Today marks the beginning of Holy Week, the holiest seven days in the entire church year. This is the week dedicated to the suffering, death, and burial of our Lord Jesus Christ. Today, we will remember Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem as He rides in, in a humble manner, on the back of a donkey, as their noble king. He is the Lord of heaven and Earth who has humbled Himself by taking on flesh and blood and will soon empty Himself on the tree of the cross.
Our next observance is Holy, or Maundy, Thursday, named after the mandate our Lord gives his disciples at the Passover table: to love one another as He has loved them. And Christ, our Lord, shows us His love in the Lord’s Supper, where He gives His body and blood for us to eat and drink as a pledge and token of His promise and redemption. Also, this night ends in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He begins His passion in prayer, sweating drops of blood. Then we have the Friday we called “Good.” When Christ, our Passover lamb, is sacrificed, His death is accepted by God the Father, which satisfies His wrath on sin and grants us pardon and remission.
Today, the church has chosen the gospel reading, the passion of our Lord according to Saint Matthew. Not only to prepare us for the things that are to come this week, but also to set our minds on Christ’s bitter suffering and death. To truly grasp the passion of our Lord is, first, to know Him, second, desire Hm and third, to obey Him.
First, knowing our crucified Lord means we must listen to Him and be silent. The majority of the gospels are Christ, revealing Himself to us in His words and actions. For hοw can we know our Lord if He does not speak first? To know our Lord truly is to have faith in Christ and His word. The scriptures say that ‘faith comes by hearing and hearing the words of Christ.’ So how can faith be at work in us if we are not silent?
Before we possess faith by hearing and the power of the Holy Spirit, it was our Lord Jesus Christ, the object of our faith, who was first silent on our behalf before Pontius Pilate. Although He has borne the sins of the world since His baptism in the Jordan, Christ has committed none of His own. And because He bore our sins, when accusations came upon him, the Lord provided no rebuttal. As He certainly could have, and still He fulfills the salvation of man, Christ allows the accusations to stand against Him. Christ, does this, knowing that it will lead to His crucifixion and death. For the Prophet writes, “Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent.”
Our Lord Jesus is silent for us. He endures the pain of the cross for us. For this has been a plan from the foundation of the world that God would send forth His Son to save us from the misery and righteous condemnation of our sins. So we must imitate Christ out of faith and devotion for Him. We are only saved by faith in the Lord, apart from the works of the law. Therefore, to maintain our faith, we must always be listening. For the word of God has ultimate authority. The power to judge the living and the dead, and His words are life. If we desire salvation, we cannot lose our attention from the Word of God. For the Scriptures are the words of Christ with the power to save.
Second, true Christian faith means that we desire our Lord. That we know what He has accomplished for us on the cross, and desire our salvation purchased by Christ. And now the salvation is given to us in His Holy Sacraments, these are where the crucified Lord comes to us. Where the Lord made His dwelling with us. For the words of Christ, tell us how to receive Him. The waters of holy baptism, where he says, “He who believes in me and is baptized will be saved.” And in His Holy Supper, where our Lord says, “Take eat; this is My body” and “drink from that, all of you. For this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” The Sacraments instituted by Jesus are no small addition to His word; they are where Christ united His word to Earthly elements for forgiveness and salvation.
This desire of Christ is the opposite desire for Jesus that we see in the passion of our Lord. While we desire him for salvation. The people wondered Him dead for another purpose. As the Jewish leaders rile up, the people make them believe that they would rather have Barabbas, a murderer, than have the Lord Jesus. And when Pilate asked the mob, “What evil has He done?” They can only call out all the more, “Let Him be crucified!” These cries against the Lord of Heaven and Earth do not come from faith, yet He comes to die for the sins of a whole world so that those of faith will be saved.
Those of the Christian faith desire the blood of the Lord for their eternal benefit and reward. It is in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper that we rightly pray, “His blood be upon us and on our children.” For without such blood, there would be no forgiveness of sins.
And finally, faith that is formed by the Word of God and nourished by the Holy Sacraments will yearn to obey Christ as Lord. Faith will follow wherever He goes, as the Lord says the night before His death, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” And that way is the Cross. As He says, “Take up your cross and follow Me.” We will suffer in this life because we are members of the body of Christ, which suffered for us.
So when life becomes filled with burdens and crosses. When sicknesses become terminal. When we carry the pain of overwhelming loss. When you are despised by the scoffers for clinging to hope for God, who allows us to feel pain and sorrow. Let us not forget the companion of our Lord on the way to Golgatha, Simon of Cyrene. This is the man who followed after Jesus, also bearing the same cross in aid to our Lord. He literally follows after Christ. Simon suffered as Jesus did, yet it is our Lord who dies on the cross of Calvary. The things we suffer in this life cannot be compared to the things that Christ suffers for us. Yet, it is Christ who gives Simon and all who believe in the Lord the victory over sin, death, and the power of the devil.
Knowing what Christ has endured for our salvation, let us enter this Holy Week with purified hearts and minds to meditate on our Lord’s love and cross and receive them always with true faith,
May Almighty God, by the intercession of Christ our High Priest and the power of the Holy Spirit accomplishes in us. Amen.
St. John's and Grace Evangelical Lutheran Parish 