Sunday of the Passion
Mt
26:1-27:66
3/29/15
It is not hard to recognize that
Matthew thinks the events which we will remember this week are of central
importance. Our Gospel lesson that
recounts the last supper, betrayal, trial, suffering and death of Jesus takes
up two full chapters. If we extend our
consideration back to the event we observed at the very beginning of this
service – Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem – we find that starting from chapter
21, Matthew uses seven full chapters into order to tell us about what happened
during Holy Week. Fully 25% of the
Gospel of Matthew focuses on this one week of time. The focus on Holy Week is
even more pronounced in the Gospel of Mark. There, almost 40% of the Gospel
deals with events of this one week.
Based on what we learn from the
Gospel of John, we know that Jesus’ ministry lasted about three years. Matthew spends 25% of his Gospel covering just
one week of these three years. In
fact, if you didn’t have John’s Gospel you wouldn’t know that Jesus made
multiple trips to Jerusalem as a faithful Jew who went on the pilgrimage to
celebrate the religious festivals. If
you only had Matthew’s Gospel, you would think that Jesus only made one trip
to Jerusalem – a trip that ended in his death.
Matthew and all of the Gospel
writers focus on the events of this one week.
And yet when we consider the events of this week, it is easy to conclude
that Jesus is a failure. At the
beginning of today’s service we heard about how Jesus entered into Jerusalem on
Palm Sunday. Like an election event this
was carefully choreographed. Jesus
arranged for himself to ride into Jerusalem mounted on a donkey. It may sound odd to us, but because of the
Old Testament background of King David and King Solomon it is a scene that has
royal and messianic associations.
Many in the crowds perceived it this
way. Matthew tells us that they went
before him and followed him shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is
he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”
And yet when he entered Jerusalem
and people in the city which was stirred up by his arrival asked, “Who is
this?” the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.” They call him a prophet … and that’s
all. It is an answer that we already
know from Peter’s confession of Christ, is the wrong answer.
All during this week Jesus will meet
with opposition as the Pharisees and Sadducees take turns attacking him. One of his own inner circle of apostles will
agree to betray him for thirty pieces of silver. The rest of the apostles will abandon him in
the Garden of Gethsemane. Peter will
summon the courage to follow Jesus to his trial, only to deny there that he
even knows Jesus.
At a trial that occurs in several
parts, Jesus will be mocked by Jew and Gentile alike. He will be sentenced to death, tortured and
humiliated. And then he will become the picture of powerlessness. Nailed to a cross he will die a death that in
his world is the ultimate proof that you are failure as a Messiah – that you
are a false Messiah. Those who pass by will deride him saying, “You who
would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you
are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” The chief priests, with the
scribes and elders will mock him, saying, “He saved others; he cannot save
himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we
will believe in him.”
The Son of God? The Messiah? He will
die crying out just before his death, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is,
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And then in a hasty burial, Joseph
of Arimathea will place him in a sealed tomb.
It will be a rush job, and so women who care about Jesus will feel the
need to return after the Sabbath on the first day of the week in order to
complete the preparation of the body.
Three years of ministry, and the
Gospel writers choose to focus upon this?
They don’t seem to know much about “spin.” They present Jesus as the Son of God and
Messiah, and yet everything in this account seems to say that he was a fraud
and a failure.
Of course, it takes one to know one. And you should have no problem recognizing a
fraud and a failure, because you are one too.
You claim to love God, and yet often you can’t be inconvenienced with
coming to his house or spending time reading and studying his Word. You claim to love your spouse and children,
and yet you speak angry words to them and act in selfish ways that hurt them. Again and again you show yourself to be
anything other than a saint and a child of God.
And it is because you are a
fraud and a failure that Jesus will appear to be one this week. If you follow the world’s script for what a
Messiah – what a Savior – is supposed to look like, then Jesus is a fraud and
failure. But Jesus isn’t doing it that
way because he has come to provide the answer to a problem that the world
doesn’t recognize. He has come to
provide the answer to sin.
Jesus’ rejection, betrayal,
suffering and death is exactly the plan that he has come to carry
out. Just before he entered Jerusalem,
Jesus predicted his passion for the third time in Matthew’s Gospel. He said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem.
And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and
they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be
mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.”
Identified as the Servant of the
Lord at his baptism, Jesus came to be the suffering Servant. He came to redeem
you from your sins. Just after again
predicting his passion, our Lord went on to say, “You know that the rulers of
the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over
them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must
be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even
as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a
ransom for many.”
Jesus went to Jerusalem that final
time to serve you. He went to free you
from sin – to give you forgiveness for all those times you prove to be a
failure and a fraud. Matthew and the
Gospel writers focus on this one week because it is the most important week in
the history of the world. It is in fact
the most important week in your life, because through baptism the saving
suffering and death of Christ’s passion have become yours. As Paul told the
Romans, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ
Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by
baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by
the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
The events of this week have freed
you from sin. Clothed with Christ in
your baptism, when God looks at you he now sees a saint. He sees not your sin, but instead what Christ
has done for you in order to win forgiveness. And so already now you know the
verdict of the Last Day. It will be:
innocent, not guilty.
This is the most important week in
the history of the world. This is the most important week in your life. And so
this week we pause. We stop our normal
schedule. And we come to church. We come to church for the Triduum – the one
service the runs over the course of three days.
We gather on Maundy Thursday to hear about our Lord’s example of loving
service as he washed his disciples’ feet.
We hear again about the setting – the night in which he was betrayed -
in which Jesus instituted the Sacrament of his true body and blood, given and
shed for you. On Good Friday we gather
to hear of our Lord’s death as he was pierced for our transgressions and
crushed for our iniquities and then placed in a tomb.
And then on the evening of Holy
Saturday we gather for the Vigil of Easter.
On Saturday Christ was buried in the tomb, and in this service which has
so many ties to baptism, we remember that we were buried with Christ through
baptism. Yet sundown on Saturday is also
the beginning of Easter. As he had told
his disciples, Jesus did not remain dead.
Instead he rose from the dead and because of our baptism into Christ we
know that we will be raised too.
Where it is possible, this year make
Holy Week a priority. Make the services
of Holy Week a priority. Come to the services of the Triduum. Come in remembrance of all that your Lord has
done for you and receive the forgiveness he gives. After all, this is the most important week in
history of the world. And it is the most important week in your life.
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