Lent Midweek 4

SERMON 4: LENTEN MIDWEEK 3 "When You See Such Blind Ignorance, What Do You Think?" Luke 22:63-23:1 This evening we're going to look carefully at how St. Luke described the trial or hearing of the Lord Jesus before the Sanhedrin. Luke's account is very focused, much more than Matthew's or Mark's. (John doesn't include this event at all in his Gospel). After we ponder the reading closely, I want to mention one way you and I might react. I'll mention this reaction because it's not a good one; it's spiritually dangerous. I'll briefly describe it, and then suggest a different attitude of the heart as a response to what St. Luke has written for us tonight. So, that's what's coming in a few minutes-a warning, and an encouragement. But first things first-let's look carefully at Luke 22:63 to 23:1. The first thing to say it this. Many Christians remember the events of the night Jesus was betrayed-and we remember them from all the Gospels. That includes Jesus's trial before the Sanhedrin. But to help us ponder what Luke offers this evening, I want to first show you how different Luke is from the others. That will help us focus not on what we remember from Matthew and Mark (which is true and right, of course!), but on what the Spirit inspired Luke to write and to put before us this evening. When Luke describes the Lord Jesus before the high council of his own people, he says less about it. In fact, Luke's account is a lot shorter than Matthew's or Mark's; Matthew's account is about half again longer than Luke's, and Mark is almost two-thirds longer than Luke. Luke is shorter, and focused. And we could also say that Luke is not only shorter, but it is simplified, stripped down. Really important people, for example, aren't even mentioned. Luke doesn't refer to Caiaphas the high priest at all! Of course, we know that Caiaphas was there and I'm sure Luke knew it, too. But he decided and the Spirit guided Luke to leave that out-it's focused, streamlined. Here's another thing. Luke doesn't tell us anything about witnesses against Jesus, or about false testimony, or about the council trying but failing to get the witnesses to agree. No referring to the high priest tearing his robes, or anything at all like that that is so familiar to us from reading Matthew and Mark. Again, all those things happened-but Luke does not focus our attention on them at all. What does Luke give us? Well, first he tells us what the men who had arrested Jesus were already doing to him, and from that it comes clear where this is all going. A lot of people mistreated and abused the Lord as he moved toward the cross. But only Luke tells us that even before Jesus stands in front of the council, even before the council has a chance to reject him, the people who arrested Jesus were beating and mocking and blaspheming against him, over and over and over. As far as they're concerned, this is going in a certain direction and it's almost a done deal. It's clear, it's simple. Jesus will be condemned. Now, notice this. Luke invites us to see that the council, the Sanhedrin, is speaking with one voice. As I mentioned, the high priest has faded into the background; Luke never even mentions him. There are, of course, many people there. But it's focused. And so, not once or twice, but three times, "they" speak to Jesus, with one voice: "And they said" (v. 66), "So they all said" (v. 70), and "Then they said" (v. 71). And at the last, "The whole company of them arose and brought him before Pilate" (23:1). Evil is speaking with one, unified voice. And the Lord Jesus himself also speaks, but he speaks more than once. But when the Lord replies to what "they" say to him, he's doesn't really answer in a way that gives "them" any traction; he's not going to help them get where they want to go. As Jesus said in the garden, "This is your hour." It's almost as if the Lord is letting go, letting evil have its way. And so, when they first say to Jesus, "If you are the Christ, tell us!" Jesus says, "If I tell you, you won't believe. And if I ask you, you won't answer." "It's like this," Jesus says, "You don't really care what I say. You're blindly against me. Your mind is made up, and nothing can change it. All you know is where you want to go with this." The Lord then adds what could be taken as a warning or as an invitation; he says, "From now on the Son of Man, I, Jesus, shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God." It's coming soon, very soon, Jesus says. My victory, my exaltation to God's right hand. It is coming. Beware and repent. Believe. But Jesus's words go right past them. They just want to get enough against Jesus so they can hand him over to the Roman governor, to Pontius Pilate-because only Pilate has the authority to execute Jesus. So, for the second time, "they" speak: "So, you are the Son of God, then?" And Jesus answers again in a sort of an indirect way: "You say that I am." "Do you hear yourselves? You don't even hear what you are saying about me, and you don't believe what's coming out of your own mouths." No, they don't believe-they just want to get it done. So "they" speak for the third time: "What further testimony do we need? We have heard it ourselves from his own lips." Heard what? Well, they didn't really need to hear anything from Jesus. They are so bent on destroying him that they didn't really need any testimony at all. But now they think that they have enough, and they're ready to take Jesus to Pilate so that, as Jesus predicted, the Gentiles can torture and crucify and kill him. As Luke gives us the events, it is streamlined, focused, simple. With one voice, with one intent, the Sanhedrin is determined to eliminate Jesus. They are captive to their own unbelief. Their own unbelief. You can describe unbelief in different ways. But here's one way to say it: unbelief is blind ignorance. Blind ignorance. You see this in the Gospel of Luke. In the Nazareth synagogue in Luke 4, Jesus read from Isaiah and said that his ministry was all about, among other things, "recovering of sight for the blind." He meant that literally, of course-he restored the sight of people who were physically unable to see. But there's even more-there's recovery of spiritual sight for people who are spiritually blind. In teaching his disciples, for instance, about how they needed to grow in their faith and understanding, Jesus said, "Can a blind man lead a blind man?" Unbelief is blindness. And it is ignorance. Perhaps we see this most powerfully in Jesus's words from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." Unbelief is blind ignorance. The problem when you are both ignorant and blind is, well, you don't even realize what's going on with you. Luke has told us that Satan is behind all the evil that is coming against Jesus. But can you imagine that the Sanhedrin is aware of this? Are any of them thinking, "Well, Satan is really our master, and we are following him right now"? Anything's possible- but it's hard to imagine. They are blind and ignorant. This means that the Sanhedrin that night was wrong in two ways at the same time. First, they thought that if they destroyed Jesus, they would be serving God and getting rid of a dangerous blasphemer. They were wrong about that. Second, the council members had no clue that their blind, ignorant plan would, in fact serve the purposes of the God whom they thought they knew. Their unbelief made them wrong-twice. Because Jesus is God's Son. And God's plan in the world and for the world will produce the greatest reversal of all time, and it will happen in Jesus. The first will be last, and the last will be first. Yes, indeed. Jesus, the first, willingly becomes the last. And the evil planned against him will reach its goal. Even before the hearing, they treated him like a condemned man. With one voice during the hearing and after it, they reject Jesus and hand him over to Pilate to die by Roman execution, on a cross. The first chooses in love to become the last. And the last will become first. The evil came against Jesus so that it would not have to come against you. Sin and Satan and even God's righteous judgment itself came against the innocent, pure Son of God. But then on the third day he stripped off the sin and guilt laid upon him, and his life destroyed death, and Satan was overcome and defeated. And God's judgment was overturned by God himself when the Son of Man was raised from the dead, to sit at the right hand of God's power. "They" meant it for evil. Yes, they did, in their blind ignorance. But God meant it for good. Yes, he did, in his stunning reversal and grace. Yes, he did. He surely did. Now-for ourselves and our life in Christ, what may we learn from this reading tonight? How might we respond and react to the streamlined, focused account of evil that speaks with one voice against the innocent Son of God? I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon that there is way of reacting to this reading tonight from which we should turn away; there's one response we should reject. That response would be this: to ponder this streamlined account about focused evil and to say, "How could they do that? I would never do such a thing! I would never be so blind, or so ignorant!" That response, my friends, would be a kind of pride, a sort of arrogance. "They" did that, but "I" would never do such a thing. Let me try to show you why that arrogance would be so dangerous to you. It was a similar sort of arrogance that helped blind and deceive the Sanhedrin in the first place. Let me try to show you how it might have worked. Here's a question. Why did they hate Jesus so? I'm sure there was more than one reason. But if you read the Gospel of Luke, people get upset-and the religious leaders of Israel get really upset-because Jesus won't let them compare themselves with others and come out on top; over and over, he rejected that kind of arrogance. You know the game: "Well, sure I'm a sinner, but at least I'm not as bad as he is." Or, "I've made mistakes in life, but how could they do that?" But you can't play that game if you're going to reckon with Jesus. Let me show you some passages in Luke-and they're only in Luke. In Luke 4 the people in the Nazareth synagogue try to kill Jesus because they thought that they had some special "in" because he was from their hometown. In so many words, Jesus tells them they are no different than Gentiles, because God wants to show mercy to everyone the same. It's a level playing field with God, with Jesus. No comparisons allowed. In Luke 7, Jesus is in the house of Simon the Pharisee, and he lets a broken, sinful woman (literally!) pour out her gratitude on his feet, and wipe his feet with her hair! And the Pharisee thinks Jesus is ignorant, that he's not even a prophet because he doesn't know "what sort of woman this is." But Simon is the blindly ignorant one, because he's thinking, "Well, I'm not like her." That Pharisee was not ready to admit, like that woman did, that he too was supposed to honor Jesus, he was indebted to Jesus, and he needed to be forgiven by Jesus. And when Jesus forgave her sins, Simon, and the others like him, couldn't handle it. In Luke 15, Jesus tells three parables in a row. He says that a great celebration happens before God when "one of those people" repents. Jesus is among them like a father who runs out to welcome an unclean, shameful son who doesn't deserve to be treated like a son at all. To the father in the parable, that is, to Jesus-the older brother and the younger brother are the same. And then there's the parable in Luke 18 where a Pharisee and a tax collector are praying in the temple and the Pharisee says, "I thank you God that I am not like other men, or even like that tax collector." Jesus said that Pharisee went to his home still guilty and condemned. Over and over again, Jesus seeks to destroy the arrogance that compares. He destroys the pecking order; he cancels the comparison game; in his presence, there are no distinctions. This is nothing more or less than utter grace. But they hated him for that. And by nature-so would I. And so would you. So, when we read of the evil, blind ignorance of the men who handed Jesus over to Pilate, don't give in to arrogance. Don't think, "I would never do that." Instead, I invite you and beseech you to think this: "There but for the grace of God go I." And let there be in your heart a godly fear over what you and I are capable of, should the blindness and the arrogance ever overcome us. This is not a fear that somehow we're not Christians or that we've not been claimed by Jesus. But it's a godly fear that remembers that we don't get the credit for our faith. As we sometimes say, to God alone be the glory. So, tonight-I invite you to a godly fear. And then there's this as well. I invite you to embrace a compassion for people trapped in blind ignorance, back then and also today. Compassion. I say that because you see this very compassion from Jesus, on the following afternoon. Yes, Jesus's enemies meant it for evil; yes they did, and it was sin and it's not to be winked at or condoned. But when you read about them or you see this in people today, ask God to put compassion in your heart for those people. The world around us is in chaos-but it always has been, at least since Genesis 3. And sin and wrong are still sin and wrong-of course they are. But when the greatest evil in the history of the world was happening-when nails were being driven into his hands and feet-Jesus prayed, "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing." Compassion-when we read these verses from long ago, and when we see spiritual blindness and ignorance in our world also today. Ask God to help you show compassion for those who do not know, and who cannot see. So, we hear this word of God from Luke, and we pray God will grant us humility and a godly fear, not arrogant comparing. And the gift of compassion. And finally, there is this: a grateful wonder. This reading can help us again to a sense of wonder that our God-almighty, allknowing, all-majestic, all-everything-would work in the world in the ways that he does. You can't stop his desire to save; you can't keep his plan from happening. Even human blindness and ignorance bow before him. They meant everything that they did to Jesus for evil. And it was evil. But God meant it for good, and his Son died as the innocent one in our place, and he rose in victory and authority to forgive and to save. What a wonder our God is! So, yes-a grateful wonder. Because through no merit or intelligence or superiority or anything in us, God has opened our eyes and enlightened our minds to know and believe in this Jesus. To God be all the glory-all the glory-for our faith this Lenten season, and always. May God also use you and me to offer the message of Jesus to whomever we meet. For all are precious to him. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.