You may not be familiar with his name but you are familiar with his music. Isaac Watts is considered the father of English hymnody. Born July 17, 1674 in Southampton England, he displayed a propensity for rhyming early in his life. The result was a life time of writing hymns, over 750 hymns, many of which you know. They include “Joy to the World,” “Our God our Help in Ages Past!” and one which we will sing to end this service today, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” Watts was a member of the Church of England but both he and his father were persecuted because of their non-conformist positions.

Among his favorite subject was this day, Good Friday. One of his most famous hymns is titled, “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?” The first stanza goes
Alas! and did my Savior bleed
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?

If you are familiar with the hymn in its recent manifestation, you know that the worm has gone missing. For many years now, we’ve not called ourselves worms. In our hymnal and most, I might add, the last line of the stanza is “for sinners such as I.” “Would He devote that sacred head for sinners such as I.”

I wonder what Isaac would think of our squeamishness about calling ourselves worms. He might accept the change as being more to the point. But he would not agree with our aversion to blood. We do have the new version in our hymnals, you know. “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed” was absent from our previous two hymnals. Somehow it made it back into the current hymnody of Disciples congregations but only in time for the controversy a couple of years ago about blood.

You know the one I’m talking about, the one which had Christians taking sides about the last day of Jesus’ life. Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” was bloody, as bloody as Gibson’s earlier movie about William Wallace, “Braveheart.”  There were protests about anti-Semitism and substitutionary atonement, but the largest protest was about the blood, about the graphic violence and the blood. Many of us saw it together and it was bloody; so much blood ….but “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?”

The bleeding started last night. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas arrives with a group of Temple soldiers armed with clubs and words. He identifies Jesus with a kiss. The chief priests and scribes know who Jesus is but clearly the temple guards do not. The unthinkable happens. One of Jesus’ disciples is armed. He draws a sword and cuts off the ear of a slave of the high priest. The first blood of the evening isn’t Jesus’s blood.  Jesus is taken to the courtyard of the high priest where he is put on trial for blasphemy. When they condemned him, they began to spit on him. They blindfolded him and then struck him. Then, the guard took over and beat him. Now Jesus bleeds. “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?”

At six o’clock the next morning, the local collaborators—chief priests, elders and scribes—hand Jesus over to Pilate. Jesus is interrogated mocked, bartered for Barabbas and then, sentenced to crucifixion. The bleeding begins again. In the Roman Empire, flogging was often a prelude to crucifixion. Whips with small pieces of metal or bone at the tips were commonly used. Typically, the one to be punished was stripped naked and bound to a low pillar so that he could bend over and be stretched out.  In addition to causing severe pain, the victim often approached a state of hypovolemic shock due to loss of blood. Flogging was sometimes referred to as “half death" because many died shortly thereafter. “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?”

 As if there is not enough blood  in the flogging, the guards fashion a crown of thorns and place it on his head, hailing him as King of Jews! Then, they lead him through the streets of Jerusalem. Prisoners condemned to death by crucifixion were normally required to carry the horizontal bar to the place of execution. Mark tells us the soldiers compelled a passerby, Simon of Cyrene, to carry Jesus’ cross. It is likely not out of kindness. He is too weak from his loss of blood.[1] “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?”

At 9:00 a.m., at Golgotha they crucified him. There is no need in the gospels for explanation. It was well known what crucifixion was. Crucifixion was a form of Roman imperial terrorism, intended for very special victims, for runaway slave or rebel insurgents who subverted  Pax Romana. While the word bandit implies a thief to us, bandit was commonly used to describe guerilla fighters. It would have been highly unusual to crucify a common thief. Ordinary criminals were not crucified. It was considered a public deterrent to sedition. Jesus was likely crucified with two rebels.

As deterrent, crucifixion was in a permanent public place. Arms were typically tied with rope to the crossbar and ankle bones were pierced by iron nails.  Almost all were left on the cross and not given the honor of burial. Birds and scavenging dogs fed on the corpses. Soldiers would often become bored of the spectacle so to speed the process; they would often break the legs of the victims. This would cause the weight of the upper body to collapse on the lungs leading to quicker suffocation. John tells us that instead of breaking his legs, they pierced his side with a spear and there was blood. “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?”

He bleeds in darkness. For three hours, darkness covers the land like a plague Moses called down on Egypt. It is a sign of judgment causing at least one witness, the centurion at the cross, to affirm his faith. Ancient societies perceived darkness as places of suffering, mourning, and judgment. There is suffering and mourning at the cross, judgment averted because of the blood. “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?”

At three o’clock Jesus cries out. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He is quoting scripture, Psalm 22. The entire verse reads, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?” Psalm 22: 1. Was this what he wanted to say but he’d bled so much that he didn’t have the strength to complete?  Maybe those around the cross finished it for him. With half a verse of scripture as his last words, he breathes his last breath and the bleeding stops.

The bleeding stops on the cross and the bleeding stops in the sanctuary. The curtain of the temple is ripped in half, opening that place of blood letting, the place where the high priest threw the blood of bulls and goats, offering an annual sacrifice for sins in hopes that a fearful, angry God might be approached.  With the curtain of the Temple ripped in half, the bleeding stopped. Now, “we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain that is, through his flesh) ….”( Hebrews 6:19-20.) God is not fearful and angry. We have confidence to approach God.  “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?”

There is no more bleeding that day. Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, petitions Pilate for the unusual. He asks to bury the body and Pilate grants the request. This is in itself remarkable.  Because it is Friday and it is spring time, around six o’clock the Sabbath will begin. They hurry and lay him in the tomb. There is no more bleeding that day and no more bleeding needed, ever.

This is what the cross demonstrates. Theologians and scholars have written over and over again their arguments about what God was doing on the cross. Seventeen million volumes about Jesus are in our Library of Congress.  Debates rage about the blood sacrifice, particularly during the bloody movie we witnessed together, “The Passion of the Christ.” But of this all agree. There is no more bleeding needed, ever. Jesus’ outstretched arms on the cross demonstrates this. The cross is not a symbol of Roman domination and public terrorism, it is the symbol of the outstretched arms of God, wanting to embrace us. God’s heart so desires a relationship with us that God reaches into temporal humanity, stretches out His arms out on the cross that we might know love. “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed!”

“Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed!” that we might know God’s heart for people. How do you have a heart for people? For three years, Jesus taught that “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). These two commandments were the first and second great commandments. Then last night, on the last night of his human life, just as Jesus began his Last Supper, he simplified it. How do you have a heart for people?  He said, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another (John 13:34).

On Good Friday, he demonstrates it. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends (John 13: 33-34). The cross, once a symbol of hatred is now a symbol of God’s heart for people, of Jesus’ love for us. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.” “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed!”

A century and a half after Isaac Watts penned those words, a thirty year old blind woman attended a revival at Thirteenth Street Methodist Church in New York City. She answered an altar call in hopes of finding an inner peace that was so illusive, given her disability. As she knelt, the congregation sang, “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?” She’d heard it before but for some reason, that night, she heard the final stanza with different ears. The words go this way.
“But drops of grief can ne’er repay
The debt of love I owe:
Here, Lord, I give my self away
’Tis all that I can do.”

At that moment, she felt her soul flooded with God’s love. She sprang to her feet and shouted “Hallelujah” She got it. “Alas! And Did my Savior Bleed” is not about the blood, it is about love. The cross is about God’s love.  The woman was Fanny Crosby and she went on to write not 750 hymns like Isaac Watts, but over 8000 hymns.

It is why each year, we come to this service, we come to remember that, Alas, our Savior did bleed! We remember by surveying the cross. When we survey it, it is a bloody yet wondrous sight. From where you sit, can you see? From his head, and his hands, and his feet, blood and love flow mingled down. It’s amazing love, God’s love, love so divine, that it demands our souls, our life, our all, our heart.  We give it to Him when we have a heart for people, when we love one another as he has loved us.

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[1] The historical material comes from “The Last Week, What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’ Finals Days in Jerusalem," Borg and Cross, Harpers San Francisco, 2006, page 137-162.