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The scripture reading of the morning is the Gospel according to John, chapter 19. I begin the reading at the verse number 31. "Since it was the day of preparation, in order to prevent the body from remaining on the cross on the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a high day, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.

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So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth,

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that you also may believe. For these things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled, not a bone of him shall be broken. And again another scripture says, "They shall look on him whom they have pierced." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me.

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. What do you think happened on Calvary? I'm not talking about the events, the people, the politics, the procedures of execution. I'm not talking about those things. And please, please don't give me some glib slogan. I'm not looking here for some theology

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that can be summed on a bumper sticker. You say to some people, "What happened on Calvary?" And they say, "Jesus died for our sins." What does that mean? How is it that one man can die for another? Why do sins have to be died for at all? Did God die? And how did what happened 2,000 years ago have influence and impact on what's happening here today? You see, that question,

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"What do you think happened on Calvary?" is a very profound question. The greatest theologians of the last 2,000 years have wrestled with it and have presented profound theories of the atonement. And none of these has been able to encompass all the mystery of what occurred there.

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And I certainly cannot encompass it this morning or in any other lifetime that might be mine. Instead, what I would like to do is to point to just one kindness that was done on Calvary and to suggest how that kindness within itself sums up all the great profundities of the atonement that have been pronounced by theologians across the last 20 centuries.

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I warn you in advance that we're going to go through some deep waters together this morning. But if we hold hands, I think we'll make it to the other side. There are basically four theories about what happened on Calvary. The first theory is called the example theory, and it means simply this,

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that God wanted to give us an example of how we are supposed to live, how we are to sacrifice ourselves in the service of one another. And so he sent his Son to give us the perfect example of what truly sacrificial service really is. We are taught principally by Calvary, these people say, that we are to take up our cross and follow him.

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And when we see Jesus on the cross, that is a picture of the life that we are to be leading. Now, critics of that view say that the difficulty with it is that it gives us a good goal, but it gives us no power to get there. That is, it shows us the way we are to be offering ourselves in the loving ministry to other people,

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no matter how great or costly that offering might be. It shows us that, but it doesn't give us in and of itself any motivating power in order to accomplish that. It fills us, as it were, with sympathy or empathy for what happened there. But sympathy and empathy aren't enough to get us to live cross-centered lives.

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As a matter of fact, for most of us, looking at the cross fills us with guilt, for we know we're not living that way. Now, the second common theory of the atonement is what is called the "satisfaction theory." This goes back to Van Salm of Canterbury, who wrote a book called "Cur Deus Homo" -- "Why Did God Become Man?" --

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Jaroslav Pelikin, the great church historian, says it's the greatest book between Augustine and the writings of Martin Luther. And in this book, he deals with what happened on Calvary, and he says that the sin of humankind so insulted the honor and the dignity and the purity of God, that God insisted that the justness of the law be upheld,

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that some sacrifice be made to atone for all of the insult and all of the disobedience which had been hurled at God by humankind. The difficulty is that man had no sacrifice he could offer that was adequate. So God became a man.

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He laid aside the dignity of heaven and took on the limits of our earthly life, and then offered himself as a sacrifice on the cross to pay the debt for humankind's sin. Christ then becomes the sacrifice which satisfies God's demand for justice. And Calvary is the altar on which the sacrifice is made.

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This view relies very heavily on the Old Testament, where they used to sacrifice animals in order to placate God. And Jesus, as you know, is often referred to in the scriptures as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Paul says, "Christ, our Passover Lamb, is sacrificed for us."

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Or, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." Those are all sacrificial pictures, you see. But the critics of this view point out, if God really is willing to step down from the dignity of heaven to become a man in order to satisfy his law,

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if he's willing to sacrifice his dignity that much, why doesn't he simply sacrifice the dignity of the law itself and say, "I'm willing to forgive and forget the whole thing"? Why doesn't he offer not the life of his Son, but instead lay aside his own demands for justice? Some might say, "Well, justice must be fulfilled."

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Why? Is justice something higher than God? Are there rules that are higher than God that God himself must obey? Or is not something just simply because that's the way God is?

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Is it justice that rules God or God who says what justice is? Well, of course, it's God who says what justice is. Nothing is higher than God. So could he not have said, "I lay aside the dignity of my justice and will forgive and forget"?

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And other critics say, "How is it that the sacrifice of one person can atone for the sins of others anyway? We just executed a serial murderer in Florida, Ted Bundy. Hideous crimes." Now, suppose someone came along who'd never committed a murder and said,

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"I would be willing to die in his behalf." Would society be satisfied with that? For even one moment, would we say that it's all right for this innocent person to die in order to make up for the killings committed by Bundy?

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And beyond even this, there are certain thinkers today, particularly the liberation theologians led by John Sobrino and other Christologists from Latin and South America, who point out that this satisfaction idea of Hanselm's really has to do with the relationship between God and an individual person and not the relationship which exists between or among persons.

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That is, it has a very strong vertical dimension. A sacrifice is made to get things right between a person and God. But the scriptures teach that that which offends God most is those sins committed against others of his children. And this particular view doesn't say anything at all about relationships with other people.

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So while this satisfaction theory is probably held by more people than any other theory, there are those who lodge very serious questions with regard to it. Now, the third view of what happened on Calvary is what's called the moral influence theory. And this is mostly associated with the writings of C.S. Lewis.

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And it goes back to the example idea which we talked about a few minutes ago, but it personalizes it. You remember the example idea was simply that God gave us an example of how we're supposed to live on the cross. Well, this goes beyond that in that it takes that example and applies it to the individual life, rather like this. Suppose there's a young soldier who's a hero in the war, and he turns the tide of the battle,

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and in the course of the war, he offers up his own life. Now, his sacrificial offering of his own life is, of course, a good example to every other soldier in the army. But now let's suppose that you're fighting right in the same foxhole with this fellow who's such a good example, and into your foxhole comes a live hand grenade.

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And this noble example throws himself on that hand grenade, taking the blast of it into his own body, dying in order that you might live. Now, you see, the example has become intensely personal. You are living only because he died. In a sense, you are living two lives from that point on.

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You are living the life which was given to you by your parents, but you are also living the life which he offered for you, so that what he wished, the things for which he stood, take on a greater possessing power. And this, the moral influence, it is to say, is the spell of the cross. That what happened on Calvary was that an intensely personal example of God's love was given,

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and that should move each and every one of us. But the critics of this view point out, "Well, confronting Calvary in this way may change me now and change my life from here on out. I may be influenced enough by the cross when I discover it, so that I am transformed, and all the rest of my experience will be different than what it was before.

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But what happens to all that sin that was mine before I ever got to the cross? If it is true that God will not look upon sin, then the fact that I won't sin anymore may be good, but what about the sin that existed in me prior to this time? What about the residue of my previous unrighteousness which is still in me?

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Will God have anything to do with me if he sees that that is still there?" The moral influence theory, you see, speaks to the now and to the to come, but it doesn't say anything about what happened before. And this leads to the fourth theory of the Atonement, which is called the Christus Victor, or Christ the Victor theory,

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mostly associated with the great Scandinavian theologian Gustav Bolle. He says that when Jesus became a man, he took into himself, "absorbed" is the word Olayne uses, he absorbed into himself all of humanity. Now, because humanity is attacked by evil, attacked by Satan,

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Jesus, having all humanity in him, receives all the brutal attack of evil, of satanic power. It's all brought to bear upon him, and the ultimate battleground, the place where evil reached out to hit him harder than anywhere else, was on the cross. And there on the cross, where evil tried to do its very worst, it failed.

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For Christ rose again from the dead. The victory that belongs to him belongs to all those who have been absorbed into him. In other words, the victory on the cross becomes the victory of all people everywhere. As he came to absorb humanity, so he absorbs humanity not only in terms of its being attacked by evil,

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but in its victory over evil. But the critics of this view point out that there's very little biblical imagery to suggest any idea like this, and it rests upon a very primitive concept of what evil is, and it's also universalist in its orientation.

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That is, it suggests that everybody in all humanity is saved, whether that person has ever legitimately confronted Christ and his cross or not. We are all absorbed into glory almost automatically by what happened on that green hill far away. So I go back again to the question with which I started.

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What do you think happened there on Calvary? And I hope you see that glib answers are not enough. Bumper sticker theology is not enough. A lot of long, hard thought has been given to this,

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and all of these views, while they have something to say, and if you will, shed some light on the subject, all of them also have within them weaknesses and inadequacies. So that we can only say, when we confront the reality of Calvary,

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that it is in ultimate terms a great mystery. And yet at the same time that we say that, we have to go on to say that that mystery changes people who truly confront it. What I would like to suggest to you this morning is

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that there was one act done on Calvary which in a sense sums everything that we've been talking about, which in a sense gathers up all of this ancient, hoary theology and puts it in a single picture. And I'd like to share this picture with you and then we're done. Both the Jews and the Romans approved of crucifixion,

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but there was a difference in the way in which the Jews and the Romans looked at crucifixion. The Jews had a much kinder view, and it was kinder in this way. A Jew insisted that anyone who was crucified must be dead before the sun went down. Now when the Romans crucified people, they just left them hang there till they died,

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and some of them endured that torment for as long as six days. But the Jews would not tolerate such a thing. Anyone who was crucified had to be dead before sunset. So the Jews said to the Romans, "You must kill these prisoners."

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And the Romans went to do that. Their way of doing it was to break the legs of the crucified people. You see, most often death by crucifixion is death by suffocation, paralysis of the diaphragm. As long as you can push up with your feet, you can relieve that pressure on your diaphragm so that you can breathe and live. But if your legs are broken, then you can't push up, and you literally suffocate from your own weight.

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Now when the Romans got to breaking the legs of these crucified ones, they discovered, and the scriptures spell this out in the reading I shared with you a few minutes ago, that Jesus was already dead. His bones did not have to be broken. But one young soldier, in order to be sure that this Galilean was gone for good,

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took his spear and plunged it into Jesus' side. He evidently made a very large wound, because later we read that Thomas could put his hand into that wound. And when this spear was plunged into the side of the Savior, something remarkable happened. And John wrote it down for all of history to remember.

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Water and blood flowed from the wound. Remember what John said? "But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once came out blood and water." And then John emphasizes this three times. He says, "He who saw it has borne witness,

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and his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth." It's a certainty, John says. When that spear pierced Jesus' side, water and blood flowed, mingled down. Now what does that mean?

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Well, you see, one of the interesting things about Jesus' death on the cross was that he died so quickly. He died in only six hours. Now that's rather remarkable, particularly when you remember that Jesus' last words spoken from the cross was a very loud cry. In other words, he still had some strength left.

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But suddenly, he's dead. What is it that caused this sudden death, when all the indications are that he should have lasted much longer? Well, physicians who have studied the evidence suggest that it is possible for people to die because their hearts rupture.

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We have a saying, "She died of a broken heart." That's not just a poetic image. That can be literally true. It is possible in times of great anguish and grief for a heart to literally break. Now when that happens, the blood from the heart flows into the sac which contains the heart.

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That sac is filled with a clear fluid. And the blood and the fluid do not mix. They are separate from one another. Now if someone were to plunge a spear into that sac, or any other sharp instrument penetrating it, what would flow down from that pericardial sac would look to any person who was witnessing the scene

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like blood and water. Here's what's happened. The Jews, with a cruel kind of kindness, say he must be dead by sunset. The Romans go to do the job.

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They don't have to break his bone, but one of them uses a spear to make sure. And what happens because of the spear thrust is we receive the evidence that Jesus died of a broken heart. It was not his arrest. It was not the beatings he received during the trials. It was not carrying the cross. It was not the nails. It was not the crown of thorns.

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It was not that moment when they lifted up the cross and dropped it thuddingly into the earth so that every nerve in his body must have shrieked and quivered with pain. It was none of these things. He died because of the anguish of his great heart.

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As the veil of the temple was split from the top to the bottom, so his soul poured out from a broken heart. And I can't forget that. I think of that every day of my life.

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The thought is never without some hold on some corner of my consciousness. Yes, his sacrifice was the example of the ages. Yes, he did satisfy the justice of God and he is our substitute, the sacrifice preeminent. Yes, he is the greatest moral influence in all of history,

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so that people's lives have been changed by the contemplation of him. Yes, he defeated evil. He absorbed humanity into himself and took upon himself all that humanity was properly owed. But the wonder and the mystery of it all is,

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what sums it all is, that he died of a broken heart. He kept on loving and kept on loving until his heart couldn't take it anymore.

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Well, I had a seminary professor named Addison Leach who told us several times of how he and his wife bought a house and shortly after they moved into the house, they were sitting in the dining room having dinner one night and they saw some boys playing in the woods with a BB gun shooting at birds

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and the boys got careless and one of the BBs came through the dining room window and my professor, Add Leach, got up and ran out to catch the boys. The boys ran all different directions and got away and he was very angry and upset about this

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and he went ahead and he had the window fixed and paid for everything taken care of, but he tried to find out who the boy was who had shot that BB that had smashed the window. He found out it was a kid named David Jones, but no matter how hard he tried, he never seemed to be able to catch up with this David Jones.

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It was obvious that the kid was hiding from him, trying to avoid confrontation with him, staying away from him at all costs, but one day their paths crossed and Add Leach said to this boy, "Now you must confront the reality of what you've done

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and you need to say you're sorry." And the kid was angry and the kid was hostile and the kid was defensive, but he said, "All right, I admit it, I did it and I'm sorry." And then Add Leach said to him,

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"That's the end of it. It's fixed, it's paid for, it's all over. We can be friends now." The kid said, "I don't want to be your friend." He said, "Look, it's all over. It's fixed and it's paid for. It's done.

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Now we can be friends." And again and again, Dr. Leach said that to this boy and again and again, the boy resented it and rejected it and pushed it aside and was unwilling to accept it.

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And again and again, the good news was given. "It's all over. It's paid for. It's fixed. We can be friends." And finally, the boy believed it. And finally, the boy reached out his hand and finally they became friends.

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And that is the gospel. That God loved us to a cross and died a death there, which is the supreme expression of love, a broken heart. And what he says to each and all of us is,

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"All you have to do is say you're sorry. And it's fixed. It's paid for. It's all over. And we can be friends." And when someone holds out their hand to do that,

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the guilt of all their previous sin disappears away. It's fixed and paid for. But not only that, because that one and God have become friends, a new power moves into that life.

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And that one who has been at the cross [silence] It's the mystery of Calvary, though she may not be able to explain it. Loves because she knows how much she was loved.

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A friend of God. And when you know that, there's a power over the sin in your life, which makes you more and more like the one who loved you so. [silence]

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There are all kinds of theories of the atonement. But the fact is that he broke his heart. To say it's fixed.

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It's all over. If you're sorry, we can be friends. Let us pray. If the spirit is moving in your heart,

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then let this prayer be yours, as I make it mine. Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee.

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Let the water and the blood from thy riven son side which flowed be of sin the double cure. Cleanse me of its guilt and power.

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For we pray in Jesus' name, amen.