Quinquagesima Sunday 2010
"Then He took the twelve aside and said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again.” But they understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken. Then it happened, as He was coming near Jericho, that a certain blind man sat by the road begging. And hearing a multitude passing by, he asked what it meant. So they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. And he cried out, saying, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Then those who went before warned him that he should be quiet; but he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” So Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought to Him. And when he had come near, He asked him, saying, “What do you want Me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, that I may receive my sight.” Then Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he received his sight, and followed Him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God." Luke 18:31-43
But they did not understand any of this and his speech was hidden from them. And they did not know what he meant when he said it. Luke 18:32
Why did Jesus have to die on the cross?
The disciples didn’t think it was necessary. They had been to Jerusalem with him before, and they knew it was dangerous to go back. They wanted to follow Him, learn from Him, be with Him, but they didn’t want to see Him die. It would be foolish for Him to sacrifice Himself. The disciples didn’t understand why it was necessary.
A part of me agrees with them. The speech about the Son of Man being handed over by one of His friends and then laughed at, run down, and spat upon seems too much. What could He gain by being tortured and executed as a criminal? Why would He have to do that? It seems so completely over the top.
All of this makes complete sense until you start to follow Jesus.
Following Jesus is a lot like the melody we sang to the hymn of the same name this morning, "Let us ever walk with Jesus." I chose to use the older melody to this song on purpose. [See footnote] The more you try to sing it, the more you see how difficult it is to sing it well. The notes range from some of the lowest on the scale all the way up to some of the highest. Most of us can’t do it. We get frustrated. We want to quit.
Let this song be our first sermon this morning. Following Jesus is like that difficult melody.
When I notice how much I want to make kindness and love the law in my life, without any qualifications on my part, that’s when I find out how hard it is to follow Jesus. The harder I try to keep the commandments, the more I see just how badly I’m doing it. Like a challenging melody, my love for God cracks and breaks down before I can reach my goal. Even if my actions are good, my thoughts are not in harmony. I entertain too many sinful fantasies in my mind. And my cruel words betray how heartless I really am.
That is why Jesus had to die. He knew that our way of following him would never make the grade. And we know it, too, if we are honest.
Some might call this over-obsessing over sin. These are the people who really aren’t trying hard enough to live holy lives. Only when you really set your heart, mind, body, and soul to loving God and other people are you able to see how badly you’re doing it. If you don’t get it, you’re not trying hard enough.
The blind man in our reading today is a living parable. He cannot see Jesus at all. But he sees the need for Christ better than the disciples. It doesn’t say here that the blind man understood the need for Jesus to die on the cross--he doesn’t have to. The whole point is that the blind man is acutely aware of how much he is in a fix. He cannot do anything to help himself. He cannot go anywhere without assistance. Then Jesus comes by and makes it possible for him to see again. This man knows who alone can help and save him.
It was the blind man who had the right picture of God. The disciples did not.
Our view of Christ is often like the disciples’ view--blind. It is the blind man who shows us that we need to see Christ differently--as a savior.
The first thing Christ gives the blind man is physical sight. Then Christ goes to Jerusalem and gives him forgiveness and life.
Our prayer and desire this morning is for spiritual sight. First, that Christ would come and heal our blindness. Too often we are blind to our need for Him. Second, that He would let us see Him as He truly needs to be for us--as the One who makes atonement for our sin.
Our blindness is removed when His Spirit touches our hearts and shows us our sin. The Spirit can make us feel guilty and sorrowful over sin. This is good.
But it is only good if the Spirit also gives us a clear view of Christ as savior. Jesus must touch our spiritual blindness where it hurts most, and convince us by His Word that we are healed. And there is no better place for that to happen than the cross.
By his stripes we are indeed healed. So speaks the prophet Isaiah, talking ahead of time about how Jesus would be stripped and whipped for us as a warm-up to his crucifixion. This is the atonement we need. Atonement is how Jesus pays for our sins with His life, so that we can be reconciled to God. This is the price Jesus was willing to pay so that God will not hold our failures of love and obedience against us.
The Apostle Paul wants us to see Jesus in this way. Paul, you may recall, also had been blind--blind with faithlessness and impenitence in the days when he was still executing Christians, and also blind physically, when God struck him down on the road to Damascus. After he recovered his sight, after he was baptized and spent years preaching and teaching and suffering for Jesus’ message of salvation, he had a crystal clear view of Christ. He had the sight to say, “I am determined to know nothing but Christ Jesus crucified.”
Christ crucified. The apostle Paul, who knew a thing or two about trying hard to follow Christ by practicing real love and commitment, refused to see Jesus in any other way. Paul will have no other Christ than the one we see on the crucifix. He himself knew that there was no other way to be saved from his constant failures of achieving perfection. He calls these daily failures his wretchedness. When we nod our heads in agreement about this, applying the same words to ourselves, it is a sign that our blindness also is beginning to go away.
When we see Jesus crucified, we see him as the savior who has done for us what we were unable to achieve for ourselves. Christ crucified means there is a loving God, and our failures at spiritual perfection are forgiven. When we see Christ crucified as our hope and atonement, then we are seeing clearly. This is how Jesus wants us to see Him.
The crucifix in our church is a proclamation of Paul’s message and a reminder of Jesus’ sermon on the way to Jerusalem. It is balm and healing for those who have tried so hard to love God and people and come up short, just like those who tried so hard to sing a hymn this morning and came up short. “I am determined to know nothing but Christ Jesus and him crucified,” says Paul. If we know Jesus that way, then we are no longer blind.
“You’ve only got a savior because of the cross,” said a Christian once. Today we look to that savior on that cross and thank Him for having mercy on blind men like ourselves. When we see Christ crucified, we see our hope and salvation. Amen.
The Reverend Sean M. Smallwood
cruxprobatomnia -- the cross tests everything
This sermon makes more sense if you sing the older melody to “Let us ever walk with Jesus” first. The tune is Sollt ich meinem Gott; we may know it better today as "I Will Sing My Maker's Praises."
Credit to the works of Revs. Gerdt Kelter, Wilhelm Loehe and Bo Giertz for words and inspiration.
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