This is an overview of one of our messages from the Matthew series. This is from Matthew 27.32-66.
A long time ago, my wife and I had a weekend trip planned in Asheville, North Carolina. We booked an Airbnb, drove an hour to get there, and arrived at what we thought was the right address. We opened the door and walked into the middle of the room, only to find the TV on, clothes hanging about, and steam rising from an Indian takeaway box. We realised with horror: we'd just walked into someone else's house. We didn't belong there, and it was weird and unnerving. What had we done?
There was nobody around—should we say sorry and run away? We slowly backed away, closed the door behind us, and ran to the car to regroup and find the actual address. We were outsiders intruding into someone's personal space. We absolutely didn't belong there.
The Universal Experience of Not Belonging
That kind of "not belonging" feeling can crop up in many places. At work. In your family. A city like Manchester is a perfect place to feel like an outsider—there are millions of people around, and yet we still feel lonely.
But perhaps you don't feel your outsider-ness. Maybe you're a cultural insider: successful, lots of friends, all of it.
What the Bible tells us, though, and what the story of Jesus' crucifixion blares out to us, is that all of us are spiritual outsiders. We could be born with a silver spoon in our mouths, or we could be born without anything at all—all of us are the same in our spiritual lives: spiritual outsiders. Estranged from our Father, and without Him, never really at home.
Jesus, in His death and resurrection, comes to the outside, comes to us. Not so that we would stay there, but so that we cease to be spiritual outsiders and become part of His family. Insiders in the family that God is creating.
This is the story of Jesus' death. Jesus' crucifixion is the process of an insider transforming Himself to be an outsider so that we would be insiders with Him. So that we could finally belong.
The Crucifixion: An Insider Made an Outsider
Jesus Cast Out
Jesus' crucifixion is the process of an insider transforming Himself to be an outsider.
Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity, has always been God and always will be. He was present at the beginning of the creation of the world itself. Nothing that has been created was created outside of Him. He holds everything in the universe together.
That Jesus is led away, outside of the city gates, "going out" in verse 32. The One who knows the Father and the Spirit like no other has been cast out of the city. Crucifixions wouldn't take place within the city—they happened outside. This location is important: you are not one of us. Soon, you won't be one of us; you'll be dead. But even in the lead-up to that, you are an outsider.
Jesus was and always is a spiritual insider, here treated as a cultural and religious outsider.
The Humiliation of the Cross
Crucifixion is a horrible way to die. Nails through hands and feet, stretched out in such a way where you have to push up with your feet so that you can breathe. If you don't push up, if you can't, you suffocate. It's meant to be humiliating. That's what public torture does. There is no other act these people could perform to make it clearer: Jesus, you are an outsider.
Of course, Jesus had said this was going to be His end. He told people many times He was going to die. And not just for Himself, but for them. So He's not surprised.
He's there, hanging, just barely alive. Thorns from His parody of a crown digging into His head. Nails in His body. No clothes. That's not something we see in the paintings—the naked humiliation.
And then He cries out (verse 46): "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
The Cry of Dereliction
This is something very specific that Jesus is drawing our attention to. It's also called the "cry of dereliction."
This doesn't mean Jesus didn't know what was happening. It doesn't mean that Jesus was surprised. It's not a "why, God, please explain to me" kind of question. Jesus has all the information He needs—He's God and never ceases to be.
What this is, is two things:
First, an expression of deepest pain: Jesus doesn't lose faith, but, like in the Garden of Gethsemane, He expresses the depths of His own unimaginable pain. Physical pain is the easiest part of it. The burden of taking on sin and being abandoned by His Father—He must drink the cup of suffering, and He does so willingly.
Second, He's leaving us a trail to follow: Psalm 22 is what Jesus is quoting—the first line. It's like starting a quote and assuming others will finish it. Like if you and a friend both have the same idea at the same time, you'd say "Great minds..." assuming the endpoint: "...think alike."
Psalm 22 begins with pain, begins with one feeling far from God, an outsider. Jesus, now, in the state of taking our sins, is an outsider. For the first time ever—and the only time—Jesus is a spiritual outsider. To be crucified itself is to be cursed.
Psalm 22, though, ends in the joy of being in God's presence, not just for the author, but for many others. The reason Psalm 22 was written, the reason it is true, is because of what Jesus has done here, on the cross.
Who Misses Jesus?
There are people in this story who would be considered religious insiders or cultural insiders.
The crowd of religious people mocking Jesus in verses 39-43—these are the religious insiders. The Romans who have the political might, the ones carrying this all out—they are cultural insiders.
Both groups of people, religious and cultural, because they missed Jesus, may be insiders in some areas of life, but in the most important area—in their spiritual lives—they are outsiders. They are on the outside with God.
To prevent us from thinking that only insiders miss it, we also have the rebels on either side of Jesus. From other gospel accounts, one of these rebels eventually does come to Jesus. But the limited scope we have from Matthew serves to underline this reality:
In this life, it doesn't matter if you feel like you're an insider or an outsider. It doesn't matter if you're the ones with power or the ones being oppressed and marginalised. If you miss Jesus—who He is, what He teaches, the life He lived, how He tells us to live our lives—if we miss that, we are on the outside looking in.
But the good news is that Jesus knows our outsider-ness much better than we do, and He died so that we wouldn't stay on the outside. Understanding what it means to be a Christian helps us grasp this profound truth about moving from outsider to insider.
The Curtain: Transforming Outsiders to Insiders
Why Jesus' Death Matters
This helps with the question: why are Christians always talking about Jesus' death? Why is that a big deal...for me? What did it do?
Jesus, the insider, comes to us on the outside, not so that we would stay there, but so that we would be brought inside.
There are many instances of how this works out in this story. Let's focus on one: verse 51. The curtain.
"At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom."
The Torn Curtain
The curtain was a separation between God and man. And now, from top to bottom, it is torn apart, completely torn.
This curtain was in the temple. It was the inner veil separating the holy of holies from the holy place. The holy of holies was the place that only one person once a year was able to enter. It symbolised God's intense presence. Whoever was on the other side of this curtain was outside God's presence. Four inches thick, about 60 feet tall and 30 feet wide—a curtain that functioned like a wall.
Jesus' death destroyed the curtain. Top to bottom! Nothing else could! Who can bring outsiders to the inside? Who can bring people to God other than God Himself? This wasn't a potential; this was an actual event in history that affected spiritual life forever.
Jesus has brought outsiders to the inside.
Jesus not only made it possible; He made it happen. On the cross, Jesus removed our guilt—the guilt that keeps us on the outside—and gives us a new heart, now on the inside, with Him, in His own house.
Hebrews 10:22 tells us this: "Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water."
Draw near: now, because of Jesus, we can! A sincere heart: because it's a new heart! Our hearts sprinkled, cleansed: no more guilty conscience, because the guilt that produces that is gone!
Jesus is able to be with us outsiders, to invite us to be near to Him, on the inside. The way He can invite us to this is through His death that bridges that impossible gap between us and God. The curtain torn in two, top to bottom.
How Nature Responds
Nature itself responds: darkness when the sun is highest in the sky. This isn't Manchester, where midday can be gloomy. When it's noon in Jerusalem, it's bright. But not today.
After Jesus died, there's an earthquake, an eruption of earth. The dead are coming out of tombs—what is this madness? They're walking out of their graves and walking into the city. Who knew horror was such an important genre in the Bible?
What's happening here is that the universe is upside down. Things are being shaken, literally and spiritually. It's dark when it should be light. People are walking around when they should be dead. The earth that should be firm is moving around underneath us. Jesus' death turns everything upside down.
When you come into contact with Jesus, you get turned upside down. Things you thought were right aren't. Things you would never have done (like come to a worship gathering!), now you're doing. For some people in church in Manchester, this is your experience right now. For others, we've been living in this tilting world for a while, but we shouldn't grow complacent.
If you're here and don't yet believe, and you find this all crazy, know that it is crazy. But isn't this the kind of thing we'd expect to see if Jesus is actually God Himself?
If this was how nature responded, if this was how dead people responded, how should we, the living, respond?
The Call: What It Means to Be an Insider
Two Examples of Response
Ultimately, being an insider means surrendering to God's transformative love. We have a few examples here.
We have the Centurion in verse 54, the cultural insider, making some kind of recognition of Jesus. We also have the religious outsiders, the women in verses 55-56, "watching from a distance." They will care for Jesus' body and also be the first witnesses of the resurrection.
But two people I'd like us to look at more in depth:
Joseph of Arimathea: Generous Wealth
The first is Joseph of Arimathea (starting verse 57). A cultural and religious insider, he's Jewish and well-to-do. God has given him money. He's able to have access to Pilate to ask for Jesus' body.
Joseph was also a disciple of Jesus. He's a spiritual insider; he follows Jesus.
Joseph had resources and gave them without any return on investment. Joseph isn't making money here. This would have been costly. It would have been generous because it would feel like a sacrifice for Joseph.
There was time, there was money, there was effort. Because of his generosity, all of these are used for God's mission in ways beyond his imagination. If you care about your legacy, look at Joseph's example. If you care about how to use your wealth, whatever it is, look at Joseph's example.
God's mission requires Josephs like this. The mission of the church will be hindered if people hang on to the wealth God has given them.
Of course, that's true for us as well. Maybe you don't think you're "wealthy," but we all have resources given to us that God calls us to use for His mission. It's more than money, of course, but not less. Understanding what it means to join God's mission can help us see how our resources fit into His purposes.
Simon of Cyrene: Sacrificial Service
The second person here is Simon of Cyrene, at the top of our story. In verse 32, we find Simon forced to carry Jesus' cross. What was God's mission in this moment for Simon? Did he ask for it himself? No. Did it feel good? No. It felt like gruelling work. Was there a good ending? Not yet! What did Simon get out of following God? In the moment, he got to be obedient!
Now, thousands of years later, we're still talking about his role in God's mission. Simon was there, and he responded. It didn't feel good. It wasn't something he'd choose to do. But the need was there, and he responded.
Don't think that becoming a Christian makes your life easier—there will be difficult things. But it is a better life. A life truly lived.
Shaking Off Consumerism
The reason I'm focusing on Joseph and Simon is that I'm hoping their example will shake us out of our consumerism. I'm hoping they'll shake us out of our focus on comfort, on our preferences, out of the idea that following God always feels good. It's labour sometimes!
We are all called to be generous. That looks different for all of us, but to say you follow Jesus means you are like Joseph and Simon. That's what being a spiritual insider can look like.
The glory of being able to work for our Lord—it is glorious! Not in the shallow way we want our lives to be, but in the grand plan that our God has written!
You can be a Joseph. You can be a Simon.
The Freedom Jesus Offers
This is the upside-down kind of free life that Jesus' death has won for us.
Romans 8:1-2 says this: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death."
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus": Jesus took away our condemnation and put it to death, never to rise again.
"Because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death": We are set free from the law of sin and death, the old ways of living. Where we try to do good to be good, where we try to make this world as comfortable as possible for ourselves, where we focus on the wrong things in the wrong way. We are the walking dead!
But now, "the law of the Spirit who gives life" sets us free. We don't have an old way of living, but a new way of living.
The only hope to be generous like Joseph is Jesus! The only hope to be sacrificial and caring and bear others' burdens like Simon is Jesus! The only hope to have this kind of legacy is Jesus.
Because without Jesus dying on the cross and making these things true, we would have always been stuck on the outside. Spiritual outsiders, every single one of us.
Romans 3:23: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
The great equaliser: every one of us in this room, in the world, are not perfect for God. We all fall short. So how can we go to Him? Well, we can't!
Which is why He came to us. The spiritual insider, giving everything up, to be a spiritual outsider, in order to bring us to Himself.
Romans 3:23-24: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."
That redemption is the story we've read today. What we get to do is surrender to this love that transforms us.
The Choice Before Us
Without God, how do we end up working? When we rely on our own strength, what does that look like? Look at verses 62-66: doing everything humanly possible to make sure Jesus doesn't do the thing He said He'd do. And what's the result? Jesus is going to do it anyway! You can be against Him (which is a waste of time and life), or you can surrender to Him and get a life.
You can be a Joseph. You can be a Simon.
In what ways is God calling you to be Joseph or Simon, but you've taken up guarding an empty tomb? Where is God calling you to a legacy that lasts instead of spending your time and money on something that lacks?
God's mission will call you to things you wouldn't do on your own—this should be expected! Who signs up for that?
Redeemer is a church in Manchester, learning together what it means to respond to God's transformative love. When we recognise the radical lengths that Jesus went to in order to bring us—outsiders—inside, to Him, to His very heart, how else can we live? We must surrender everything. We must respond to the calls on our lives, big and small. It's something we get to do.
Not to pay Him back (this is an impossibility, and God never asks to be paid back), but because the same Spirit that Jesus had we now have. It's who we are.
Perhaps that isn't who you are, at least not yet. Why not? There is everything to be gained: a new life, a new way of living, a new power at work in you, a hope that death cannot stop. And you get to give up all the broken ways of living that not only held you back but others as well.
Understanding what sin is helps us grasp what Jesus has freed us from and why His sacrifice matters so profoundly.
The story of Jesus' crucifixion is the story of the ultimate insider becoming the ultimate outsider so that we—eternal outsiders—could become insiders forever. It's the story of belonging, finally and completely, in the family of God.