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This tape includes the reading of Scripture and a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman entitled, "I Was There." As soon as the voice stops on this side of the tape, be sure to turn immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message. Let us give reverent attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the book

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of the Acts of the Holy Spirit, the second chapter, beginning at the verse which is numbered 22. Man of Israel, listen to me. I speak of Jesus of Nazareth, a man singled out by God and made known to you through miracles, portents, and signs, which God worked among you through

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him, as you well know. When he had been given up to you by the deliberate will and plan of God, he was killed by such lawless men. But God raised him to life again, setting him free from the pangs of death, because it could not be that death should keep him in its grip.

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May God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his words. Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. I'm sure you know the words of the song as well as I do, if not better. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

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O, sometimes it causes me to tremble, to tremble, tremble. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? As I say, you know the words to the song as well or better than I do. But may I ask you this afternoon, have you ever heard a song which goes, "Were you there when they handed the hemlock to Socrates?" Or, "Were you there

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when they assassinated Julius Caesar?" Or, "Were you there when Abraham Lincoln breathed his last?" I shall not presume to speak for you, but speaking for myself, I can say no. I was not there for any of those events, for I was not part of them, involved in them. The philosophical

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disputations of Socrates seem distant to me indeed. The political machinations of the first century B.C. Roman Empire hold no particular fascination for me. And while as an American I am touched by the death of Abraham Lincoln, I do not feel myself to have been personally involved in it. So my answer to the question, "Was I there for those events?" is an unhesitating

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no. But when it comes to Calvary, when it comes to the death of my Lord, my answer must be different. For you see, I was there. Christ was put upon that cross not by any spectacular sins, not by any particularly horrible or astounding deeds, but by common, everyday, garden-variety sins, the kind in which I am a specialist.

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The Book of Acts, the portion of which I've just read in your hearing, says that he was killed at the hands of lawless men. And I stood once in the great courtyard of the John Wanamaker store in Philadelphia, and I looked up at the great depiction of the crucifixion which is to be seen there, and I focused upon the hands of the men and women in the crowd.

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And I discovered that their hands were my hands. They were the clenched hands of Caiaphas, who would not accept any new ideas. And I find myself, especially as I am getting older, more and more fascinated with yesterday, and less and less with that courage which is necessary to walk into the new tomorrow where God is.

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I looked up at the picture and I saw the itchy palms of Annas, the man who was anxious to see that this thing didn't go on much longer, it was bad for business in the temple. Now, I've always thought that as a minister of the gospel, my pulpit was socially relevant, and that I spoke significantly to the social issues of our day. But I asked five seminarians

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to read over all of my sermons for the last five years and to put them in classifications, and I was humiliated to discover that only 16 percent of them spoke at all to the social concerns of our time. You see, I know which side my bread is buttered on in Glendale, California.

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There were the sweating hands of Judas, the friend who betrayed a friend. And this last week I had a particularly discouraging experience, and so I picked up the telephone and called a friend who lives at the other end of the country and cried on his shoulder. And the first thing that he said to me was, "You know, there have been many times when you have let

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me cry on your shoulder, but this is the first time that you have ever cried on mine." And I thought to myself, "Oh yes, you are very quick, Bruce, to give help, for as long as you are the one who is giving help, you are in charge." But you have been not so quick to ask for help, to give to someone the gift of your vulnerability, and that is its own

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kind of treason. There were the washed hands of Pilate. They were on the scene, the hands that had managed to shift the blame to someone else. And I condemn racism in South Africa and still own stock in Gulf oil. And I condemn racism in the United States of America and still own

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stock in American telephone and telegraph. And there were the clapping hands of the crowd, the men and women, old and young, who stood about and who would, of course, not have done the deed but were satisfied to sit and watch it. And I say that I am against violence, and yet sit and watch violence on television. Or we'll go to a motion picture theater here

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in Glendale, and coming out of it made sick by what I've seen, we'll walk past the manager without first saying to him, "That was rotten and you know it." And then, of course, there were the bloody hands of the executioners, the ones who did the deed, but they were just doing their duty. And there were times during the Vietnam War

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in which I found myself more concerned about burning draft cards than about the burning flesh of human beings, white and yellow, across the sea, more fearful of those who refused to kill than of those who willingly killed. So I say to you, if it was the hands that did it, then I was there. Now there are those who would suggest that the only reason the

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cross speaks to me like this today is that it's had a moral influence of significance upon history, and none of us will argue about the moral influence of the cross. The greatest art, the greatest music, the greatest literature, the greatest drama, the greatest painting, the greatest sculpture, all of it has found its genesis or its nativity in the cross.

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But the cross does not speak to me 2,000 years after the event, principally as a moral influence. If that is what the cross is, something that is supposed to make me love like Jesus loved and have courage like Jesus had courage, then let's say it, the cross was a failure. For I don't very often love like Jesus loved, and it's not very often that the courage of

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the Christ finds itself expressed in me. If that is all the cross is, then it's not enough, it does not explain why now I say 20 dusty centuries after it happened I was there. When I was in seminary, I was taught that the cross was a sacrifice made by God on my behalf to meet the price of my sin, and I rejected that. It sounded so bloody, so Old Testament, so

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primitive, so utterly unsophisticated for a century like our own. I decided that instead I would look upon the cross as just an influence on my life, and one night I went to the chapel of the seminary all alone, and I stood and I addressed the cross. "You have been an influence upon me," and again, "You have been an influence upon me," and once more, "You have been an

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influence upon me." I suppose I said it a half dozen times, and the last time I said it very loud. And somehow it all seemed very hollow and empty. For the plain fact of the matter is that the way the cross reaches down inside of me and takes hold of me where I am at the core of myself, that's not just an influence. Not for one moment just an influence.

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It's rather like those two or three occasions in my life when I've been driving my automobile and I've hit and killed a small animal. A rabbit once, a pheasant once, a small dog once. I didn't hear any cry. It was over in a minute. Just a little shudder of the car, a little thump, that was all. Yet somehow for the longest time I couldn't shake off

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the memory of it. I kept thinking about it, and the reason I kept thinking about it, you see, was because I was involved in it. I was the one who was driving the car when it happened. And just so with Calvary. I can't hear the cry. It was two thousand years ago. I don't hear the thud. That was two thousand years ago. The earth does not shudder with quaking

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like it did then two thousand years ago. The accident over in a minute, the cross over twenty centuries ago. But somehow I can't separate myself from it. I find myself thinking about it. I find myself grasped by it. Why? Because, you see, I was involved. I was there. The hands were my hands. I went back and read what the books had to say about Old Testament

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sacrifice. Could those who said that that's what it was, God paying the price, be right? I found that those who disagreed really did not know what sacrifice was, for in the Old Testament, sacrifice was a very personal thing. The lamb which was offered had to be a perfect lamb without blemish. It was not raised with the other sheep. It was raised within the

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home. It was, as it were, a pet. It was cleansed and fed special food and cared for with great tenderness. And then, when the time came for the sins of the family to be paid, the father would take the lamb, by this time near to them all, and would lift it, quivering, onto the altar and hold it while its throat was cut. Now, there's no way not to be involved

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in that, and I am sure that the one who held it there felt very much a part of it, as if his own blood was being shed. And if that were so, then when this is magnified to the ultimate, so that the only begotten perfect Son of God and Son of Man was stretched upon a cross, and I put my hands on a quivering Christ, I am involved. I was there. And the

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thing that astonishes me the most about it is that God loved me enough to let me get away with it. Certainly there must have been a way out. I mean, it could have made a deal with Caiaphas, some kind of under-the-table arrangement with Pontius Pilate, called upon those twelve legions of angels of which he spoke, but he did none of those things. He

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let me get away with it. Why? Because he was Savior, and it is of the nature of a Savior to die. A Savior cannot be a Savior until he lays down his life. An acorn cannot become a tree until the acorn gives up its life. A soldier cannot save both his life and his country. He lays down his life for his country. By definition, a Savior is one who pays the

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price. And I find myself on the cross, laying my hands on one who let me get away with it because he was Savior, loving that much. Now, some people try to make that love more respectable. It is too permissive to understand God loving just that much, so they established certain criteria that one must meet in order to enjoy the love. That is, you must answer affirmatively

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to certain questions, you must belong to this church, you must acknowledge these four spiritual laws, you must undertake this ritual or that sacrament, this discipline, that act of devotion. But when I look at the cross, I see the God that Jesus depicted as a Father who forgave his prodigal son before the prodigal son breathed one word of apology. I remember Jesus forgiving

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in this love of God a prostitute before she had said one word about being sorry for what she had done and made any promise whatever about changing her way of life from that time on. I find God expressing there, on that green hill, the kind of love which is unconditional. And I say to you that it's a good thing the love of God is unconditional, for if it was

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conditional, it would not apply to me. For you see, I was there. I don't meet the conditions. And the fact that the love of God is so unconditional, so utterly open that he will let men do to him what we did to him that day, if it is that unconditional, oh my, I call that fantastically good news. I call that the gospel. It's the only thing, you see, that gives me any worth

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at all. If God so loved me, then I have some worth. It must be so. So yesterday, when a young man of our fellowship who is going off to service called in the last draft, came to me for a blessing, all I could say to him was, "Tommy," I don't know why I used the diminutive, it just seemed appropriate at the time, I said to him, "Tommy,

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just be who you are." You see, I knew that he'd been to Calvary. I knew he was there. I knew he'd experienced the love of God. I knew that all the worth in him he understood to be in terms of that love. So what else could I call him to as he went away? And I have no fears for him at all, because he knows how God loved him. He was there.

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It's important, you see, not only that we remember how God loved us on that tree, but also that we remember how God loves us today. It is not something that happened. It is something that is happening. It's not just "good Friday today," "yesterday was good Thursday, and tomorrow will be good Saturday, and then good Sunday, and then good Monday, and then good

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Tuesday, and then good Wednesday," and all the rest of them, because, you see, that love of God shown on that cross is as real now as it was then. Nothing can frustrate, nothing can stop, nothing can terminate that kind of loving. Samuel Johnson's biographer was James Boswell, and Boswell was the kind of individual who

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often needed to be reassured of other people's love. And he was badgering Johnson one day to make sure that Johnson loved him. And finally Johnson turned to him and said, "My regard for you is greater almost than I have the words to express, but I do not choose to always be repeating it. So write it down on the first page of the notebook in your pocket, and then

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you will never have to doubt of it again." And I think of that when I think of cross love, not because it is not repeated—it is repeated every day—but because of that last phrase, "You never have to doubt it again. I can write, you see, across the first page of my life, I never have to doubt the continuing love of God." Oh, that's the gospel.

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I had a friend in seminary named Warren. He had served on the mission field, and on the mission field in a building accident, a power saw had cut off the four fingers of his left hand. And the medication which they gave to him was wrong. He had a reaction, and as a result of the medication, he developed leukemia. And there were numerous times while he was

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in seminary that he had to go into the hospital for a brief time, and we would always go and visit him, and on one occasion I was visiting him, and Warren said to me, "You know, I feel terribly depressed. I don't feel the love of God here." And I said to him, "Warren, the love of God is not something that you necessarily feel. It's at the very times when you feel

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like it's about you the least, that you in fact are experiencing it the most. The love of God is always there. It's not just a matter of emotions. Let's review the promises." And so we reviewed the promises. "Lo, I am with you always. Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Whither shall I flee from thy presence? Yea,

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thou walk'st through the valley of the shadow of death. The rod and the staff they comfort. Thou preparest it." And on and on we went, and gradually we began to feel and to know which is deeper than feeling, the presence of the God who still loves. And I did something which I've done on many occasions. I took a chair and I pulled it up beside the bed,

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and I said, "Now, let's see Jesus sitting here, and let's talk with him." And so we did, and to some of you I'm sure that sounds very unsophisticated, but for some of us it seems to work. And we talked with Jesus sitting in that chair, and after a while the nurse came in and she said to me that my time was up and that I should leave, and she started

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to straighten up, and she picked up the chair and Warren said, "Don't move the chair." And she said, "Why?" And he said, "Because Jesus is sitting there." And she gave him a rather condescending smile. When we walked out into the hall she said, "Thank you for cheering him up, he seems brighter." I said, "I didn't cheer him up, Jesus did." And she gave me

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a rather condescending smile. Now none of us knew how close it was. I don't think any of us had any idea, and I'm sure that Warren himself did not know that that night he would die, but he did. In his sleep he died. And two weeks later when I was calling in that hospital I saw that nurse in the coffee shop, and I said to her, "Did you have any idea

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it was coming? Did you have any knowledge of how serious it was?" She said, "No, none at all." I said, "Did you see him any more that night?" Well she said, "A little bit later I was walking down the hall and I heard him laughing in his room, and I thought, 'Now somebody's in there after hours.' So I went over to see and I opened the door and he was

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all by himself." "Did he say anything to you?" I said. "Well, just one thing. He asked me to move that chair closer to the bed." And I said, "What chair?" And without any condescension at all, she said, "The chair where Jesus was sitting." The cross is the testimony of stimony. The cross is the testimony that the love that

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was real then is just as real today. And the power of it can be felt in all of our experience. I know because I was there and heard him say, "Father, forgive," and I'm here, and I know the power of his love now, as it was known then and now, so we'll know it forever. For the cross which has extended across twenty centuries will extend off into all of our

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forevers. I've recently returned from Africa and spent some weeks in Kenya, and there is a tribe there called the Kikuyu. They have a tradition that when one of their number is desperately ill, they uproot a tree, a certain kind of tree, and they bring it and plant it before

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the door to the man's house. And it is believed that this tree will prevent death from entering that house. And that spoke to me when I heard of it, because you see, there was a time when I and other men went out and got a tree, not as an instrument of life, but as an instrument of death, and we crucified the Son of God upon it. But he, by the power of his love,

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turned it from an instrument of death into an instrument of life, turned it from that which was defeating into that which was everlastingly victorious. He took that thing which was ugly, and by the power of his love, made it so beautiful that today we fashion it of gold and hang it about the necks of little girls and our mothers and our sweethearts, and we make it

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of precious stone and raise it high above those buildings on the earth which we prize and hold most dear. All because, you see, of a love that gave itself there, gives itself now, and will, because of the power of the cross, continue to give itself into all eternity, never forgotten by God. That's what the love of the cross means.

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So James Martineau was a great English philosopher, and he and his wife, shortly after they were married, had a little baby, and the baby died. And at that time, he was teaching at the University of Dublin, and so they buried the baby in Dublin. And a year later, he went on to Liverpool, and from there to many other cities, and the decades went by, they lived long lives together,

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and then Mrs. Martineau died and he was left for a lonely walk. And when he was 87 years of age, the tercentenary of Dublin University was celebrated, and he went back to Dublin for the event, and they heaped on him honor after honor. But one day, with the help of a friend, he separated himself from the crowd, and went to a little cemetery, and standing

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there headed in the rain, he remembered with love by that tiny tomb. There was not a single person in Dublin that day who remembered that baby who had died over 60 years before. There was not a single person in Dublin that day who remembered that baby except its father. For the love of the Father never forgets. And the love of the

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cross is the expression of the love of our Father in Heaven, and it extends through all of life and beyond. He will never forget. I think that is all I have to say to you this Good Friday, except perhaps to note that I discovered a law of the state of California this last week which made me very sad. You

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all know the legend of the dogwood, that very old legend which said that the cross was made out of a dogwood tree, that at that time they grew very tall and strong, but so that they could never make a cross out of one again, Jesus cast a spell, as it were, upon the tree, worked a miracle, and caused it instead of being a tall, strong tree to become a little

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bent tree so that never again could a cross be made of it. And he made the petals come in little white crosses, and on each petal the mark of a nail, and in the center the crown of thorns stained blood brown. That's the way the legend goes. It's a beautiful legend.

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But you know what I learned on Wednesday? I learned that it's against the law to pick dogwood in the state of California. I suppose that's to protect the ecology and the environment, and that's good. I would not breathe a word of protest against that. That's very good. And I suppose if you could pick it, that everybody would want to pick it, just like everybody

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wants to know the love of God. So I cannot give you dogwood as you go forth today, but instead I can give you three blossoms, the sweetness of which will perform and perfume in all of your days, here and hereafter. First, God loves you, and that means you are worth so much to him. Second, God loves you, and that means you never will do anything alone.

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And third, God will never forget to keep on loving you, and that means I can say to you, have a nice forever. I know these things are true, for you see, I was there. Let us pray. Our Father, if any word has been said which is not true, then drop it into the deepest seas of our forgetfulness. And if any word has been said which is true, then write it

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forever within our hearts, for we would remember only that which is the truth, and thus is of thee. But that we would remember, as long as we can remember anything at all. We lift our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]