Good Friday Tenebrae Service
Sermon Text: John 19:1-8
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
It is always nice to have someone do your “dirty work” for you. You know, the things you personally do not like to perform… certainly if you do not have to. Things of which you are glad there are others who will do them for you.
When our kids were babies, how easy it was to wait for my wife to take care of a dirty diaper. “Oh, sorry hun, I didn’t know the baby needed changing.” That might still happen with grandchildren.
In regard to our Gospel text this evening, the chief priests were looking to the Romans (and Pontius Pilate in particular) to do their dirty work. What was that work? Putting this Jesus of Nazareth to death.
That was the conclusion they had reached some time ago. Jesus had to die. Oh, they tried at first to discredit our Lord, to trip Him up many times in His words and in His actions, but to no avail. So they planned to remove the “problem” once and for all.
Ironically… but certainly not by accident… that is exactly what Christ was planning as well… to remove the problem once and for all with the “problem,” of course, being our sinful state, the eternally deadly state into which we and all mankind are born.
All one has to do to measure the severity, the depths to which sin had plunged the world is to look at what the world and those of the world were willing to do… the lengths they were willing to go in carrying out that which is evil… that which is wicked, sick and perverted.
And this, for the almighty self. This to quench sinful, selfish desires which many times, their warped minds can actually justify as being good, being expedient, being right and needed. It was happening then, so many years ago in Jerusalem and still now, to this very day in every city and place.
The leaders of the Jews wanted blood, Christ’s blood, but JUST NOT on their hands. Let it be on the hands… at the hands of the Romans. And the Romans at first said no. Pilate said, "Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him." (John 19:6)
Pilate found no guilt in Him… no guilt in Jesus. And the same is true of the Jews. All they had were trumped-up charges against the sinless, perfect, and holy Lamb of God. The One who looked so pathetic… made to look pathetic, standing there in a purple robe and crown of thorns no less… meek and mild, all bloodied and beaten, mocked and insulted.
In the end they will prevail. Sin will be allowed to prevail with no one’s hands being clean. Not the Jewish leaders. Not the people there present who exclaimed, “His blood be on us and on our children!" (Matthew 27:25)
Not with Pilate, no matter how many times he washed them.
His blood… Christ’s blood… His entire suffering and complete state of humiliation is on us… all of us… all the world. As is His death.
You and I have heard it before and quite frankly, cannot hear it enough. What nailed Christ to the cross were your sins and mine… and that of the whole world. Pilate said, "Take him yourselves and crucify him. And we did. We did.
But wonderfully, mercifully… that blood… that very same blood… Christ’s blood… does not condemn us. It does not accuse us. Rather, it frees us… cleanses us… blotting out all of our iniquity.
To think, the Sacred blood on our hands has become the Sacred blood that we gladly take and drink… that which our loving Savior offers again and again and this, to our soul’s health and peace.
In truth, dearly beloved, there was a lot of dirty work done. Yes, some by the hands of men… but the greatest, by far, was that undertaken by our Lord Himself.
The dirty work of His coming to earth for the likes of us.
The dirty work of His suffering, His humiliation, the pain and agony, the bloody sweat. You heard the Gospel account. You know what He endured.
The dirty work of allowing Himself to be crucified… suspended there between heaven and earth as the only acceptable sacrifice… as our mediator and redeemer.
And to think (which is what this evening is all about)… He did it for you… “for us men and for our salvation.”
We read in our text, “So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, ‘Behold the man!’" (John 19:5)
You got that right Pilate. Indeed, dear friends… behold the God-Man… Christ Jesus… who gave His life for you.
Take it all in. Take it home with you this very night. See… your Savior! Amen.
“Take Him Yourselves and Crucify Him” The Rev. Mark H. Hein
4/18/25 Zion Lutheran Church, Naperville, IL