Suffered, Crucified, Died, Buried

Welcome and Recap

Welcome back to our sermon series on The Apostles’ Creed, where we are going line by line through one of the earliest Christian Confessions of Faith, discovering why each truth proclaimed is important.  In today’s clause of the Creed, we are introduced to another character in this story.  Apart from Jesus, the Creed references only two other people by name: Mary and Pilate.   We’ve heard so far about the Father, creator of Heaven and Earth, Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of a Virgin named Mary.

Intro

Today, we dive into His suffering under Pontius Pilate, crucifixion, death, and burial.

There is a longstanding Christian tradition associated with Matthew 27:19, that proposes that the wife of Pilate who warns him, “Have nothing to do with that righteous man; for I have suffered terribly in a dream because of him,” does so after receiving a vision of a chorus of voices in various languages; the church throughout the centuries reciting this Creed repeating, these very words, his name forever tied to the moment he washed his hands of the truth.

True or not, the Gospel Coalition recognizes Pontius Pilate today as one of the best-known figures of the entire Roman Empire—virtually tied on Google Trends with Julius Caesar; more than Caesar Augustus, more than Tiberius, Caligula, even Constantine, Marcus Aurelius, or Russell Crowe.  A mere governor, registering with more people today than any other Roman of his time.

The Creed deliberately includes this name.  It’s not poetic or spiritual—it’s merely historical.  Still, by naming Pilate, the Creed refuses to let us simply spiritualize the cross.  It happened under a real, flawed, corrupt authority.  That specificity reminds us: our salvation isn’t abstract; it’s tied to real suffering in real history.

The fact that we know Pilate’s name—to put this in perspective, would be like a time-traveler going 2,000 years into the future, and discovering that everyone had heard of Putin, a few people recognized a bust of Trump, but that pretty much everyone knew the name Kathy Hochul.

Rory Shiner observes that “Mary is associated with Jesus’ birth; Pilate with his death.  Mary with his reception; Pilate with his rejection.  Mary with his flourishing; Pilate with his suffering.  He was born of the Virgin Mary; he suffered under Pontius Pilate.”

Illustration

Suffered, crucified, died, and was buried, reminds me of the poem, “The Dash” by Linda Ellis, who points out that on tombstones, it’s the dash that contains everything—all the life lived in the years between the date of birth and the date of death, it’s really only those who loved the person who know what that dash is worth.  In the same way, here in our creed, the whole life of Jesus is summarized by a comma.  

Indeed, we have more, but this is what is reflected in our creed, what we hold uncompromisingly.

In our creed, that comma contains everything from manger to ministry, miracles to teachings, friendships to tears—from a 12-year-old boy in the temple, His baptism, calling His first disciples, teaching on the Mount, His miraculous healings, the Last Supper, His prayer in the garden.  John says if every detail were written, the world couldn’t contain the books (John 21:25).  Yet here it is—in not even a single word, but rather a pause, a breath, a comma.

And, in the same way, it’s only those who love Jesus who truly know what that comma is worth.

Alliteration

Highlighting the stark contrast between confessing the core tenets of our belief and the abrupt end of Jesus’ ministry and presence, theologian Karl Barth likens Pilate to a “dirty dog walking into a nice room.”

Barth describes Pontius Pilate as an unwelcome, defiling intruder into our creed.  Crude, out of place, and contaminating the otherwise “pure” or holy scene.

But maybe what’s wrong with a world that’s capable of committing such an atrocity could be summarized in the word “he.”

On one side is this “He” is the extraordinary, sinless person who touched and healed lepers, showing radical mercy to the outcast and unclean; Healed the woman with chronic bleeding, restoring dignity to someone society shunned; Proclaimed freedom for captives (liberating people spiritually and physically; Loved his enemies, the ultimate reversal of human vengeance and hatred.

On the other side: this same “He” suffered under Pontius Pilate, representing the self-serving and unjust powers of the world, who, looking at the man who once proclaimed, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” literally looking ‘truth’ in its face, asks, mockingly, “What is truth?” 

This is the theological punchline: The world’s deepest problem isn’t vague “evil out there.” It’s this shocking, specific fact that Jesus Christ, whom we’ve already established as fully God, fully man, was made to suffer under our flawed, corrupt, sinful authority.  The crowd shouted, “Free Barabbas!” Aligns us with Pilate.  We, declaring as Lous Lane did to Superman’s face, “The world doesn’t need a savior, and neither do I.”  That collision—divine love crucified by human sin—is a perfect summary of what’s wrong with everything.  It reveals our rejection of God, our injustice, and our need for redemption.

In the Church of Santa Croce in Rome is the Titulus Crucis, which is purported to be the very sign Pilate had hung over Jesus; where the crimes of the individual crucified would go, and it contains the acronyms, in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, for “Jesus the Nazarene King of the Jews.”  In Latin, this is ‘INRI;’ in Greek, it is ‘INBI,’ but in Hebrew, this is abbreviated ‘YHWH;’ a word in and of itself—also known as the tetragrammaton; God’s sacred, personal name in the Hebrew Bible, derived from the verb “to be,” as in the response given to Moses when he asks God for His name, “I am who I am.”

This fulfils the words of Jesus during the Feast of Tabernacles, shortly before his crucifixion, recorded in John 8:28: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he.”

The cross looks like defeat, but it’s God’s hidden victory.  The Creed doesn’t celebrate power here; it confesses weakness.  Yet in that weakness, God defeats sin and death.  The one named Pilate becomes a footnote; the one crucified becomes King forever.

Transition

Romans 5:8 reads, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  In the midst of the sin of the world, God mercifully stitched the Gospel narrative.  Barabbas, as in bar—abbas, literally translates to “Son of the Father” in Hebrew.  Standing beside the other “son of the father,” one a sinful, condemned man deserving death, and the other the sinless true Son of God.  A true M. Night Shyamalan “reference inside a reference,” of substitutionary atonement—Jesus, takes the place of the guilty so that sinners like Barabbas (us) can go free.

Point

So, what does it mean for us today?

First, our faith is not in a fairy tale.  This happened—it’s historical.  We have just as many firsthand accounts of this event as we do of any other historical figure of the time, which is odd given how historically insignificant this event would have otherwise been.

Second, God came all the way down.  He didn’t just send help—He became the help.  He took our place.  As Isaiah 53:5 says, “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities.”  Barabbas—the son of the father, the guilty man set free, Jesus taking his place is also us.  The cross is substitutionary love.  In a world full of injustice and suffering, the cross reminds us that God enters into it with us.  He suffered under Pilate, so we can face our own ‘Pilates’ with hope.

The cross shows us both God’s love and the cost of our rebellion, which is the third lesson this stanza teaches us today: our sin is serious.  Many people tolerate it today, saying, “Jesus didn’t talk about sin, he talked about love!”  The cross shows how far God went to deal with it.  If the Son of God had to die, how can we treat sin lightly?

But it also means hope.  The grave couldn’t hold Him.  Because He died and rose, our suffering has meaning, and death isn’t the end.  The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in us today.

Application

So, if this is true, how do we live in light of the cross?

We can say we believe many things.  But do our lives show it?

Challenge

So, if this is true—that God’s Son suffered, was crucified, died, and was buried—what then?

· The original meaning of the word martyr was not necessarily someone who died for their faith; instead, it referred to someone who bore witness, i.e., gave testimony.  This was especially true of those who were persecuted, lending to its current usage.

My point is, it’s one thing to take a stand once, and I don’t want to sound like I’m minimizing the sacrifices of our martyrs.  Still, it’s another thing entirely to live that same conviction, daily.  To die for something versus to live for something.  Will people recognize you as a follower of Christ by your deeds?

· Will you forgive in the measure you’ve been forgiven?  Serve in the capacity He served, love as He loved?

· Can you pass on what you hold to be true without words?  Does your life display your knowledge and conviction of the life lived between the commas, by the love you have for those around you?

Close

Don’t answer now,  but ask yourselves, whose name does your life more closely align with?  Mary’s faithful “yes” in the face of scandal; “I am the Lord’s servant... May your word to me be fulfilled,”or Pilate’s fearful “no;” “I am innocent of this man’s blood… It is your responsibility!”

The Creed invites us to embrace the scandal of the cross—its ugliness, its weakness, its power—and let it shape us.  Because the God who suffered under Pilate is the God who suffers with us, and for us, today.

Before we close in song, I want to leave you with one more story.  Because the creed draws such tension between the two individuals named, and the two men the crowd choose between holds so much value—both being a Son of the Father, one deserving death and spared, the other innocent, but willing to die for many.  In the military, on our utility uniforms, we all wear our own names, but we also bear one another’s.  On our chests, we either have U.S. Army, or U.S. Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force, Coast Guard—it’s not so different than us identifying with Christ’s name; we call ourselves ‘Christians,’ because we follow him.

This story, maybe some of you have heard before, is about Alexander the Great, one of the greatest military generals who ever lived.  He conquered almost the entire known world with his army.  The story goes that he was surveying the bounty of a particularly successful campaign when he witnessed his men escorting a prisoner.  The man was dressed as a Macedonian, not a conquered people, but a countryman of the great king.  So, the king asked the guards what his charges were, and they responded, “fleeing in the face of the enemy.”  Cowardice had only one punishment: death.  As the king looked at the young soldier, he decided to show mercy, taking the opportunity for a teachable moment.  He asked him for his name.  When the young man responded, however, the smile left the king’s face, and he immediately grew angry.  Upon asking the boy to repeat his name, the boy said quieter, and with less confidence than before, “Alexander, Sir.”  The king offered him the ultimatum that the boy change his ways or change his name!

We’re all sons and daughters of the father, Barabbas’ or Batabbas’, but we get to choose whether to respond as Mary’s or Pilate’s.  We get to choose whether we follow Christ or not, and which ‘Son of the Father’ we emulate. 

So, as we leave here, love where it hurts to love—but not because turning the other cheek is easier, but because the model we’ve been given is that sin is so perverse that it took an entirely selfless act to deliver an otherwise helpless people.  That’s mercy, not ignoring sin—not simply accusing people of it either—but delivering people from it.