Golgotha

Matthew 27:33 In the beginning there was a garden.  It was a place of beauty and wonder and goodness.  It was fresh and new.  There was no ugliness.  No lack.  No hunger or violence or want.  In a world that God called into being and called “good”-- this garden was even more.  It was the place where God dwelt with man.  They lived in perfect fellowship with one another.  No barrier between them.  No hard feelings, guilt or shame.

            In this garden were two special trees.  There was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  And there was the Tree of Life.  Both of these trees worked in perfect agreement with their names because God himself promised that they would.  The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil provided that knowledge-- and the Tree of Life gave life, full, unending, eternal life.  God’s Word attached to those trees gave them their power.

Dwelling there with God in the garden was man:  Adam and Eve.  God loved them.  He provided for them.  He wanted to protect them from anything that would harm them.  And so he gave them his law:  you must not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil for the day you eat of it you will die. 

You know the rest of the story.  You can tell it as well as I can.  What we struggle to understand is what they did what they did.  In a perfect world, where they dwelt with God, when they had everything they could possible need, why on earth would they reach out their hand to what God had forbidden, take of it, and eat? 

Part of that answer of course is the devil.  He was there at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, contradicting everything that God had said.  “There is no curse here!  There is no loss here!  There is only gain!  You will be like God!”

That is part of the answer of why Adam and Even did what they did—but it is only part.  The other part of the answer is found in themselves:  ears that were willing to listen to the devil, eyes that were willing to look on forbidden things, hands that were willing to take what didn’t belong to them, and hearts that strayed from a God who loved them and desired to bless them.

When we think about what happened in the garden that way, then it begins to make a lot more sense.  We begin to see our story in their story.  Eyes and ears—hearts and hands-- that disobey.  We understand THAT story, don’t we?  We know how that story goes.

Adam and Eve took fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and ate.  The tree worked just exactly how God promised it would:  there was knowledge of good and evil but what a terrible curse that knowledge was! 

They knew that God was good in a way that they could never be—in a way they never could have imagined.  And they knew that they were evil—evil in a way they never could have imagined—evil-- like the one who tempted them, promising that they would be like God—but giving them instead a hateful, evil image like his own. 

Their disobedience destroyed God’s creation.  Life was replaced with death—beauty with ugliness.  Fellowship with God became fear of God.

There was another tree there.  The Tree of Life.  That tree had a promise of God attached to it as well.  It would give life.  Eternal, unending life.  If Adam and Eve had eaten of that tree they would have lived forever-- for God’s promise is true.  But they would have lived forever as they were:  broken, sinful, alienated from God and allied with the devil.

And so God cast them out of the garden to keep them from that terror.  You see he still loved them.  Despite their sin.  Despite their disobedience.  Despite what they had done to his world.  God loved them.  He cast them out from the garden to keep them from the tree of life and he promised that he would make things right once again—that he would send the Seed of the Woman to save the world.  He sealed that promise with the shedding of blood.

We can picture Adam and Eve being cast out of the garden.  But what I want you to picture, is the line of people who followed them.  Their children, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and more and more.  An unimaginably long, sad line of people going forth throughout history, bearing Adam’s curse, cast out of God’s presence.

That sad line of people, if we are following it in our mind’s eye, brings us to another place—a place called Golgotha.  We call it a garden in keeping with our theme—but it was nothing like the Garden of Eden.  It was a place of ugliness.  A place of death.  A rough, rocky outcropping shaped like a skull where crucifixions were carried out. 

Golgotha is where that sad like of broken humanity stretching back to Adam and Eve had finally come—a place of death—just like God promised.

There was a man in this Garden of Golgotha—a man who looked nothing like Adam in all his glory.  This man had suffered such a horrendous beating that no one could bear to look at him.  His face was so disfigured by the blood from the thorns on his head and the brokenness of his beating that even his friends could not recognize him.  Nails had been driven into his hands and feet.  Every breath was agony.

There were other people there too.  That long, sad, ugly line of people that went all the way back to Eden had continued along the Via Dolorosa and then out through the gates of Jerusalem and made its way up to this hill of death called the skull. 

There were religious leaders who should have had words of life on their lips but were agents of death.  There were soldiers whose life’s work was death.  There were criminals whose deeds were worthy of death.  There were loved ones of the condemned whose broken hearts already mourned his death.  Death.  Death.  Death.

What made this scene even more horrible was that the One who was beaten and shamed and crucified was completely different than every other person in that sad line of humanity stretching forth from Eden. 

He was innocent of any wrong-doing.  He was holy and sinless.  He deserved nothing that had happened to him.  It was the height of injustice that he had been sentenced to death.  He shouldn’t have been in that line of broken humanity at all—except that he chose to be there. 

As we gaze upon that scene—as our eyes follow that sad line of broken, sinful, dying humanity that stretches forth from the Garden of Eden throughout history right up to the cross and the death of this holy, innocent, sinless man—we might think to ourselves:  this is the end—it simply cannot get worse than this--this is the culmination of ugliness and sin—this is the undeniable fulfillment of God’s terrible wrath over what man has done.

And we would be right.  The death of this holy, innocent man is the culmination of evil.  It is the fulfillment of God’s wrath.  It is the inescapable end of human sin. 

But that is NOT ALL it is!  It is also a beginning.  This place is a new start for mankind.  You see, the one who hung there on that cross, the innocent, sinless man who shed his life’s blood there, is the Seed of the Woman that God promised back in the Garden of Eden.

Into the ground of Golgotha (whose very name means death) Jesus Christ, the Seed of the Woman, the One who is life in himself-- was planted into a place of death.  He is that single grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies—and yet—from which, springs abundant life.

That is why we CAN call this place of death the GARDEN of Golgotha—because the beginnings of a new Eden were planted there.  In this Garden of Golgotha there is a tree—the tree of the cross.  Back in Eden there were two trees:  the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life.  Here in the Garden of Golgotha only one tree is needed for both.

At the tree of the cross is the knowledge of good and evil.  We see there, as in no other place, just exactly what our sins have done—their evil—their ugliness.  We see there, as in no other place, the goodness of God and the holiness and sinlessness of Jesus, that even when he was being treated in such an evil fashion the only words that came from his lips were words of forgiveness- and care-and trust in his heavenly Father.

The tree of the cross not only shows us good and evil.  It is also the tree of life.  Life is promised there.  Rich, abundant, everlasting life that comes through the promises God has attached to the cross.  Where before man was forbidden to touch the tree of life because of his sins, now God invites us to lay hold of it by faith and live forever because we are forgiven. 

We should also be aware that just as in Eden so at Golgotha, the devil is there with his lies.  His voice is heard in the scorners and mockers who stood there at the tree of the cross.  “He saved others, let him save himself!”  “If you come down from the cross, then we will believe!”

The devil’s mocking, scornful voice is heard throughout the world today, tempting us this time to refuse to take hold of the tree of life that God calls us to in the cross.

The Bible says that:  They came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull).  There was a procession of people who walked with Jesus through the streets of Jerusalem, out through the city gates, to the place called the skull. 

Some of them ridiculed him.  Some mourned him.  Some would not desert him even in death.  Some crucified him.  One helped him carry the cross. Some who left Golgotha that day remained unbelievers.  Some who came there as God’s enemies left as his children.

That procession of people is part of the great stream of humanity that came forth from Eden and through Golgotha.  We too are a part of that group.  We came out of the Garden of Eden but what matters now is who we are when we leave the Garden of Golgotha.  Amen.