The Third Station: Jesus Falls the First Time

Scripture

“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6, with references in the Meditation to Matthew 27:27-31, Mark 15:15-20, John 19:17,18, Psalm 38:4, Leviticus 16:5-22, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Romans 5:10, Ephesians 5:14).

Meditation

The blood and sweat streaming into Jesus’ eyes is burning and blinding him. The crown of twisted thorns the soldiers pressed into his skull to mock him is a piercing agony. Each contraction of his laboring heart sends a throb of pure pain throughout his flayed torso.  The cloth of his garment lies imbedded in blood, stuck to bone, meshed with shredded muscle. Yet, there is a weightier agony torturing him. It is his cross.

He is carrying the beam through narrow streets and jeering crowds. Jesus is on his way to Golgotha where the stake is already driven—the place where the two pieces, stake and beam, will become one and he will die. Now, he is stumbling under the startling seven stone weight, head pitched forward, sight blurred, placing one foot in front of the other determined not to fall.

There is a burden men were never meant to carry and Jesus is carrying it. He felt it stagger him as the beam settled on his shoulders. With every step the weight of it intensifies. It is more than mass or matter. Although real as the cross he carries, it’s not something anyone around him can see. How strange … since people are close enough to smell the copper of his blood. Stranger still because he is lifting this heavy thing off their backs. Do they not feel it …

…this crushing and destroying weight they have been laboring under? King David said it. Guilt is a burden too heavy to bear. Yet, they are unconscious of its impossible weight, the weight of sin. There is even a law of sin. It is death. He who sins dies … and everyone sins. Most of them have heard the words, but sleeping spirits keep them numb, insensitive to guilt. For some, it is a vague notion lurking in the hazy mists of peripheral consciousness. Others sense a growing and insistent call to acknowledge it. A few hear the reality of it screaming its dire warning and demanding attention, but what are they to do? That they are born guilty makes it so common and pervasive that they cannot think of escaping it.

Except … on one day of the year, the Day of Atonement, when their High Priest intervenes. If they are to live, their guilt must be removed. It’s not anything they can do for themselves. It must be done for them. They watch, able to offer nothing. The High Priest makes atonement for the sins of the entire community. It is done so with a curious ritual involving two goats. One dies and the other lives.

Together, the two goats complete the atonement. The sacrificed one is the sin offering to reconcile Israel to God. The remaining one is a scapegoat to carry away Israel’s guilt. On this day, the High Priest presses both hands hard onto the head of the scapegoat weighing it down with the burden of all the people’s sin. It is a heavy load. It is a loathsome load and it must be removed from their midst.

Finally, an appointed man prods the goat into the desert so that it carries away every sin to a solitary place. The people watch as judgment and condemnation disappear for one more year.

Jesus is on the ground now, gasping. The crossbeam on his shoulders presses him hard into the dusty street and flattens him.  The Roman soldier prods him to go on. He must get up. There is a long way yet to go to carry so many sins, the sins of the whole world. Condemned now to death, the Father has given him the weight of them. After the cross he, like the living goat, will carry this burden away – as far away as east is from west.

Christ knows, but his people do not. The heavy weight of their iniquities rests on him. They see him carrying a cross, but it is really their guilt. He is their scapegoat and also their sacrifice, a complete atonement. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world – this time once and for all time.

The soldier prods him again. “Keep walking.”

Action

I want to grasp the truth that sin and its guilt is a burden I was never meant to carry. God did not design me for this task. He has laid my iniquity upon Christ. I will acknowledge with joy his gracious provision for my sin. I am a fool if I try to bear what I cannot. Neither did he appoint me to receive condemnation. “There is therefore, now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1,2).

Prayer

Jesus, thank you for allowing my guilt to be laid upon you. It was a burden too heavy for me to bear. In your humanity, it was a crushing load. In your divinity, you were able. You let yourself to be made sin on my behalf. By this act, by the Father’s grace and by the work of your Spirit I am no longer encumbered by guilt. You have carried away all my sins. As for my condemnation, it is therefore now … no more.

Chorus

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you. Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.