil, triumphing over them in the Cross.” And he did. On the Cross Jesus said, “your power has no hold over me.” Because the Cross is the greatest expression of God’s glory. And that’s why we can say “far be it from me to boast, except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It’s the most glorious thing in the world, what’s the point in boasting in anything else? It’s all just a pale shadow of the true reality of the Crucified God. And that’s why when Jesus is raised from the dead he can say as the conquering Messiah “all authority in Heaven and on Earth has been given to me.”
He earned every last bit of the full territory of the entire Earth by invading it with the love of the kingdom of Heaven. And he conquered it not by shedding the blood of others, but by shedding his own blood. And that means that the kingdom of this world, which is ruled by the pale shadows of power and selfishness, has started to become the real world. “The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. And he shall reign forever and ever.”
When archaeologists found that mocking graffiti that’s on the wall on the Palatine hill in Rome, they kept digging for a little while and came across another piece of graffiti on that same wall, which apparently came from a different hand. There was no picture, all it said was in Latin, “Alexamenos is faithful.” We don’t know who wrote that graffiti, could it have been Alexamenos himself? Could it have been someone defending Alexamenos? Who knows. But the reply is an interesting one. He doesn’t try to apologize for the cross, he doesn’t say “oh actually Jesus didn’t look like a donkey;” all he does is say “Alexamenos is faithful.”
In other words, he says yes, that’s the God I serve. He looks ridiculous to you but I’m glad he does because he liberated me from the upside-down world where you fight tooth and nail and put others down to get some sort of honor and glory for yourself. He freed me from slavery to Sin because he loved me and gave himself for me. You have no idea what’s really going on in that picture, because it is truly the most glorious and beautiful thing in the world. My God underwent the greatest possible shame for the ones he loves. I owe that God my allegiance and I serve him faithfully.”
Among so many others, this is a challenge that the Cross gives. Can you figure out who’s really in charge in the crucifixion scene? Can you figure out the one that’s supposed to get your faithful allegiance? Is it Pilate, with their powerful Army and their intimidating gods? Is it the Jewish leaders, with their social power and religious authority? Which of these powers, who ultimately really only care about us for their own sake, should we serve? Or is it completely unthinkable to serve the one on the Cross? To recognize that he’s the one who’s really in charge? Could we serve Jesus, the true king of Israel, who accomplished everything that humanity was meant to do, who gives himself in love to liberate us from the bondage to evil and decay?
Let us pray:
God give us the wisdom and courage to recognize that you’re really the one in charge, sitting on your throne on the Cross. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you sacrificed yourself for us on the Cross, and bore the weight of our suffering and sin, and that your kingdom is breaking into the world and recreating it toward your good intention. Help us to recognize that we shouldn’t serve gods and people who hate us and use us to our own advantage, but we should serve the God who loved us so much that he dies for us while we were yet sinners. Help us to be faithful to you by imitating your sacrifice, looking out in love for the good of others and not ourselves. Amen.”
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