Christ, Lamb of God

London witnessed a spectacular scene when a giant wooden replica of the city ignited and burned brilliantly to the ground. The conflagration was planned, however, in honor of the 350th anniversary of the Great Fire of London. The original fire began on September 2, 1666, in the early morning at a bakery on Pudding Lane. The surrounding structures were soon engulfed, and the fire spread to the rest of the city, lasting four entire days. The modern-day festival to remember the disaster is known as "London's Burning" and contains four days of free art events, concluding this year with the grand burning of the replica of medieval London.

At first glance, it seems a bit odd to celebrate such a catastrophe-especially with another fire. However, as gruesome as the Great Fire may have been, it now has its place firmly etched into the city's history as a turning point: the beginning of a time of regrowth and resurgence for London.

Christians arguably perform the same "odd" type of ritual when we take communion and decorate our homes and sacred buildings with crosses. We not only commemorate the brutal murder of Jesus, but we adorn our worship with the murder weapon: the cross, one of the most widely known torture devices of that time period. And yet it doesn't seem strange to us—because we know that what Satan intended to be the ultimate act of evil, God turned around to be the ultimate act of love.

Potential Preaching Angles: Redemption; Cross; Crucifixion; Easter; Communion

No greater pain has ever been experienced on any level than the hell of Christ suffering in this moment. But why? Because he carried all of that pain, sin, guilt, and shame in that moment. Yet on a far deeper level he was forsaken and punished for us to reconcile us to God (2 Cor. 5:18).

Tim Keller illustrates it this way:

If after a service some Sunday morning one of the members of my church comes to me and says, "I never want to see you or talk to you again," I will feel pretty bad. But if today my wife comes up to me and says, "I never want to see you or talk to you again," that's a lot worse. The longer the love, the deeper the love, the greater the torment of its loss.

But this forsakenness, this loss, was between the Father and the Son, who had loved each other from all eternity. … Jesus, the Maker of the world, was being unmade. Why? Jesus was experiencing Judgment Day. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It wasn't a rhetorical question. And the answer is: For you, for me, for us. Jesus was forsaken by God so that we would never have to be. The judgment that should have fallen on us fell instead on Jesus.

How do we measure the size of a fire? By the number of firefighters and fire engines sent to fight against it. How do we measure the seriousness of a medical condition? By the amount of risk the doctors take in prescribing dangerous antibiotics or surgical procedures. How do we measure the gravity of sin and the incomparable vastness of God's love for us? By looking at the magnitude of what God has done for us in Jesus, the Son of God who became like a common criminal for our sake and in our place.

David C. Nicosia, a business owner in Chicago, had no idea who he was slapping. The 55-year-old man was outside the Cook County Courthouse when he became angry at a 79-year-old African-American woman. After arguing with her, Nicosia, who is white, spat on the woman and called her "Rosa Parks." Then he turned and allegedly slapped the silver-haired woman on the left side of her face with an open hand.

It was a bad move for Nicosia. The woman happened to be Judge Arnette Hubbard, the first female president of the National Bar Association and Cook County Bar Association. Judge Hubbard is a community icon who has served as an election observer in Haiti and South Africa and had long been a voice on civil rights and women's issues. Hubbard was appointed to the bench in 1997, re-elected to a six-year term the following year and retained since in two more elections, most recently in 2010.

Nicosia was arrested by sheriff's deputies and charged with four counts of aggravated battery and a hate crime. The Chicago Tribune quoted a local leader who said, "People of good common sense and decency, people of good hearts should be outraged by this." After all, nobody should go slapping and spitting on a community icon.

Preaching Angles: Holy Week; Christ, cross of; Cross—In the Gospels we see that the entire human race conspired to slap and spit on someone whose true dignity was also hidden. It was an outrage, and yet the eternal Son of God didn't arrest us. He set us free.

The gospel is not good instructions, not a good idea, and not good advice. The gospel is an announcement of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ.

—Michael Horton, Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California

In 1863, during the Civil War, General "Stonewall" Jackson was accidentally shot by his own troops in 1863. His body was laid in the Capitol in Richmond, Virginia, for two days before his funeral at his home Presbyterian Church in Lexington. Tens of thousands of mourning Confederate people crowded into the Capitol building to look on their beloved leader for the last time.

As the sun was setting on the last day of viewing, the marshal gave orders for the great doors of the Senate chamber to be closed. Just before the gates were finally shut, a rough looking Confederate veteran in tattered gray uniform pushed his way forward, tears running down his bearded cheeks.

The marshal in charge was about to turn this insistent old man away, when suddenly the old man lifted up the stump of his right arm, and cried out, "By this right arm, which I gave for my country, I demand the right of seeing my general one more time!" The governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia happened to be standing nearby and ordered the marshal to let the veteran in. He said, "He has won entrance by his wounds."

On August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines flight 225 crashed just after taking off from the Detroit airport, killing 155 people. One survived: a four-year-old from Tempe, Arizona, named Cecelia.

News accounts say when rescuers found Cecelia they did not believe she had been on the plane. Investigators first assumed Cecelia had been a passenger in one of the cars on the highway onto which the airliner crashed. But when the passenger register for the flight was checked, there was Cecelia's name.

Cecelia survived because, even as the plane was falling, Cecelia's mother, Paula Chican, unbuckled her own seat belt, got down on her knees in front of her daughter, wrapped her arms and body around Cecelia, and then would not let her go.

Nothing could separate that child from her parent's love—neither tragedy nor disaster, neither the fall nor the flames that followed, neither height nor depth, neither life nor death.

Such is the love of our Savior for us. He left heaven, lowered himself to us, and covered us with the sacrifice of his own body to save us.