It all centers on the cross, the event we will remember this Good Friday, the death Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to die.

Because your Father sent his Son to die in your place, you can know that he is on your side, no matter what.  You can know that he is for you, no matter what.  It's all because of the cross.

Unfortunately, the event we remember again this year is so commonplace to us that it loses its power.  We all know that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16).  We know all about the cross.  Or at least we think we do.

The New Testament doesn't tell us much about the way Jesus died.  The Gospel writers say it very simply: "When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots" (Matthew 27:35).  That's because their readers were intimately, tragically familiar with what it meant for Jesus to die on a Roman cross.  But we're not.  We've made the cross into jewelry on our necks and architecture on our steeples.  We don't know much about the singular event of human history.  So let me tell you how it happened so long ago.

It was Maundy Thursday, and the soldiers dispatched a "detachment of soldiers" to arrest Jesus (John 18:3).  "Detachment" translates speira, a military cohort of 400 to 600 soldiers.

They were accompanied by the same religious officials who would later act as Jesus' judges, their presence proving their illegal partiality.  The high priest was so close that his personal servant's ear was cut off in the melee, but Jesus healed him.  They bound Jesus, violating Jewish law which did not allow authorities to bind the prisoner unless he was attempting to flee the scene.

What followed was one of the most illegal trials in the history of jurisprudence. Jesus was tried at night, while Jewish law required that a trial must be begun in the daytime. He was deposed in private by Annas while the Supreme Court was assembling, though all proceedings were supposed to be conducted in public.

He could not be condemned on the first day of the trial, or on the basis of his own testimony, but both laws were broken when Jesus was found guilty of blasphemy that Maundy Thursday night.

Our Savior was then dragged to Pilate, the Roman governor of the region.  Now the authorities illegally changed their charge from blasphemy, which Pilate would never have heard, to treason, which he must consider.  Pilate found him innocent of all charges, but the religious authorities threatened to complain to Caesar that the governor had released a known insurrectionist.  So Pilate caved to their demands and sentenced Jesus to be flogged and then crucified.

You've heard me and others try to describe the tortures of the cross: the nails through the wrists and feet, the thorns lacerating the scalp, the blood loss, exposure, and eventual suffocation which the victim suffered.  But I cannot do his death justice.  Another preacher, one far more empowered than I, described the cross six centuries before it happened.  Here is what he saw:

Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
     and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
     nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by men,
     a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
     he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he took up our infirmities
     and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
     smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
     he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
     and by his wounds we are healed.
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.

He was oppressed and afflicted,
     yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
     and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
     so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
     And who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
     for the transgression of my people he was stricken.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
     and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
     nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
     and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
     and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
After the suffering of his soul,
     he will see the light [of life] and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
     and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
     and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
     and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
     and made intercession for the transgressors.

 Isaiah 53