Wherever and whenever Jesus and His cross appear, hostility will eventually follow. Opposition and, sometimes, even persecution will follow–not outward glory. For Christ hides His glory under the cross of rejection.
What should surprise us, however, is the source of that opposition and persecution! Who is the most hostile and has the most hatred toward Jesus? It’s exactly those who should’ve welcomed Him, who should’ve believed in Him, who should’ve loved, trusted, and worshiped Him.
That’s what we see in our Gospel reading for today. Jesus was arrested and taken before the High Priest. The High Priest was supposed to be the man who was closest to God. For God only allowed the High Priest to enter His Most Holy Place, the Holies of Holies, within the Temple. That was where God made His presence known to His people in the Old Testament.
On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest brought the blood of sacrifice into the Most Holy Place. He sprinkled the sacrificed blood on the mercy seat, which was on top of the Ark of the Covenant. That sprinkling of blood was a picture of the Savior’s work, who would shed His blood to forgive everyone’s sin. The High Priest knew that those ceremonies and sacrifices pictured the coming Savior, the promised Messiah, whose one supreme sacrifice would redeem the world.
If anyone should have recognized that Jesus fulfilled those ceremonies and sacrifices, it should’ve been the High Priest. He should have stood in front of the people and shouted the words of John the Baptizer: “See, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” But we hear and see exactly the opposite.
Even worse, the High Priest gets false witnesses to accuse Jesus of heresy and blasphemy. However, when these false witnesses fail in their attempt, the High Priest commands Jesus to take an oath and identify Himself. When Jesus declares that He is, indeed, the Son of God, the High Priest cares nothing for the supporting proof. Instead, he tears his robes in anger and calls for the death sentence.
Indeed, Christ’s glory is hidden in the rejection by His own!
Well, what about the others in the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high court? The leading priests, Pharisees, and scribes made up that court. They were all supposed to be experts in the Law and the promises contained in the Old Testament. They had memorized large portions of the Old Testament, word for word. What about them?
If the High Priest was corrupt, we should, at least, we expect some protest from the Sanhedrin. But there’s not one protest from the scribes and Pharisees. No one stands up to defend Jesus.
They didn’t refuse to defend Jesus because they were clueless about what Jesus had said and done. They had sent observers to watch Jesus throughout the three years of His earthly ministry. They knew about Jesus raising the young man of Nain from the dead. They knew about Jesus healing the lepers, giving sight to the blind, and sound to the deaf. They knew about Jesus feeding thousands with a few loaves and a couple of small fish. They had heard about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. That happened about a week earlier, not too far from Jerusalem.
They had all the evidence that Jesus was the Son of God, the promised Messiah. But they hardened their hearts against the prophecies of the Messiah that they knew by heart. They hardened their hearts and filled them instead with hatred that would only be satisfied by Jesus’ death.
Jesus and His cross stir up hatred and hostility from surprising places. It was that way during the first Lenten season. It has been that was down through the ages. It is still true today, even in Christ’s Bride, the Church. Jesus’ glory as God and Savior is hidden under the rejection by those who should know better, by those who should be the first to listen to His Word and follow it.
The Jews continued their hatred of Jesus and His Word long after He was dead. The book of Acts makes that clear. In the 2nd Century, the Jews rejected their own Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, because it was considered too messianic for them.
Rejection of Jesus has even happened in Christ’s Church. The Church wrote the Nicene Creed to defend the truth that Jesus is true God against those who denied it and had taken control of the Church during the 4th century. During the Reformation, those who faithfully preached the Gospel were persecuted from within the Church.
Today, in our country, the Gospel can be freely preached. But many who call themselves Christians don’t want to hear of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Many who call themselves Christians don’t love the cross of Christ–and that Jesus alone, born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is the only Savior of the world!
For some, Jesus is no more than a learned teacher who shows us how to live a virtuous life. So that’s what they want to hear from sermons. For some, Jesus made salvation possible but nothing more. We have to complete the work that Jesus began. So such people only want to hear something other that what Jesus did and does to save them.
Today, many churches that call themselves Christian say that Jews and Muslims and anyone in any religion all worship the same God–although those religions deny that Jesus is God and Savior. Many will argue that is doesn’t matter what you believe, after all we all believe in Jesus (whatever that may mean!). So they go to whatever church they like and not one that preaches and teaches the truth.
But Jesus also has a strong warning for us, here today. As Jesus said in Gethsemane, “Watch and pray, so you will not fall into temptation.” We have no guarantee that we will always belong to the right church. We have no guarantee that our church will always teach God’s Word in all of its truth and purity.
The High Priest was in the right church. The heretics who attacked Jesus when the Nicene Creed was written were in the right church. Before the Reformation, there was only one recognized church in the West. But the Roman Catholic Church had gone astray. In some areas, the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod has also gone astray. So watch and pray. Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus and His Word, and see to it that your church does, as well!
Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Jesus said, “If you continue in my Word, you are truly my disciples” (John 8:31). Jesus said, “Watch out for false prophets” (Matthew 7:15). The Apostle Paul warned repeatedly that we should have nothing to do with false teachers and their teachings.
How tempting for us who are supposed to know better, who are supposed to know the truths of God’s Word. We’ve become fat and complacent. We don’t know the Scripture like our grandparents did. And that doesn’t bother us. We’ve never bothered to learn what the Lutheran Church genuinely teaches and why it teaches what the Bible teaches. And that doesn’t bother us.
We need to watch and pray, so we are not sucked into thinking that doctrine, God’s truths, don’t matter. We need to watch out that such an attitude does not seduce us. We need to fight the anger that may well up within us when our pastor insists on teaching all the truths of Scripture, especially when we don’t want to hear them.
The sad truth is that sometimes the biggest problem is that we want to soft-pedal and compromise the truth of God’s Word. In our weakness, we’ve have turned away from the hidden glory of the cross in favor of the glory we want to see, a glory that excites us, a glory we can measure.
We want the glory of being popular or the glory of the easy path that runs away from the cross to whatever is convenient or suits our way of thinking. We imagine that what we believe, teach, and confess is up to us, that it is a buffet menu from which we can pick and choose whatever suits our fancy. Repent of this lie. It is from Satan.
Watch Jesus before the High Priest and the Sanhedrin, and pray that you seek and keep the whole counsel of God. Watch Jesus before the High Priest and the Sanhedrin, and pray that such love for Him may fill you, so you willingly take up the cross and follow Him.
You can be sure that just as Jesus and His faithful Church have been ridiculed and persecuted when they followed the truth and carried the cross, you too will taste that hostility that comes from faithfulness to God’s Word. Don’t let this scare you. Don’t let this surprise you. For that is what Jesus promised.
But He has also promised that He will not abandon you when you hold on to Him and to His Word. There is glory in that rejection, for it is a rejection that we share with Him and that He shares with us. He has promised that even in persecution you will learn more and more of His love and grace. As you bear the cross after Him, your knowledge of His love and grace will only increase and grow deeper.
These are hard lessons to learn. We don’t want to hear these lessons. We don’t want to learn these lessons. They are painful, they test us, and they stretch our faith.
But in love, Jesus goes the way of the cross to teach us those lessons. In love, He goes the way of the cross to bring us salvation by His sacrifice. Follow Christ to the cross. Gladly bear the cross in love and faithfulness to Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. Amen.
