Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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SERMON 6: LENTEN MIDWEEK 5
"That Day, and Today"
Luke 23:26-43
Our theme for this Lenten season has been, "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good."
This evening I was reminded of this truth: evil is often louder than good.
In news reporting, for instance, people say, "If it bleeds, it leads."
That is, you take a story that is sensational or even bloody, and you make that the main story.
It catches people's attention.
It leads.
Evil often is louder than good.
Another example.
Criticism, negative comments, tend to be more powerful, "louder" to
us than compliments or positive comments.
What sticks with us longer is the complaint
or the criticism or the insult-we keep hearing those things long after the kindness or the
affirmation has faded.
This is why so many people carry around in their heads and hearts a
whole truckload of negative commentary; we play that in our heads even when we're not
consciously aware of it.
Evil is often louder than good.
It's true in the reading for this evening from Luke 23.
It starts with "the rulers," members of the Sanhedrin: "they scoffed," our translations say.
It might be better to say, "They began to scoff" or maybe even, "They kept on continually scoffing"-because when evil speaks, it is loud and long in its sin.
Without realizing it, they say true things about Jesus, hanging on the
cross.
Jesus is God's Messiah, his Christ, Jesus is God's chosen one.
But he's not there to save
himself, but to die for all people.
The rulers don't see this, they can't.
All they can do is scoff
and ridicule.
How loud was it?
Pretty loud.
And then there are soldiers, the troops directly under Roman control; they're the executioners, they actually kill Jesus and the two criminals.
And they know the charge that Pilate has settled on, the charge against this perfectly innocent man-the only perfectly innocent man ever.
The charge?
"King of the Jews."
It's written on a piece of wood and posted over Jesus's head.
But that's not enough.
In their blindness, the soldiers mocked Jesus: "Don't kings look out for themselves?
If you're the king of the Jews-look, you even have a sign above you!-if you're the king, save yourself."
Laughter, mockery, insults.
Loud, evil words.
And there is more.
One of the dying criminals actually finds it within himself to rail at Jesus, to blaspheme him, and once he starts, he keeps on doing it: "Aren't you the Christ?
Well,
aren't you?
Do something!"
I wonder how the rulers and the soldiers reacted when one of the
men who was dying beside Jesus joined in the noise, the mockery.
They had already taken
his clothes.
The Lord has no dignity left at all.
And now this criminal's voice adds to the din.
It's loud, and it's long, and it's evil.
The way that evil often is.
But then-there is one voice.
He speaks to his fellow criminal, and then he speaks to Jesus.
This solitary voice speaks not out of blindness, or ignorance, or hatred, or mockery.
This
believing voice speaks honesty and truth and hope.
Honesty, truth, and hope.
We're going to
listen carefully to this voice, to the believing criminal.
We need to understand what he said in
faith, even with all the noise around him.
And then, Jesus answers him!
Jesus hasn't replied to
any of the noise around him.
But he speaks to this man.
We'll listen carefully to Jesus's voice,
too, as he promises a gift.
This believer-for that is what we have to call him-this believer first speaks to his fellow criminal.
We don't know what these two have done, whether they committed a crime
together, or if they were just lined up to die.
But his voice of faith is, in the first place,
astonishingly honest, about himself and his "fellow."
"Don't you fear God?"
The unbelief
all around him is ignorant, they don't even know that something more is going on here.
Something mysterious ... God's justice is at work ... and something more.
The criminal goes
on.
"Look-you and I are dying here because we deserve what we are getting.
But this man
has done nothing wrong!"
In a way, these words don't quite prove that this man is a believer-
but how does he know this about Jesus?
He's right, of course-he's very right.
And he's been
hearing the evil voices around him, saying things that are actually true.
"If you are the Christ, if
you are the king"-and Jesus is the Christ.
He is king of the Jews.
He is king over everyone.
But
Jesus has done nothing wrong, and yet he is dying on a cross.
Can he really be the king?
The believing criminal's next words show the depth of his faith.
And let's remember this.
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