Lent 2020 -- "Murderous Eyes"

Murderous Eyes

Text: ,

Other Lessons: (antiphon: v. 12); ; ;

Liturgical Setting

The Fourth Sunday in Lent is Laetare, which means “Rejoice!” We can rejoice in the trial of Jesus recounted in , where He reveals Himself to the Jews as the Son of Man, the same one who came “to give His life as a ransom for many” (v. 45). reminds us that murder of the innocent is characteristic of wicked men. Murderers are rebels “against the light,” who rise while it is still dark to “kill the poor and needy” (). Yet murder is not merely a physical phenomenon but a spiritual one, for he “who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (). identifies the scribes and Pharisees as murderers of the prophets, which points forward to their seeking the execution of the Prophet of God, Jesus Himself.

Relevant Context

introduced the chief priests and scribes seeking to arrest and execute Jesus, and Judas had arranged for His being handed over to them in .

Textual Notes

“the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread”—By mentioning these festivals, Mark focuses us on the OT background of Jesus’ last days. He is the Passover “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (). He will replace the Passover Meal with the feast of His body and blood, given and shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins.

v. 2: “Not during the feast”—They desired to destroy Jesus by stealth because there were a large number of pilgrims in Jerusalem for the Passover, and the leaders did not want to risk stirring up Jesus’ supporters to rebellion, which would alarm the Romans.

v. 53: “high priest”—Mark does not name him, but the other Gospels identify him as Caiaphas. This is particularly significant because of what is recorded in , namely, that Caiaphas thought it would be better for Jesus to die rather than risk the nation being thrown into turmoil through a rebellion, but unwittingly he was prophesying on behalf of God that “Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad” (vv. 51–52).

“chief priests . . . elders . . . scribes”—Jesus has faced opposition from various Jewish groups throughout His ministry (, , , ; , ), with a decisive separation from the Pharisees coming at . The time has come for their ultimate opposition to Jesus.

v. 54: “warming himself at the fire”—This detail about Peter sets the stage for his denial in 14:66–72. While Jesus is on trial making the good confession, Peter will deny that he even knows Jesus.

v. 55: “testimony . . . to put Him to death”—Under Roman rule, the Jews did not have authority to put anyone to death. Rather, they would establish charges against someone and then convince the Romans of that person’s guilt. In this sense, the “trial” before the Jews is more of an informal fact-finding hearing to try to establish that Jesus was trying to foment a rebellion and threaten Roman rule.

“they found none”—Jesus’ complete innocence is essential for Him to be a spotless sacrificial victim to God.

v. 56: “testimony did not agree”— says that one may be put to death only on the evidence of two or three witnesses. extends this rule to any crime.

v. 57: “bore false witness”—The Jews were so rabid to destroy Jesus that they resorted to breaking the Eighth Commandment, and their unbelief is shown by their disregard of : “A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will perish.”

v. 58: “destroy this temple”—Just as Satan twists Scripture in his temptations of Jesus, so the Jews pervert the words of Jesus to try to convict Him. In , Jesus told the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews cannot fathom how He could do this to a building that had taken forty-six years to build (and still wasn’t finished!), but St. John says, “But He was speaking about the temple of His body.” In the New Testament, the temple of God is the Body of Christ!

v. 61: “He remained silent”—Jesus would not reply to false charges.

“Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”—Finally, a question Jesus is willing to answer, since it hits upon the central truth of the Gospel.

“Blessed”—Jewish piety required that God’s name not be spoken, so “Blessed” is a circumlocution for uttering the divine name. Similarly, today some Jews will write or type “G-d” instead of “God.” However, this overly cautious practice is actually contrary to the reason God has given us His name: to “call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.”

v. 62: “I am”—The Greek is ἐγώ εἰμι, the same self-designation of the Lord in , as well as the same words Jesus speaks to the Jews on another occasion to reveal His divine nature: “Before Abraham was, I am” ().

“Son of Man”—Although hymns such as “Beautiful Savior” will use the phrases “Son of God and Son of Man” to refer to His divine and human natures respectively, the background for Jesus’ self-designation as “Son of Man” is , where a heavenly “son of man” is given an everlasting kingdom, clearly a prophecy of Jesus Christ.

v. 63: “tore his garments”—In both the OT and NT, this is a sign of grief and dismay. The high priest’s reaction tells us that he understood exactly what Jesus was claiming about Himself: that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, the Son of Man who will come from the right hand of the Father as Judge on the “Last Day.

v. 64: “blasphemy”— says, “Whoever blasphemes the name of the Lord shall surely be put to death.” While none of the false charges against Him stuck, ironically, it was Jesus’ truthful testimony about Himself that led to His unanimous “conviction” by the murderous mob.

v. 65: “spit . . . strike”— has these words on the lips of the Lord’s Suffering Servant: “I gave My back to those who strike, and My cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not My face from disgrace and spitting.”

Sermon Outline

Main Sermon Theme: The chief priests and scribes saw Jesus as an obstacle to be rid of by violence. Yet during the Passover festival, they would unwittingly bring about the Father’s sacrifice of the ultimate Passover Lamb.

I. The Jews wanted to murder Jesus, and we also have murderous thoughts toward our neighbor.

II. We want God to die so we can live for ourselves, a sin for which Jesus had to die.

III. The Father and the Son chose the way of the cross to save us murderers.

Sermon

“If looks could kill.” Can you picture eyes filled with rage? Likely you’ve seen it in the eyes of another; perhaps you’ve seen it on your own face through an ill-timed glance in the mirror. In the ancient world and still today in some cultures, the “evil eye” is a glance that is thought to cause harm to the recipient. That’s how I envision the eyes of the chief priests and scribes, the Sadducees and Pharisees, as they plotted Jesus’ death in tonight’s Passion Reading. They were filled with hatred and murder as they gazed upon Jesus being greeted with praise in Jerusalem during Holy Week, and before that, when face-to-face with Jesus, they heard Him speak woes and reproaches to them. If they could have spewed venom or shot arrows from their eyes at the Lord, they would have.

I don’t remember all the things I did to deserve it, but I recall my reaction to the punishment I received one day. My father had spanked me and sent me to my room. I vividly remember going into my room and behind closed doors muttering, “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”—out of earshot of my Dad, of course. I’m sure my eyes had that murderous look the Jews had. But I knew in my heart that I had gotten what was coming for my misdeed and needed to be sorry and change my ways.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” said Jesus (), no doubt with a rather stern, fatherly look. This rhetoric wouldn’t fit in with Dale Carnegie’s advice given in his 1936 bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People. But it was what they needed to hear, so those words were spoken in love, just as my father had done in disciplining me. God and His representatives never speak the Law to us in malice, but only because we need to recognize our sin and know what to repent of.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” said Jesus. “For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers” ().

Jesus wanted them to recognize their rank hypocrisy and repent. So He mockingly says, “Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers” to bring them face-to-face with the murder that lay in their hearts under their pious pretenses of honoring the murdered prophets and behind their pious platitudes of “We wouldn’t have done what our fathers did.” But multigenerational guilt is real when the sons of the fathers lack repentance, so Jesus challenges them to push things forward to their logical conclusion: “I know your hearts! I can see the murder in your eyes! Go ahead! Walk in the steps of your fathers! Why don’t you go ahead and kill Me too and continue your family tradition!”

“There is nothing new under the sun,” said the Preacher in Ecclesiastes. Murderous thoughts and looks are as old as the fall into sin. Cain’s downcast eyes became murderous toward his brother. The cause of murder is always the agency of man, but the original source is the devil, who, Jesus says, was a liar and murderer from the beginning. St. John says that the murderer Cain “was of the evil one” (). In addressing the Jews who wanted to kill Him, Jesus identifies Satan as the father of all who hate God’s Son.

But how does that pertain to us? Aren’t John and Jesus just wailing on Cain and the murderous Jews? Surely the Lord’s not talking to us pious Christians, is He? But listen to His Word. His apostle St. John writes, “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (). And a bit later, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (4:20). Follow the logic. If I claim to love God while hating my brother, I am both a murderer and a liar and cannot love God, and if I don’t love Him, then I must hate Him. Looks like Cain and the hostile Jews and all of us are in the same boat. This is why we make this confession to Jesus in the hymn:

I caused Thy grief and sighing

By evils multiplying

As countless as the sands.

I caused the woes unnumbered

With which Thy soul is cumbered,

Thy sorrows raised by wicked hands. (TLH 171:4)

Don’t lie to yourself. You have said in your heart, “I have reasons for hating my parents. I can make excuses for wishing that my brother were dead. I have good cause for casting an evil eye upon my neighbor.” That’s enough to make you a murderer in God’s sight and place you under His wrath. The Jews filled up the measure of their fathers in tonight’s Passion Reading, and if we’re honest with ourselves, we must see ourselves right along with them.

What a marvel, then, that the Father would allow His Son to be murdered at the hands of sinful men, just to save a bunch of rotten, rebellious sinners with eyes filled with rage against God and man. “But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God” ().

The wrath of God is not a murderous glance from the Father, but a look of righteous judgment upon the guilt of sin. We all deserve God’s wrath just as much as I deserved my father’s punishment, but instead of giving us what we deserved, God put it on Jesus, and Jesus willingly took it, for us men and for our salvation.

From the cross, Jesus looked upon the masses of humanity and said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (). Original sin, which produces lies, hatred, murder, and every other sin, is so deep a corruption that we cannot recognize the depravity of what we think, say, and do unless it is revealed by God’s Word. But once our murderous eyes have looked in horror on what we really have done—nailing the innocent Son of God to the tree with our sins—then we also are ready for the joyful Good News of the forgiveness of all of our sins for the sake of Christ’s voluntary sacrifice at the hands of murderers, the death by which He has extinguished the wrath of God toward us. “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (). Rejoicing is the theme of the Fourth Sunday in Lent. So rejoice in Christ, who has turned your murderous eyes away from sin, guilt, and despair and lifted them up to look upon Himself as your Savior. Amen.

----------------------------