Sean C. Capparuccia
29 March 2026, 6th Sunday of Lent
Lamentations 3:1-26; Ps. 88; Hebrews 10:11-14; John 19:28-42
Continuing from last week, the crowds were chanting, “Hosanna! Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest!” Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem knowing that this was the end of His mission on earth. While He was no stranger to Jerusalem, He had been avoiding the “hornet’s nest” in the Holy City lately since the religious leaders had stepped up their game to have Him killed.
He had preached the coming Kingdom of God; He earnestly plead for the people, His people, the chosen people of God, to repent of their sin, namely, their unbelief, and to come back to God. He stopped off in Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead. And here in Bethany He wept. Was He only weeping over the death of Lazarus? I have always found it a little strange that He wept for Lazarus when He had already knew that Lazarus was going to die. I mean, it wasn’t a surprise to Him. So, possibly, even though He was indeed moved by the grief of Mary and Martha, Lazarus’ sisters, He was weeping because He was steadily marching towards His own death.
But neither the crowds, nor His closest Disciples, thought that the death of Jesus was imminent. After all, they had just found the Messiah, the King of Israel, who would deliver them. But it didn’t take long before the crowds changed their tune. Because now, as they saw their “King” meekly being stripped and whipped and unable to defeat Pontius Pilate or the Pharisees and their High Priest, they thought that maybe they had been duped…. again. So, “Hosanna!” turned to “Crucify!”
Today we would say that Jesus had been cancelled; from hero to villain. You know how it goes, one day you’re a celebrity being idolized and everybody is hanging on your every word. Then, you say one particular word that upsets someone, and because gossip now moves at the speed of light, you’re the Devil’s greatest companion. Which is why we don’t seek to be approved by men, we seek to be approved by God. If your identity rests in human approval, you are in for big smack-down at some point.
And so it was with Jesus. Cancelled. From “Blessed is He who comes…” to “Cursed are You, be gone.” And they nailed Him to a tree.
I want to talk a little about death this morning. Death is the one thing that all creatures will face. No one is exempt. Of course, death is not something that God introduced into our world. No, He made it “good”; His creation was perfect without thorns or claws or death. But He gave Adam this provision, “You may eat of anything in this Garden, except do not eat from the Tree of Life which is in the middle of the Garden, for on the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.” Now Adam could have guessed what “death” was, but he had not ever experienced it, had he? No animals had died, no plants had died, Eve was still healthy and sumptuous as ever a wife could be. What is death? But while God made Adam (and Eve) perfect, He also gave them intelligence. And with intelligence comes curiosity. And, sometimes, as anyone who has had a child knows, with curiosity can come trouble. And in this case that’s trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with D and that stands for Death. And so, the first death our first parents experienced was the death of their wills. No longer free, their wills turned against God. Then their relationship with God died. And eventually their bodies began to see the decay of old age; granted, it took several hundred years, but they got old, and wrinkly, and weak, and died.
Yes, death will be experienced by all. And for most people, it is not something any of us look forward to. In fact, most of us are so against it that we live our whole lives pretending that maybe, just maybe, it won’t happen to us. But there are times when we are confronted with its reality and we cannot avoid thinking about it. When a loved one dies; when a beloved pet dies; when we go to the doctor and get disturbing news. There is something about death that causes the heart to tremble. And part of the reason for this is because no one has ever seen the other side of death. We believe what we believe but nobody has ever come from death to tell us all about it. We have no reference point; no comparison. Someone we love ceases to live and we gently and lovingly place them in the ground and hope…. and wait… and believe that they are waiting for us. And perhaps even more than fearing death itself, we might fear how we are going to die.
Beloved, do you think that God, in His merciful lovingkindness, has left us to ponder this inevitable outcome of life in fear with no word from Himself? No, He has spoken directly to it. God has not left us in ignorance but has given us the most wonderful hope.
Our passage from Lamentations is said to be one of the darkest passages in Scripture. Here we see the grim reality of impending death. There is no pie-in-the-sky sugar-coating of death in this passage. While the author of Lamentations is unnamed, it has universally been agreed that it was the prophet Jeremiah. If anyone knew pain and affliction it was Jeremiah. He says, “I am the man who has seen affliction because of God’s wrath… He has made me dwell in darkness… He has walled me about so that I cannot escape.” We can sense Jeremiah’s pain here as he sits alone and wallows in the thoughts of death. “This feels like death,” he says. We sense the darkness that is closing in on him. And the reality of this passage is that he is actually speaking not only for himself, but on behalf of all the godly who have been slain and taken into Assyria. Remember a couple weeks ago; those who could not sing the songs of Zion for the despair that had overtaken them.
Then there is our Psalm for today, Psalm 88 —perhaps the darkest psalm in all of Scripture. Notice that it doesn’t end with hope, but with this line:
“You have removed my lover and my friend far from me;
my companions are in darkness.”
What a nice way to end a Psalm, isn’t it? It just kind of leaves you hanging there. There’s no resolution; no conclusion to it – just, death and darkness.
So, what does this tell us? Well, it at least tells us that the human condition has not changed for thousands of years. We don’t see here any kind of evolution or progression in humanity. No, we’re the same today as we were then.
It also tells us that it is not unscriptural, or unbiblical, to feel the weight of death; to feel that God is not there. To feel abandoned and alone. To fear death is not weakness; to say, “I am afraid to die” is not an act of faithlessness. It is reality. Death separates; death silences; death is not under our control and maybe it’s that which is so unnerving about it. In life, you can have the last word – but not in death.
Scripture also tells us that death is not just something that is going to happen, it tells us why it is going to happen. Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death.” A sinful world must end in death. Well, isn’t that exactly what God told Adam? “Adam, if you do this, death will ensue.” I remember when I was about four or five years old my mom told me not to stick a butter knife in the electrical socket. I can’t remember if she told me why… but I was a curious kid. I found out why. Not only are the wages of sin death, but quite often the wages of stupid is death, too.
But death is not just a meaningless result of sin, either. Death has a purpose. It points us to something deeper; it leads us to an understanding of God’s justice. Again, the wages of sin is death. Sin demands justice on the part of God. Imagine raising a child with no rules, no punishment, no correction. I think the number one problem in our school system today is that children have no concept of punishment. Every kid gets a trophy; every kid passes (whether they can read or not); every kid gets a diploma.
I was talking with another seminary student who told me that some church they had been a member of up north somewhere hired a pastor who only shows up about one Sunday in a month. The other three weeks he’s got a flat tire; or has a cold; or someone else is sick, or something. Yet he still demands his paycheck. There is a problem.
God’s justice, as a recompense for man’s sinfulness, is death. Without justice there is no fairness; without justice there can be no restoration. I was over at D____’s the other week and he was showing me his beautifully restored Dart. There’s only one way to get a nice paint job like that and that is to remove all of the old paint and start again. You can’t just paint over the old paint, or every imperfection is going to be accentuated. In order to restore, the old must die.
So maybe now you see how this ties in to the Gospel.
On the Cross, Jesus says, “I thirst.” Why is that important? I mean He’s been hanging there dying for five hours or so – of course He’s thirsty. I think most of us would say, “I’m dying!” “I thirst.” And they gave the dying Savior a little wine. Now earlier in the crucifixion they offered Him wine, but He refused it. Not because He wasn’t thirsty and would have appreciated a little something, but because it was mixed with gall which was a drug that deadened pain. I’ll take a couple Excedrin at the first hint of a headache, but He refused anything that would deaden the pain that He suffered. Now He takes a little wine – without the gall.
Remember now that the night before, He agonized in the Garden praying for His Disciples and all who would come after (that’s us), then He was seized, held, tried, beaten, marched along the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha carrying the heavy cross, nailed on the cross, and hung up to suffocate. After enduring the suffering of the cross; after enduring the Father’s face turned away, still not dead- He thirsts. I’m guessing that through the whole ordeal of the last 15 hours or so no one has offered Him a drink. He’s just been led from one place to another. He thirsts.
A. W. Pink says,
“While there is much about the Person of Christ which we cannot fathom with our own understanding, yet there is everything about Him to admire and adore: foremost are His Deity and Humanity, and the perfect union of these two in one Person. The Lord Jesus was not a Divine-man, nor a humanized God; He was the God-man. Forever God, and now forever man. When the Beloved of the Father became incarnate He did not cease to be God, nor did He lay aside any of His Divine attributes, though He did strip Himself of the glory which He had with the Father before the world was.”[1]
Jesus thirsted because He was human. Just as we thirst. And yet we not only thirst because our lips and throat are dry, we thirst for something more, something deeper. Jesus, too, at this point on the cross, was thirsting for something much deeper than wine or water. He had suffered the wrath of the Father and was thirsting for a return to that union with Him.
When Adam and Eve sinned and tried to cover themselves with a few fig leaves, it was God who then covered them with animal hides. By one sin, death entered into the world. The first physical death in the universe was of an animal whose skin was used to cover the nakedness and shame of the first humans. And through the Mosaic Law, countless animals would be sacrificed to cover – not erase – but cover over for a time, the sins of God’s people. Now the death of God Himself, hanging on a cross, would cover the sins of the world. And not just cover, not just hide, but erase.
Then Jesus uttered the one word that would completely undo Satan and all that he had sought to accomplish. The one word that would bring eternal justice forever – Tetέlestai – “It is finished.” And then He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. He gave it up, mind you, it was not taken from Him. His body did not give out, although it may have soon enough, but He decided when to give His body over to death. The Creator of the universe died. He experienced the penalty of sin on our behalf.
So, you may be thinking, we still die, just as He died. What’s the big deal? When we recite the Creed here at Trinity, we say, “…He was crucified, dead, and buried; the third day He arose from the dead…” We don’t say this when we recite the Creed, I think there is probably an asterisk with a footnote there or something, but the traditional reading is “He was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell” or “descended to the dead.” Why many churches take that out, I don’t know, maybe it offends some people. But, you see, that’s the big deal; that’s the difference. From Adam, to the millions, perhaps billions, who died in the Flood, all the way up to the thief on the cross next to Jesus, when they died, they went to Sheol, which could also be interpreted as “hell.” Sheol was divided into two parts: Paradise and Torment. Two chambers, so to speak. Those who would be saved, those whose faith was in God and in the coming Messiah, went to Paradise. All others went to Torment. When the thief on the cross said, “remember me when You come into Your Kingdom,” remember Jesus said to him, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). He was not telling the thief that he would be in heaven that day, but Paradise, the “upper chamber” of Sheol. And that’s where Jesus went after He gave up His spirit. He went to get all those who were saved. Some people think He went to hell to preach the Gospel and whoever consented, got to go to Heaven. That’s kind of absurd if you think about it. I mean, who said, “Nah, I’ll stay down here and take my chances?” He went to retrieve His own.
And so, Christ died just as we do, as we all will. And I really don’t want to spoil this message with Easter. You know the rest of the story, but let’s wait until next week to hear the good part!
Nevertheless, our passage from Hebrews gives us hint of what this is all about. Up to this time, every priest was making sacrifices, day after day, year after year, to cover the sins of the people. They never sat down, the writer of Hebrews writes, because the sacrifices had to continue. With them it was never “finished.” But with Christ, there was but one last sacrifice to make. This is what all of history was pointing to – the final sacrifice. The word “Tetέlestai!” And “by one offering, Christ has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Heb. 10:14).
Our bodies will see death, Beloved. And in this life, we will still grieve the deaths of others. That’s ok. But, as we will celebrate next week, death does not have the last word any more. We know this much at least, that whatever form death may take, whatever the other side may look like, we know that Jesus is there. And so, I will reluctantly leave you with that. ~Amen.
[1] A. W. Pink, The Seven Sayings of the Savior On the Cross (Swengel, PA: Bible Truth Depot, 1919), 111.
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