Our Gospel reading today takes place right before Palm
Sunday. They are on their way, passing through the town of Jericho. At the
beginning of our reading Jesus says to his disciples, “Look, we are going up
to Jerusalem. Everything that was written about the Son of Man will come to
pass. He will be handed over to the Gentiles, mocked, mistreated, spit upon,
flogged, and they will kill him. On the third day he will rise again.”
In a succinct way Jesus plainly tells them what was going to
happen in about a week. This is not the first time that Jesus had told them
that this would happen. On at least two other occasions Jesus told them that he
would suffer, die, and be resurrected. You already know about one of those
other times. It was soon after Peter confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the
promised Messiah, when Jesus asked the disciples who they thought he was. Peter
said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus told Peter
that this knowledge did not come from flesh and blood. It came from God.
Peter’s confession would stand as a rock, against which the gates of hell would
not be able to prevail. That is how Peter gets his name—Peter means rock. His
given name was Simon.
Right after this Jesus told the disciples what would happen
to him as the Christ. He told them what we heard today—Jesus would be betrayed
by his people, shamefully treated, killed, and rise on the third day. When
Peter heard this he said, “Far be it from you, Lord, that such things should
happen to you.” Jesus responds, “Get behind me Satan! You are not
thinking the thoughts of God, but the thoughts of men.” Simon quickly went
from being called “the rock” to being called “Satan.” The reason why there is
the change is because of what he says about Christ’s cross. Peter had different
ideas, manmade ideas, about how Jesus should go about being the Christ.
Obviously, things didn’t change. I don’t know how Luke, the
Gospel writer, could be more emphatic. He says, “They did not understand any
of these things. What was said was hidden from them. They did not understand
what had been said.” They didn’t get it. They didn’t get it. They didn’t
get it.
This would be proven by their actions, as well. They were
content to be Jesus’s disciples when he rode into Jerusalem with everybody
shouting, “Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord.”
They were content to be Jesus’s disciples when he was driving all the greedy
people out of the temple. They were content to be his disciples when he was
putting to shame all the Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes who were trying to
catch him in his words during Holy Week.
They were not content to be his disciples when he allowed
himself to be arrested without even putting up a fight. They were not content
to be his disciples when he was mocked and shamefully treated, stripped naked
and nailed to a cross. The game was up when Jesus cried out in agony, bowed his
head, and breathed his last. There’s no point in being the disciple of a Christ
who is dead. On Good Friday it was obvious to them that they had been mistaken.
If Christ had not gone out to find his disciples after his resurrection, then
they would have remained in their unbelief even though they had been told
beforehand. Peter really speaks for all these disciples when he says, “Far
be it from you, Lord, that such things should happen to you.” That is not
how the disciples wanted the story to go.
I think we could go even farther and say that Peter speaks
for all of us as Christ’s disciples. The knowledge of Christ’s cross does not
come naturally to anybody. There is an old complaint among a certain segment of
Christianity about crucifixes. It is said that crucifixes are inappropriate
because now Jesus is risen from the dead. Since he has arisen, we should no
longer look at this disturbing, shameful episode when he was so weak and
despised on the cross.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that a triumphalist view
of the Christian life is taught in these same kinds of churches. Consider a
typical testimonial. A testimonial is when a Christian testifies to the
powerful effect that God has had in their lives. Testimonials often follow a
certain train of thought, and they often go like this:
The Christian says, there was a time in my life when I did
not know Jesus. When Jesus is not known, then a life of shame and vice is all
that there is. And so some of these folks got involved in alcohol. Some of them
got involved in drugs. Some of them were enslaved to sexual perversions. But
then—somehow, someway—they came to know of the love of God for them in Jesus
Christ. They know that Jesus died for the forgiveness of their sins. They,
therefore, choose Jesus. They ask Jesus into their hearts. Then their lives are
changed. They don’t drink alcohol anymore. They don’t do drugs. They get their
lives together and become respectable citizens. The shame, the weakness, the
guilt, the cross, are in the past. Now they are living resurrection-lives-of-power-and-success.
Forgiveness and justification are in the past. Now they are working on getting
better and better and sanctification.
There is something very good and Christian about these
testimonials, but there is also something that is very off—something that is
very much the thoughts of men rather than the thoughts of God. What is good
about these testimonials are the confessions of sin on the one hand and the
grace of God in Jesus Christ on the other. These testimonials are often very
powerful songs of praise that every Christian can’t help but be glad to
hear—“Foul I to the fountain fly, wash me, Savior, or I die. Rock of Ages,
cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee.” The sinner believes in Jesus, the
Savior of sinners. It doesn’t get any more Christian than that. But here’s
where the false note enters in—it’s with the second part of the story where now
the Christian has been able to turn his life around. Something very human is
going on here.
The other day I was watching a rather disturbing YouTube
video. It was the court testimony of a mother who was on trial for killing her
infant son. The 3 or 4 month old infant was found dead with many injuries. His
little arm was broken. Several of his ribs were broken. There seemed to be
evidence of bones being broken previously and some healing had started before
he died. Obviously this baby boy was terribly mistreated by his very own mother.
The mother admitted that she was the cause of her baby’s
injuries, but she couldn’t bring herself to admit the awfulness of what had
happened. The prosecutor went after her hard in the cross examination and
wanted to know how the baby had gotten those injuries. The mother didn’t want
to say. All she said over and over was that it wasn’t intentional. Eventually,
after much harassment, she said something about dropping him, but she didn’t
want to say a word more. She said she couldn’t remember how the baby got those
injuries. She was on drugs, so that’s why she couldn’t remember. By looking at
her face you could tell that she was lying. She could remember. She just didn’t
want to admit that she was cruel and selfish and did what she did because that
was the very thing that she wanted to do. She said what she said because she wanted
everyone to believe that she wasn’t that bad.
I know how this gal feels. So do you, if you have the
courage to admit it. I remember as a child doing things I wasn’t supposed to
do. When I got caught, I’d immediately start to think of reasons why I did what
I’d done. Liars like me get pretty good at this kind of thing. It’s somebody
else’s fault. I couldn’t help it. I was curious. I didn’t mean to. Unfortunately, this hasn’t gone away with age.
Sometimes I go to confession. One of the reasons why you go to confession is to
confess that you are a sinner. I can’t help myself—before I go I think about my
sins, and immediately I’m thinking about how I can present these sins in the
best light to my confessor so that I don’t look as bad as I really am. I’m no
different from this murdering mother: I don’t want people to think that I’m a
monster.
Now let’s get back to that typical testimonial. Here is what
is so human about that story of improvement after asking Jesus into one’s
heart: we don’t want to admit that we are monsters. We might be willing to
admit that we have been a monster, so long as we are monsters no more. The life
of shame and vice is over and done with; now I’m on the straight and narrow.
That used to be me, but that’s not me
anymore. I promise.
Martin Luther had a friend named Staupitz. Staupitz once
said to Luther, “I have promised God a thousand times that I would become a
better man, but I never kept my promise. From now on I am not going to make any
more vows. Experience has taught me that I cannot keep them. Unless God is
merciful to me for Christ’s sake and grants me a blessed death, then I shall
not be able to stand before him.”
We cannot—and so we should not—outgrow the cross while we
live this life. Jesus was tortured as punishment for the sins that we have
committed and still commit. We’d like to believe that we won’t sin anymore.
We’d like to believe that we can put the cross behind us and live resurrection
lives now. We’d like to believe that we are good people and not monsters. It is
just like all those plot lines of books and movies. The main character starts
out bad, but then he turns his life around. In the end he turns out to be a great
guy, and he lives happily ever after. That’s what we all want to believe about
ourselves. We all want to believe that we can learn by the object lesson of the
cross so that we don’t sin anymore. Now we are good people. We are marching
towards glory.
The last words Martin Luther spoke before he died were, “We
are beggars. This is true.” That is a plot line that is a bit different. It corresponds
to the second part of our Gospel reading with Bartimaeus, the blind man from
Jericho. He was a beggar. When he heard that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by,
he cried out, “Kyrie Eleison!” “Lord, have mercy on me!” And some of the people
around him thought he was a piece of trash and he probably was a piece of
trash. They told him to shut up and get a job—to pull himself up by the
bootstraps—but this was a stubborn fellow. The more they told him to shut up
and gain some self-respect, the more shameless he became. Louder and louder,
“Have mercy on me! Have mercy on me! Have mercy on me! Have mercy on me!”
Wouldn’t you know that Jesus heard him? He came over and gave him his sight.
His faith saved him.So it has to be for us sinners who still sin because of the
devil, the world, and our sinful flesh. We are beggars.
Do you know how it is with white trash? They have no shame.
They sit around all day doing nothing, but then when they hear about some
give-away somewhere, suddenly they are propelled into action. They jump into
their jalopies and might even be first in line. They open their money sack big
and wide and say, “Fill ‘er up!” That’s how beggars act. There’s not much that
is commendable about beggars, but, you know, if they find somebody rich enough
and generous enough, they might come out alright.
When Christians come to confession they say, “I, a poor,
miserable sinner, confess all my sins and iniquities.” That’s like us opening
our sack wide and saying, “Look, there isn’t a darned thing in there!” Then
Jesus says, “I know. That is why I suffered so much. But I did it for you
because I love you and want you to be forgiven and blessed forever.” Through
the office of the keys, the authority to forgive sinners that has been given to
the Church, the pastor of fellow Christian is authorized to forgive sins.
Therefore it is Jesus who is speaking when the sinner hears, “I forgive you all
your sins in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Thereby the pauper is made into a prince—literally. The
sinner is given adoption as a child of God. We do not confess our sins so that
we can explain how we used to sin, but now are on the mend. We do not confess
our sins to merit our forgiveness through the humiliation of revealing our
secrets. We confess our sins because we are as poor as poor can be, but we know
of a treasure that’s being handed out for free!
We do not outgrow the forgiveness of sins. We do not outgrow
the cross. We remain beggars, but we have a benefactor who is rich!
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