“Despising the Shame”

The Appomattox Court House Presbyterian Church Pulpit
Rev. Cameron S. Smith
Holy Week Service, Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Hebrews 12:1-3

"It is not a fearful thing to die, but to die shamefully."
Epictetus, Stoic philosopher in Rome (Diss. 2.1.13)

Last spring I had an opportunity to visit the new Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. Recognizing that the anniversary of his death, April 15th is this week, I was reminded of the shock and terror of the president's assassination on that bloody night at Ford's Theater by a particular exhibit in the museum: The Night the Moon Ran Blood Red. It was a historic walk through the last days in the life of the president. The first part of the tour was a series of pictures of the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, complete with his correspondence revealing his thoughts of hatred towards the president. The next room displayed the actual carriage that carried Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln to Ford's theater. This was followed by some furnishings from Ford's Theater with pictures of the presidential booth and the now famous drawings of the assassination and the fleeing assassin. In the next corner, they have a display of the small, cramped room across the street from the theater where they brought the dying president. The actual furniture of that room is on display down to the pictures and fixtures on the wall. Right around the corner from that scene, there's a scaled down model of the funeral train along with the marble table used to hold the president's casket. But then, just as you're about to walk out the door, you have to walk by some of the accessories that were used to execute the conspirators: some shackles, rope and some of the black hoods used to cover the condemned prisoner's heads. It was an eerie experience, but it drove home the gravity of that night in American history in a way that the printed word of our history books just can't match.

As we move closer to Good Friday, the words from Hebrews 12 remind us in a powerful way, the sobering truth of Passion Week: The Lord Jesus, "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross…." Perhaps it is true that for the Church, this is old hat. You've heard the Easter story so many times that you just sort of tune out and move on when you read it or hear it. I'm not going to rehearse here the gory details of crucifixion to shake us out of cognitive indifference. Mel Gibson's version of The Passion of Christ employed that approach effectively. You know the barbarity of the practice; the public shame involved; the pathological sport generated by the jeering crowds; the pain and dishonor of a disgraceful death. The crucified are "stripped of dignity and worth in the eyes of this world." Here's part one of my meditation for you today: The "endured the cross" part we all know from sheer repetition; but in the wider context, we read that Jesus "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame." The subsequent words of verse 3 reveal the substance of the joy before him to be his certain resurrection from death and his ascension to the right hand of God the Father in glory.

The question is, what does it mean to say that Jesus despised the shame? Obviously, it must be an attitude toward the scandal of the cross. Those who have some understanding of Ancient Near Eastern culture tell us that "[Despising the shame] entails more than simply enduring the experience of disgrace rather than shrinking from it." I want to suggest to you that when Hebrews tells us that Jesus despised the shame of the cross, it means that he wasn't sensitive to the possibility of dishonor. He wasn't weighing public opinion before he went to the cross. He didn't convene a focus group to find out whether it would play well in posterity! Jesus despised the shame; he didn't care what people thought - he knew they were wrong and he also knew the rightness of his mission; a mission that would ultimately make peace with God a possibility for you by means of a scandalous death.

The public record in the Ancient Near East is replete with anecdotal evidence on death by crucifixion. It wasn't something that would win friends or influence people. Those who scorned the message of the cross in the days of the early Church thought Christians to be stark raving "mad," to use the words of an early Christian apologist, Justin Martyr. He said, "They [i.e. the educated pagans] say that our madness consists in the fact that we put a crucified man in second place after the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of the world." What kind of fool would worship "a criminal and his cross"? Crucifixion had many inglorious nicknames in the day: the "infamous stake"; the "barren beam"; the "criminal wood"; the "terrible cross." Even Scripture itself confirms this verdict on crucifixion when it says in Deuteronomy 21, "he who is hanged [on a tree] is accursed of God."

But once more, the author of Hebrews reminds us that the response of faith is in "fixing our eyes on Jesus…who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." John Chrysostom, another esteemed orthodox voice from the early Church famously remarked that, "Jesus died disgracefully "for no other reason than to teach us to count as nothing the opinion of human beings." And this thought brings me to the second and final part of this Holy Week meditation: What does despising the shame mean for your daily walk? I think it is this: My friends, this world is not a friend of the faith. All humanity bears the image of God; and the world that He created is indeed good. But I hasten to add, the Fall is our present reality, and it has been thus for thousands of years and will continue to be until the return of the Lord Jesus. There is sin and there is rebellion. Welcome to our world. Jesus never said it would be easy to believe.

There are always things out there that seek to undermine your faith. Just in the past few weeks, we've had a bevy of negative news: Abdul Rahman, the Muslim convert to Christianity, who was held up as an example to the unbelieving world for his courage in the face of the death penalty for not to renouncing his new found faith, has now gleefully been attacked by Time magazine as a mentally unbalanced, deadbeat dad who abused his two teenage daughters and refused to pay their child support. The big news in the secular press this week is the unearthing of the news that Judas Iscariot was actually a hero and not the goat that Scripture portrays him to be, thus undermining the confidence in the Bible that you cherish and trust. And, last, but not least, the news magazines are aglow this week about the so-called "fishapod" that is said to be Darwin's "missing link" in the fossil record, connecting land animals with aquatic life. Newsweek opined this week, again joyfully, about the death knell for intelligent design as a viable alternative to the theory of evolution.

My friends, the writer of Hebrews deliberately chose to surround his congregation with a biblical "cloud of witnesses." You'll note; if you haven't done so already, that the preceding chapter in Hebrews, chapter 11, is all about the heroes of the faith from righteous Abel right down through the prophets of old. These were saints who despised the shame. Those who were looking to the joy set before them, a heavenly country; a better country. It culminates in our text this morning with Jesus Christ, the founder [or pioneer] and perfecter of faith. Jesus is the perfecter of the faith because he displayed faith and trust in the most perfect form, period. Moses did it well, but Jesus is the ultimate. And Jesus is also the pioneer of the faith. Hebrews 4:15 says that in Christ, "we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." He's been there and done that. I exhort you my friends in the faith to despise the shame of the world and live the life of faith in God unencumbered. "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the [pioneer] and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted." Amen