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SERMON 3: LENTEN MIDWEEK 2
"The Real Battle"
Luke 22:39-62
When I was younger, I read a few of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" stories.
If you don't know don't know that much about Sherlock Holmes I'll just give you the basics.
Holmes is the main figure in the series; he's a private detective in London and he is the master of logical thinking, careful reasoning based on evidence, solving crimes, and so on.
At one point in the series, Holmes reveals that behind a crime wave in London-blackmail, murder, and so on-behind it all is a single connection-or better, a single person: "Professor Moriarty" is his name.
Everyone else involved in the crime wave is just a two-bit figure.
Like a spider weaving a web, Professor Moriarty is the root cause and the guiding mind, and so Holmes is out to find and outwit and defeat his great enemy.
The other people involved play their roles-but the real enemy is that one person.
He's never visibly present at the scene of a crime-but he's behind it all.
Why do I bring this up tonight, when we are reading and pondering Jesus's agony in the
garden, his arrest, and Peter's denial?
Well, to answer that question, let me ask another one.
How many people are key to these verses from Luke 22? One person comes to mind right
away of course-the Lord Jesus.
And others are there-twelve apostles, counting Judas, and
some of the chief priests and the temple guard and a servant girl and a couple of others and
several crowds of people.
And they all play their part, so to speak.
But Luke's Gospel reveals
in a unique way that behind it all is one figure, one person if I can use that term.
Satan.
There's Jesus.
And there is his great enemy, who isn't even named in the verses that we read
tonight.
But let me show you what I mean and let me also say that all these verses I'm going
to mention are found in Luke's Gospel, and remarkably, only in Luke's Gospel.
Like Matthew and Mark, Luke tells us that early in his ministry the Lord Jesus was directly
tempted by Satan.
When that event is over, however, only Luke makes this direct statement:
"And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Jesus until an opportune
time."
Satan would be back.
Here's another one, and you might remember it from our Ash Wednesday reading.
There Luke begins to tell the events of that Passover meal and the night when Jesus was going
to be betrayed.
First, he says that the chief priests and their allies were looking for a way to
destroy Jesus.
And then he writes, "Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot ... and he
went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray Jesus to
them."
John's Gospel has a very similar statement.
But Luke is making it clear that now the
moment for which Satan has been waiting-that opportune time-has come.
Satan is behind
the plan, the plot to arrest Jesus.
And then there is this, from last week's reading, from verse 31: "Simon, Simon, behold,
Satan has demanded to have you all, that he might sift you all like wheat."
Now, yes, next
comes Jesus's promise of Peter's turning back again after it's all said and done.
But the fact
remains-Satan is going to separate, sift, winnow, shake the apostles and see who is "wheat,"
and who is "chaff," blown away by the wind.
So, yes, in this reading tonight, there is Judas, and there are the chief priests and their allies.
There're the apostles.
But Satan is directing, influencing, attacking all of them.
He's behind it all.
And so, in a way, there are really only two figures, two "persons" who matter.
Satan ... and Jesus.
And Jesus knows that.
He knows it.
He's the one who warns the apostles in the garden that night, he warns them: "Pray."
"Pray," he says.
"Temptation is coming against you; the tempter is coming against you; Satan is coming against you.
Pray so that you won't enter into it.
Because if you do, you won't be able to stand.
You're not solid enough, you're not strong
enough; you'll blow away like chaff."
Jesus knows that Satan is behind it all, under it all.
The chief priests and their group think that it's their clever, secret plan that made it all work.
Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss, and
they bring force against him.
It looks like it was all their plan, and that their plan worked.
But Jesus knows better.
He says, "I used to be in the temple courtyards every day, and if you
wanted to arrest me as if I were a robber, you could have done it then.
But it's happening
now because this is your hour and even more ... this is the power of darkness."
The power of
darkness-Satan's power.
When the disciples ignore Jesus's warning for them to pray, how do they fare when Satan attacks?
They scatter like chaff.
While Jesus is praying in an agony that none of us can come close to imagining ... the apostles fall asleep.
And then one of the twelve betrays Jesus with a kiss, and Jesus has to undo the violence of another one.
And then Peter-who promised
that he was ready to go with Jesus to prison and to death, is following ... from a distance.
And speaking through a servant girl and two others, Satan comes at Peter, and Satan sifts
him, and Peter is undone.
Jesus said it would happen.
And on his way to stand before the
Sanhedrin Jesus looks straight at Peter ... and Peter remembers.
But Luke tells us that Peter
only remembers the bad news.
He didn't remember that Jesus promised that Peter would
turn again.
And so, Peter is undone.
He goes outside, and he weeps bitterly.
Not until the
first Easter morning will Peter be restored ... as Jesus promised he would be.
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