Quinquagesima
Lk
18:31-43
2/14/21
This past
week I turned fifty one years old. The year included a development that
reminded me that I am not getting any younger.
When working on my model railroad, I realized that I could no longer see
the very small details with which I needed to work. I mean, it wasn’t even
close. And so I had to purchase a pair of reader glasses at the drug store for
use in modeling. My kids have found the
sight of their dad with a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of his
nose to be an amusing sight.
Typically,
our eyesight deteriorates as we get older. For at least one person I visit,
life into her late nineties has meant that her vision is almost completely
gone. The condition of not being able to
see at all – to be blind – is hard to fathom. The inability to read, watch TV
and just see the world around us would be an incredible hardship.
In our
Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus encounters a man who is blind. This man calls
out to Jesus in urgent faith, and our Lord heals him. Yet this miracle of healing is juxtaposed
with Jesus’ most explicit prediction of his upcoming passion. We see that the
way of suffering and death is not a contradiction with Jesus’ role of the
Christ. Instead, it is part of it. And
in this truth, we find insight into how we are to view the presence of
suffering and hardship in our own lives.
Our text
begins by telling us that Jesus took the twelve apostles aside and 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.”
There are two things to note about
Jesus’ statement. First, he says that
the upcoming events of his passion will be a fulfillment of what the prophets
in the Old Testament had written. Jesus
presents his passion as the will of God foretold in Scripture, and now coming
to fulfillment as they approach Jerusalem for the final time.
The second thing is the explicit way
Jesus describes the upcoming events. He
will be handed over the Gentiles to be mocked, and shamefully treated and spit
upon. Jesus describes the humiliation
that he will experience at the hands of the Romans. Then he adds, “And after
flogging him, they will kill him.” Jesus
refers to the scourging that preceded crucifixion, in which a whip studded with
lead or pieces of bone was used to flay skin of the victim. This terribly
painful event was meant to weaken the person before crucifixion. It was also a part of what made crucifixion
such a horrible way to die.
This is the third time that Jesus has
predicted his passion in Luke’s Gospel. And like the previous two times, Jesus
concluded it by referring to his resurrection.
Yet we learn in our text, “But they understood none of these
things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was
said.” They did not understand the necessity
of the Christ’s suffering. In fact, we
are told that it was hidden from them. It was not something they could grasp.
Immediately after this we learn that
as Jesus was approaching Jericho, there was a blind man sitting by the roadside
begging. He could hear that a large crowd was passing by and asked about what
was going on. When he was told, “Jesus
of Nazareth is passing by,” he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy
on me!” The blind man called Jesus the “Son
of David.” He confessed Jesus to be the
Christ, and he implored Jesus for help.
Those at the front of the crowd
thought that his cry was a nuisance, and told him to stop. But we learn
that in response he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” He would not allow his cry of faith to be
silenced, because Jesus was there.
Our Lord stopped and commanded the
man to be brought to him. When the man came near, Jesus asked him, “What do you
want me
to do for you?” The blind man responded, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” He addressed Jesus in the language of faith
as the blind man called him Lord. Then Jesus demonstrated that he is
the Lord. He said to the man, “Recover your sight; your faith
has made you well.” We learn that immediately the blind man recovered
his sight and followed Jesus, glorifying God.
In our text this morning, we have
side by side the stark and brutal prediction of Jesus’ passion, and the miracle
in which Jesus heals a blind man. On the
one hand we have the lack of understanding among the apostles, and on the other
hand we have the unwavering faith of the blind man as he confesses that Jesus
is the Christ and asks the Lord for help.
The contrast of suffering and death,
and the power of Jesus’ healing miracle, is something that confronts us all the
time. On the one hand, we live in a
world where we continue to experience illness, failure and hardships. Our life is always threatened by death, and
for some of us that threat is very immediate and pressing.
On the other hand, we confess and
believe that Jesus is the Lord – the Christ. We believe that he is the One who
has all power, and has won forgiveness, salvation and eternal life for us. Yet in the face of the suffering and
difficulties that continually
seem to arise, it can be hard to believe this.
Doubt can creep in. Doubt can
turn into resentment and even anger against the God who claims to love us, even
as we experience these things.
In our text today, Jesus brutally
predicts his suffering and death. Then,
he turns around a heals a blind man.
At Jesus’ baptism, he was anointed by the Holy Spirit who descended upon
him. Next, in his sermon at Nazareth he
read this text from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he
has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to
proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to
set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's
favor.” Then he announced, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled
in your hearing.” The healing of the blind man demonstrates that Jesus is
indeed the Christ – the Messiah promised by God.
John the Baptist proclaimed that he
was preparing the way for the One who would bring God’s end time judgment, and
after Jesus’ baptism the Lord began his ministry. Yet when John spoke the truth of God’s Word
to King Herod Antipas, Herod had him thrown in prison. From prison John sent
this question to Jesus, “Are
you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” John wondered how he could be suffering this
evil, if Jesus was the One.
Luke tells us, “In that hour he healed
many people of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and on many who were
blind he bestowed sight. Jesus answered, "Go and tell John what
you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame
walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are
raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is
the one who is not offended by me.”
Jesus’ answer was that, yes, he was
the One! The healing of the blind man in
our text bears witness to this. But note
what our Lord said at end of his statement to John: “And blessed is the one who
is not offended by me.” Our text this morning shows us that for Jesus,
suffering and death, and the powerful ministry of the saving Christ are not
contradictions.
In our text, Jesus says, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem,
and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets
will be accomplished.” He predicts his suffering and death. But he also
says, “and on the third
day he will rise.” Our Lord says that suffering and death are not the end.
Instead, his mission will pass through this and lead to resurrection. The disciples don’t understand. In fact we are told, “This saying was hidden from them.” They could
not understand the meaning until it was revealed to them by God on Easter in
the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
After his resurrection, Jesus walked with the two
disciples on the road to Emmaus. They lamented what had happened to Jesus, and
shared the puzzling initial reports that they had heard about Jesus’
resurrection. Then Jesus said, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the
prophets have spoken!
Was
it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his
glory?”
Jesus was indeed the Christ. He came to suffer and die in order to win
forgiveness for you. He came to fulfill
what the prophets had written. But this fulfillment also included his
resurrection and glory. The apostles
don’t understand Jesus in our text today.
But on the evening of Easter the risen Lord appeared in the room where
they were and explained, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should
suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and
that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his
name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses
of these things.” It was the resurrection of Jesus Christ that allowed them to
understand that suffering and death were not contradictions with Jesus’ power
and glory as the Christ.
The same thing is true for you.
Jesus Christ himself passed through suffering and death in order to win
forgiveness and salvation for us. He walked the way of the cross. But the cross
was not the end. Instead he conquered death
as the Father raised him from the dead on the third day.
Jesus has not promised the absence
of suffering and hardships. Quite the opposite, he has said that we will be
called upon to sacrifice and suffer because of our faith in him. In his resurrection, Jesus has begun the
final victory over death. But until he
returns, the wages of sin is still death. The illness that we experience is
simply this fact playing all through our life.
We are in the process of dying even as we live. As we continue to live as fallen people in a
fallen world, there will be difficulties.
But because of the resurrection of
Jesus Christ, we have the assurance that God is still in control, and that he
still loves us. In fact, the
resurrection of Jesus and his victory allows us to trust that God is still at
work in the midst of these difficulties.
It’s not comfortable, but God uses these things to kill the old Adam in
us. They force us to turn away from
ourselves, the world and all its distractions, and to turn towards God.
They cause us to rely on him – they cause us to grow in faith.
We can believe and trust that this
is what God is doing because we have the risen and ascended Lord who suffered
and died for us. Our salvation was won
on Good Friday in what could only be seen as weakness, failure, and defeat. But
the resurrection of Jesus revealed that it was in fact the most powerful action
of God to save us.
Because we have seen God do this in
Christ, we can trust as the baptized children of God, that God’s love and care
continues for us. We can cry out with
the faith of the blind man, “Jesus, Son
of David, have mercy on me!,” and know that he does help us as through his
Spirit he sustains us. We can know that
that the final victory is already ours, and live our lives in this confidence.
We know how everything ends, because Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.
