INJ

Luke 18:31-43 | “The One Going to Jerusalem”
Quinquagesima Sunday | 15 February

Dear Saints,

Jesus is going to Jerusalem, and He is going there to die.

Two times He has told His disciples about it, and we have, in the Gospel reading, His third passion prediction.

And taking the twelve, he said to them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.”

This is a pretty clear text, and these are not difficult words to understand, but the disciples don’t get it. Luke tells us, in an almost humorous overstatement:

But they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.

The disciples were look at Jesus thinking, “I wonder what He’s up to?” He tells them, “I’m here to die,” and they think, “I wonder what He is doing here.” “I’m going to Jerusalem to be arrested, to suffer, to die and be buried, and then to be raised,” and the disciples wonder, “Why are we going to Jerusalem?”

It doesn’t make sense to the disciples, that Jesus would die, and the more and more they know about who Jesus is, that He is the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, God in the flesh, the Creator of the world, God of God and Light of Light, very God of very God, then the less His death makes sense. Here is the Lord of life, the creator and sustainer of the entire universe, the one who has the power and authority to turn water to wine, to still the sea, the make the blind sea, who even raises the dead with His word. Death can’t touch Him. Here, at last, was a man who had, in Himself life, who was free from the curse of Adam, who would live forever, and He says, “I’m going to Jerusalem to die”?

The first time Jesus told this to His disciples Peter stood up and rebuked Him. “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” Remember that? And Peter received from the Lord the harshest rebuke we have recorded, ““Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matthew 16:22-23).

It is the mind of man that thinks Jesus shouldn’t be dead. It is the mind of the flesh that doesn’t think Jesus should be on the cross. It is the mind of the devil that would prevent Jesus from going to Jerusalem to die.

Now why is this? Why are we so opposed to the suffering and death of Jesus?

I think there could be a number of reasons. We think, “If Jesus is strong enough to not die, then He shouldn’t.” After all, if we had that kind of power, we would use it to stay alive.

I think this objection is behind one of the major arguments I hear form unbelievers about the problem with our theology: that we can’t account for evil in the world. If God is good, and God is all-powerful, then why doesn’t He make everything nice? Why doesn’t He end suffering? The thinking behind that question is this, “If I had power to end suffering that is what I would do.”

Well, what if God wants to do something else with that power? What if, instead of stopping all suffering, He wants to join with us in that suffering? What if, instead of ending death, He wants to die Himself? What if, to destroy hell, He would suffer the pain of hell? What, instead of ending all suffering our God will first become our Brother in suffering and our Savior in death, sinking Himself into the very source of our suffering, our sin, so that He would be our Savior?

We think that if we had power we would use it, but here is Jesus in weakness, and this is for your salvation.

Jesus is going to Jerusalem to die.

I think the other major objection of our mind to Jesus going to Jerusalem is that it isn’t fair. A man should suffer for His own sins, should be punished for the crimes He commits. When we really know our own sin, when it sinks into our conscience, then we also know that we deserve God’s anger and wrath. The punishment should be ours.

Pr Flamme and the Elders and I were reading an article by J. Budziszewski about the “Furies of the Conscience,” and one of the very profound points he makes is that our conscience has some sense that we should suffer for our sins, that we should make atonement, that our mistakes should result in pain. This conflicts with our normal thinking, which is something like “Pursue pleasure at all costs,” and these two conflicting ideas run into each other and make quite a mess. So we have some pain that we inflict on ourselves (and Budziszewski talks about a number of examples that are disturbing), and I think we could all see this in ourselves if we considered the pain we cause ourselves, or the troubles that we think we deserve, or the ways that we sabotage our own happiness and our own faith.

This is a kind of self-atonement; we try to sort out how much we should suffer to atone for our sins.

And if we think this about ourselves, we especially think it about others. When we hear about horrific crimes on the news, or when someone does something to hurt us or the people that we love, then we cry out for justice, that is, we cry out for their pain. We want them to suffer for their crime.

Again, atoning for sin through suffering. The trouble is that we don’t really know how bad we are, so we don’t have a right understanding of how much we should suffer. It is like the murderer thinking that they can atone for their murder by serving five hours of community service. Because they don’t have a right sense of the depth of their crime, their corresponding sentence doesn’t match; it isn’t enough.

In fact, this is how it is with us. We don’t know how bad we are. In our insistence of justice we are insisting on condemnation. We are unknowingly insisting on hell. It turns out that the only suffering that can atone for our sins is the suffering of God’s wrath. Now think of that! You can’t actually suffer for your sins because that suffering belongs to God. If you imagine that every sin you commit puts a bit of suffering in a cup, and you go to drink that cup to make up for it, but your find that the cup is in the hands of God. That you can’t get to it.

“If you make the bad, you have to sleep on it,” right? It’s my sin, my suffering, I should own it. But look, the Father takes that cup filled with His wrath, and hands it over to His Son, and He drinks it to the dregs. He suffers for your sins. He makes atonement for you.

It’s not fair, you say. But it’s His wrath, and He can do what it with He wants, and He wants to suffer in your place; Jesus wants to die for you, to save you, to rescue from hell, to deliver you from death, and to take you through sorrow and trouble to life everlasting.

Jesus is going to Jerusalem to die, to die for you. To suffer for you. To be buried for you. To be raised for you. And there is nothing you can do to stop it!

And taking the twelve, he said to them, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.”

By faith we understand what Jesus is doing, what He has done, and we rejoice it; we glory in His cross, because in the cross is His love for us, and in His death is our salvation. Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your heart and mind through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller
Hope Lutheran Church | Aurora, CO