Sermon manuscript:
Have you ever had the experience of dreading a day that was
coming? Maybe you have dreaded the day when you have to go to the dentist or
the day of surgery. Maybe you have dreaded the day when your child is going to
leave home. The date is right there on the calendar and only gets closer. Each
passing day increases the anxiety.
This was Jesus’s experience this Holy Week. Did you notice
this past Sunday how Jesus was troubled on Palm Sunday? There were some Greeks
who wanted to see Jesus. Greeks wanting to see Jesus is different than Jews
wanting to see Jesus. Greeks weren’t the blood descendants of Abraham. And yet,
here they are, wanting to see the Christ. Jesus knew that the hour had come for
the Son of Man to be glorified.
Jesus said in our Gospel reading on Sunday, “Now is my
soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, this
is the reason I came to this hour.” Jesus knew that he had to drink the cup
that the Father gave him to drink. He was going to save all people by being
crushed with their iniquities. He isn’t looking forward to doing it. He knows
he needs to be done. His soul is troubled.
On an almost infinitely smaller scale we can understand
that. That is how it can be for us when we are dreading that thing in the future.
We know we need the surgery. There’s no other choice. Sometimes we manage to
forget about it, but then, all of a sudden, it hits us again. The soul is
troubled.
Our reading tonight is from the Thursday of Holy Week. At
the beginning of the reading it says, “Jesus was troubled in his spirit.”
Yet another thing was falling into place for the dreadful thing that was coming.
Jesus was to be betrayed by one of the twelve. Judas sold his soul for a mere
thirty pieces of silver. Satan entered him when he took the bread from Jesus.
Although he sold his soul so cheaply, he would come to loathe even that paltry
sum. When he saw how Jesus was condemned to die he despaired. A horrible,
black, pit of despair overtook him. He threw that money back to the Jewish
officials and went and hung himself. God save us from despair in this life and
in the next!
With Judas gone, on his way to the officials who would
arrest him, Jesus knew it was just a matter of time. Maybe it’s a tiny bit like
arriving at the hospital and entering a room where you have to change out of
your clothes and into a hospital gown. There’s no stopping it now.
When Judas left the upper room where Jesus and his disciples
celebrated the Passover, it was already dark. Evening had come on that Thursday
of Holy Week. Jesus and his disciples left that upper room that evening, walked
across the Kidron valley, and up on to the Mount of Olives. There was a garden
there name Gethsemane. Jesus liked to go there with his disciples. Now he
wanted to go there in order to pray.
He asked Peter, James, and John to please stay up and watch
and pray with him. He said his soul was sorrowful, even unto death. Then he
went on a stone’s throw to pray by himself. He said, “Father, if it is
possible, let this cup pass from me. But not my will, but your will be done.”
This is holy ground. We have to take the shoes off of our
understanding. We won’t be able to grasp it completely. Jesus, who is God, asks
that the cup should pass from him. Jesus, unlike us, is perfect and remains
perfect. Jesus, unlike us, is delighted to fulfill the will of God. Here he
asks that the cup might pass from him. How the Son of God could say something
like that is beyond our comprehension, but that is what he said. What we can
know for certain is that his soul was troubled. His sweat fell to the ground
like great drops of blood. The weight which was going to crush Jesus was
coming. Our sin was going to kill God.
Three times Jesus came back to his apostles, but he found
them asleep. Jesus’s sorrow had rubbed off on them and they were overcome by
sleepiness. The third time Jesus returned to the apostles he could see Judas
coming with a whole bunch of people. The Jewish authorities were there. They
had brought along a whole bunch of soldiers. They had their torches and
weapons. Jesus was being sucked down into the Maelstrom. From here he would go
to the chief priest’s house, from the chief priest’s house he would be brought
to Pilate’s house, and from Pilate’s house he would be nailed to a cross. By 9
o’clock, Friday morning, the Son of God would be lifted up, and, to use Jesus’s
expression, “glorified.”
In the midst of all of this, in the midst of Jesus’s soul
being troubled, on this Thursday, Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper which we
continue to observe to this very day as Jesus’s disciples. We very easily take
this sacrament for granted and think nothing of it. What a shame. This
sacrament came at the last possible moment for Jesus. Twice Jesus says, with
both the body and the blood, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
What we can remember of Jesus is how his soul was troubled.
In addition to everything that we have talked about tonight, Jesus knew that he
was going to be all alone. Even his heavenly Father would turn his back on his
Son, for Jesus cries out from the cross: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus was troubled. The burden that
Jesus bore was absolutely unique. Nobody has experienced anything like it, and
nobody will ever experience anything like it again. This Jesus did for our
redemption.
As we do this in remembrance of Jesus we might also remember
that Jesus wanted to do all of this for us. Jesus said to his disciples when he
instituted the Lord’s Supper that he passionately desired to have this Pascha
with them. If we were to put that into more colloquial language he said that he
“really, really wanted to have this meal with them.” The day of dread was
drawing near and was on his mind, but something else was also on his mind. Jesus
was really looking forward to the Lord’s Supper with his disciples.
The reason why Jesus desired to have this sacrament with the
disciples must be learned from the Words of Institution. Jesus himself defines
this sacrament. He is very specific about it. “This bread is my body which is
given for you.” “This cup is the New Testament, the new arrangement
between God and man, in my blood, which is shed for you for the forgiveness of
sins.”
This sacrament is the sacrament of Jesus’s death for you. It
was instituted at the last hour before the processes that would lead to his
death were put into motion. Paul said in our Epistle reading that the sacrament
is a proclamation of Christ’s death until he comes again in glory. And it is
for you. Jesus wants you to have this. Why? So that you may know that you have
been reconciled to God by Jesus’s death. So that you may have peace on account
of Jesus being troubled, chastised and crushed.
By this sacrament, by faith in Jesus’s words, we may
therefore rise above whatever day or event we could possibly be dreading. No
matter how dreadful that thing might be, we can rise above it through faith in
Jesus, because he has overcome it. – Jesus wasn’t able to do that. Jesus wasn’t
able to transcend his troubles. He bore the full brunt of everything. He drank
the cup to its last dregs. We, however, can rise above whatever comes our way.
It does not matter if it is disappointment, or sadness, or
shame, or death or anything else in all creation. In Jesus God is for us. Who
can be against us? Jesus wants us to know this. He really, really wants to have
this sacrament with us in order that we may be at peace through faith in him.
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