[Machine transcription]
Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor’s headquarters.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear saints, first, it’s going to be all right.
I know that these are strange days, troublesome days,
that we’re hearing news every day, in fact every hour,
about the approaching dread of the coronavirus.
We get news of the pestilence,
news of people contracting the disease,
news of people dying.
And it is a frightful time,
a time unlike anything that any of us have ever seen before.
So we need to hear the words of Jesus.
Don’t be afraid.
He tells us that even though we walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, that he is with us, that his rod and his staff, they comfort us.
That if we have Jesus, we have passed, as the Lord himself has promised, we have passed
from death to life, so that all things are ours. This too, this trouble, will pass. And
And all things, according to the Lord’s will, will at last be made new.
There is a day coming when Jesus himself will stand on the earth, and the dead will
be raised, and there will be no more sin, and no more sickness, and no more death.
And we abide in that hope.
And while we hope for those things, we also live in faith toward God and in fervent love
toward one another rejoicing that all things are ours in Christ. With that in
mind we want to meditate on the Passion text that’s put before us. We want to
kind of have an overview of it and then I want to I want to focus in on one
particular picture. The Jewish trials of Jesus first at the house of Annas and
then Caiaphas were all through the night and so now we’ve arrived at the morning
early morning perhaps the Sun is just coming up and the Pharisees the Sanhedrin
have convicted Jesus and they bring him to Pilate and they send him inside the
governor’s palace. They themselves do not go into that pagan place lest they would
be defiled and not able to eat the Passover. It’s plain from the very
beginning here that Pilate doesn’t want to have anything to do with Jesus.
He comes out to talk to them and says what’s the deal and they tell
him and he says you take him and judge him you’ve got a court and they say we
can’t because we want him dead and you Romans have taken away from us the
right of capital punishment. The Romans had let the Jews keep their court but
they couldn’t execute anybody. And so Jesus is interviewed by Pilate. He talks
to him about his kingdom. He talks to him about truth and he’s trying the whole
time to get out of this mess. Finally he hears that Jesus is from Galilee and so
So, he sends him over to Herod.
Herod, remember, was the son of Herod the Great.
He was the ruler up in Galilee and on the other side.
Herod was a notoriously wicked kind of man.
He was down in town visiting for the Passover.
So Jesus goes and appears before Herod, who’s happy, the text says, to see him, because
he was hoping that Jesus would perform some sort of sign, like a circus trick.
But Jesus doesn’t say a single word to this man.
So, Herod’s soldiers dress Jesus up in extravagant clothes
and send him back to Pilate.
I don’t wonder if this was the best dressed Jesus had ever been.
The fanciest clothes he’d ever worn.
Well, he’s back to Pilate and Pilate is now going to go through a series of attempts
to get Jesus released.
The first attempt is this.
He goes out and there was a custom on the Passover
that the governor would pardon someone,
would let them off, and so he goes out
and he’s gonna try to win over the crowd
and have them cry to release Jesus.
So he goes out and says, you have a custom
that on the Passover, I release someone to you.
Do you want me to release to you this man, Jesus,
or do you want me to release to you Barabbas?
Now, it’s interesting for us to note
that at this point, Pilate, who was an expert
at reading the crowds, thinks that the crowds will want Barabbas to be crucified
and Jesus to be released. But the Pharisees stir up the crowds and they cry out,
release for us Barabbas. What should I do with Jesus? Crucify him, they cry out. Crucify him.
So Pilate will attempt one last thing. He takes Jesus into the palace and he has him stripped and
flogged with the Roman whip, the cat of nine tails.
He twists a crown of thorns and presses it
into his sacred brow, puts a purple robe on him,
some mockery, and brings him out before the people
and says, behold, the man.
We have to understand this as Pilate’s last attempt
to have Jesus released.
You would never whip somebody before crucifying them.
Crucifixion was intended to be this long-lasting
kind of suffering so that someone would hang on the cross
for days, maybe even for a week or more
with the sign above them of their crime.
If someone was flogged, they were in too weak of a state
to endure that long on the cross.
So it was one or the other.
It was either flogging or crucifixion.
And so Pilate has Jesus flogged in the hopes
that the people would see him in such a pitiful state
and cry for his release.
But the crowd at this time can’t be changed.
Behold the man, and they cry out for his death.
Crucify him, crucify him.
Jesus is so weak he can’t bear the weight of the cross.
They find a certain man in the crowd, Simon, a Cyrenian,
and they put the cross on his back
so he can carry it from the palace of Pilate
down the Via Dolorosa, outside the city, to the place of the skull, to Calvary, where
Jesus will be crucified.
The Gospel of Mark notes, and this is interesting, the Gospel of Mark tells us not only about
Simon and where he’s from, but also tells us his children’s name.
This is an interesting fact.
It probably means that this man and his whole family became Christians and were well known
to the church in Jerusalem.
So this Simon, the first man to carry the cross of Jesus,
will meet in the resurrection.
And they come at last to Golgotha,
where Jesus is crucified between two criminals,
one on his right hand and the other on his left.
So far, the Passion reading for tonight.
Now, dear saints, I want you to consider this,
that Jesus, who sits at the right hand of God,
who sits on the throne of the heavenly court,
Jesus, who is the judge of all people,
who will come to judge the quick and the dead,
that Jesus is here brought into court,
that Jesus, who is the judge,
stands to be accused.
Even though he had done nothing wrong,
even though he had broken no law of God
or of man, even though there was no right way to rightly accuse Jesus,
although he was completely innocent, completely holy, without any sin at all,
he stands there silent, like a sheep before its shearers, he opened not his mouth.
If anybody could have stood and defended himself in court, it would be Jesus, your Jesus.
Now, consider how St. Paul talks about our own sort of incessant desire to justify ourselves.
We are self-justifying machines.
We are constantly arguing the case for our own innocence, even though we are sinners.
That’s why God had to send his law.
It says in Romans 3 that the law came forth so that every mouth would be stopped, that
we would stop this incessant attempt
to make a case for our own righteousness.
The law stops our mouth,
but the law could not have stopped Jesus.
He could have simply opened his mouth
and defended himself to Pilate,
to the Sanhedrin, to Herod, to all of the world,
and yet he does not because Jesus is there in court
bearing your sin and mine.
sin, Jesus takes every accusation put against him, every accusation that could be mustered,
and he, the innocent one in that courtroom, takes on your guilt and mine, and is condemned
for it. Paul says it like this in 2 Corinthians 5. He says, he who knew no sin, Jesus, became
sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” So that Jesus is pleased
to be condemned as guilty in the courtroom of Pilate so that you can be declared innocent
in the courtroom of God. And so it is. The innocent is crucified while the guilty is
released. The innocent one dies so that we sinners can live forever. The Holy One
is accused in the earthly court so that you and I will stand justified in the
heavenly court and that will last forever. So when your conscience troubles
you, when the devil comes and reminds you of your own sin, remember that Jesus opened
not his mouth, that he was condemned, punished, afflicted in your place so that you could
live with him forever. God be praised. Amen. And the peace of God which passes all understanding
guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
