Journey to the Cross: Reflecting on 24 Hours That Changed the World

By Adam Hamilton

Experience the final hours of Jesus’ life in new ways as you take your own journey to the cross. Based on Adam Hamilton's devotions from 24 Hours That Changed the World, this new edition contains added content to help readers prepare heart and mind for Easter: descriptions of Hamilton’s travel to the Holy Land, historical and scriptural content from each chapter of 24 Hours, links to online travel videos and photographs, as well as Scripture, prayers, and opportunities for personal journaling.


Journey to the Cross is excellent for individual devotion and reflection and can also be used in a small group experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Release date: Jan 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781426787447

Adam Hamilton

Adam Hamilton is the founding pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. Started in 1990 with four people, the church has grown to become the largest United Methodist Church in the United States with over 18,000 members. The church is well known for connecting with agnostics, skeptics, and spiritual seekers. In 2012, it was recognized as the most influential mainline church in America, and Hamilton was asked by the White House to deliver the sermon at the Obama inaugural prayer service. Hamilton, whose theological training includes an undergraduate degree from Oral Roberts University and a graduate degree from Southern Methodist University where he was honored for his work in social ethics, is the author of nineteen books. He has been married to his wife, LaVon, for thirty-one years and has two adult daughters.

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Introduction

These Forty Days

Jesus is believed to have died at the age of thirty-three after a life of approximately 12,000 days. The Gospel writers devoted most of their words to just 1,100 or so of those days, the last three years of his life; and their primary interest was in one particular day—the day Jesus was crucified. They believed that the final twenty-four hours of his life changed the world, and each of the Gospels drives toward it.

Beginning Thursday evening after sunset and going on through Friday, Jesus would eat the Last Supper with his disciples, pray in the garden of Gethsemane, be betrayed and deserted by his friends, be convicted of blasphemy by the religious authorities, be tried and sentenced for insurrection by Pontius Pilate, suffer torture by Roman soldiers, and undergo crucifixion, death, and burial.

When the apostle Paul summarized the gospel for the Corinthian Christians, he did so with these words: For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). The suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ represent the pinnacle of the gospel and the completion of God’s saving work through Jesus.

With this book, you are invited on a forty-day spiritual journey during which you will explore the final hours in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, beginning with the last meal he ate and culminating with his death and burial. We will look closely at these all-important hours and examine the ways in which we might be like some of the characters we meet along the way—perhaps Pilate, Peter, Judas, or John.

The Bible is filled with forty-day spiritual journeys in which people of faith have sought to hear from God. Elijah spent forty days fasting and seeking God at Mount Horeb. Moses fasted for forty days and forty nights at Mount Sinai when he received the Law. Noah watched the rain fall for forty days and nights as he sat in the ark pondering God’s words to him. Jonah preached repentance to the people of Nineveh for forty days. Most important of all, Jesus, before beginning his ministry, spent forty days and nights fasting in the wilderness while being tested by the devil.

Christians in the early 300s, if not before, began observing a period of fasting leading up to the celebration of Christ’s resurrection. This period was (and still is in most of the world) known as Quadragesima (Latin for forty days or fortieth day). In the English-speaking world we call this season Lent. It is a time of spiritual seeking, devotion, and preparation climaxing in Holy Week and Easter, with the crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

My prayer is that you might devote forty days to listening as God speaks to you through the story of Jesus’ final day, a day when Jesus gave his life to redeem and save the human race from the brokenness and sin that have left us alienated from God and from one another. Each week includes a brief description of an event during Jesus’ last hours that will set the scene for the week’s devotions. Daily readings will help you dig deeper into the details of Christ’s death and resurrection and will help you to see yourself somewhere in the story. Each week ends with a few travel notes describing the places where these events took place, so you can imagine yourself in the land where Jesus walked.

Would you take this journey with me and discover the most tragic, moving, and powerful story ever told? My hope is that these devotions might help you hear and meditate upon this story and what it reveals about Jesus, about the Father he sought to serve, and about you.

WEEK ONE

The Last Supper

The Passover Seder was meant to be a time of joy and celebration, retelling the story of God delivering the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. It hinted at the hope that God would send the Messiah. For this reason the meal had special meaning to the disciples; they were convinced that Jesus was the Messiah and that they were in Jerusalem on this Passover so that he could claim his kingdom. Four days earlier, the crowds in the city had welcomed him with shouts of Hosanna! Why then was he now speaking of his blood being shed? What did it all mean?

If indeed the Last Supper began as a time of joy and celebration, it changed during the course of the evening. Even beyond Jesus’ foreknowledge of events to come, there was great apprehension in the room. Everyone was conscious of the heightened tension between Jesus and the religious leaders. The disciples all wondered what was going to happen to Jesus, and to them.

Jesus cut through the uncertainty with a statement so electric that it still echoes across the centuries. One of you, he said, looking at them in the sudden stillness of the Seder celebration, will betray me (Mark 14:18).

He knew which one it was, but he did not say. When we commemorate the Last Supper in the act of receiving Communion, we would do well to recall this part of the meal: Jesus’ acknowledgment of the betrayal, the denial, the desertions that would follow. Perhaps this is why the church has traditionally called for confession and repentance before we receive the bread and wine.

When Jesus said in Matthew 26:28, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins, he changed everything. He transformed the Passover Seder, giving to all people instead the Eucharist: Holy Communion. The Israelites had become a covenant people by the blood of animals; the Last Supper was the establishment of the new covenant by the blood of Jesus, not only with the tribes of Israel, but with all of humanity. Where the Seder was once the story of God’s liberation of the Israelites, it was from this time forward the story of God’s liberation of all humankind from slavery to sin and death. In that moment, God gave the entire human race new life and a new beginning and made those who choose to follow Jesus into his people, his bride. In this meal and through Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus invited all humankind to become God’s covenant people.

The last twenty-four hours of Jesus’ life is the story of God whose love for his people is so amazing and profound that he would send his Son to lay down his life as the sign and seal of a covenant that would deliver the human race from death. God would, by the Spirit, place his commands on their hearts, and he would forgive their iniquity and remember their sins no more.

Adapted from Chapter 1 of 24 Hours That Changed the World (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2009).

1. Preparing for the Meal

Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare the Passover meal for us that we may eat it. They asked him, Where do you want us to make preparations for it? Listen, he said to them, when you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him into the house he enters and say to the owner of the house, ‘The teacher asks you, Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? ’ He will show you a large room upstairs, already furnished. Make preparations for us there. So they went and found everything as he had told them; and they prepared the Passover meal. (Luke 22:7-13)

Our journey with Jesus during his final twenty-four hours begins with a meal, or more precisely, with the preparations for a meal.

Jesus sent John and Peter into Jerusalem to prepare the Passover Seder for the disciples. This entailed grocery shopping, making a sacrifice in the Temple, cooking, and setting the table. In their day this was the work of women or of servants.

I wonder how Peter and John felt about being asked to do this mundane work while Mary, Martha, and the other disciples remained with Jesus for the day.

I once met an executive who wanted to be used by God for a great purpose. He was a bit put out when the pastor suggested he begin by working anonymously in the kitchen of the homeless shelter preparing sandwiches on Saturdays. He felt he had far more potential than that—after all, he ran a large company and had leadership gifts. Realizing it was bad form to say no to the pastor’s request, he began to prepare meals in the shelter. But an interesting thing happened to him as he served each