I thought that I would share them with you here over the next seven days so here's the second which is on wood.
Jesus is Crucified
So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by
himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew
is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on
either side, with Jesus between them. Pilate also had an inscription written
and put on the cross. It read, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.’ (John 19:17-19)
Jesus would have been
used to the sound of nails being hammered into wood. It would have been a
familiar and comforting sound to him, the sound of his father Joseph working
away in his carpenters shop in Nazareth. Nails being hammered into wood was the
sound of family, love and security.
And throughout his life
wood had been everywhere around. Born in a stable in Bethlehem he was laid in a
wooden manger. Much of his travelling had been in wooden boats back and forth
across the sea of Galilee. And he had turned over the wooden tables of the money
changers as he angrily drove them out of the temple.
And
this carpenters son had talked about wood in his teaching. He had used it as an
example when he had warned people about the dangers of judging others. Why do
you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye he has said when you do not notice
the log in your own eye. You hypocrite, he said, take the log out of your own
eye first and only then are you in a position to help take the speck out of
your neighbours eye.
And
you can’t have wood without trees. Jesus must have smiled when he saw little
Zacchaeus up in that tree which he had climbed so that he could see Jesus. The
wood of the tree had been the beginning of the path to salvation for Zachaeus.
From it he had been able to see the Messiah clearly, something that many others
who had been stood next to Jesus had not been able to do. Jesus called him down
from the tree and went with him to his house. And sat at the wooden dining
table with Jesus in his own house Zaccaeus accepted Jesus into his life and chose
the path of discipleship. As Jesus said “Today Salvation has come to this
house.” It was a story that started with a man up a tree.
Now it was about to
end with a man on a tree. The Old Testament book of Deuteronomy says that
“Cursed is he who hangs on the tree” and the Jews regarded crucifixion as one
of the most cursed and shameful ways to die.
And now here is Jesus
being nailed to a tree, being nailed to a cross. Once again Jesus hears the
sound of nails being hammered into wood.
But this time it is not a sound that speaks of family, love and
security. Now it is a sound of rejection, abandonment, pain, suffering and
desolation. He has been judged by people who could not see clearly who he was
because of the logs in their own eyes.
And yet, despite how it
seemed, this tree that Jesus was nailed to was to become a tree of salvation
just as Zachhaeus’ tree had been for him. In Luke’s gospel Jesus said
“Each
tree is known by its fruit”
And
this was truly a tree that would be known by its fruit because as Jesus had
also said in Matthew’s gospel;
“every
good tree bears good fruit”.
The
cross of shame had become the instrument of salvation, and the tree of death
had become the tree of life, with its leaves for the healing of the nations.
The
sound of the nails being driven into wood is a heartbreaking sound for us
because we know that Jesus is suffering there on that tree because of our sin.
But from that tree comes the opportunity for redemption for us. Jesus calls us
from the cross to be wood that he can use, he wants us to be trees that will be
known by their fruit, he calls us to be good trees that bear good fruit.
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