In the Name of the Father, and of the +
Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It is profitable for one man to die on behalf of the people.[1]
The term “Passion” as we use it to describe the “Passion of
our Lord Jesus Christ” refers to something that is experienced, something that
happens to someone from the outside, and it usually carries a sense of
something evil that is happening. For this reason, “passion” is sometimes
equated to “suffering.” In fact, older uses of the term “to suffer” meant “to
experience something happening to you,” without the expectation that the
experience is evil.
Caiaphas, the illegitimate high priest, declares that it is profitable
for one man to die on behalf of the people. In this statement, he is correct.
Despite his unbelief, his blasphemy, his hatred of God, Caiaphas speaks the
truth. It is profitable for mankind for one man, Jesus Christ, to die on behalf
of the people.
It is profitable because only this man, only Jesus Christ,
could bear the sins of the world and make atonement for them. Only the blood of
this man, Jesus Christ, could appease the Father, who has rightfully judged
mankind to be wicked and evil in all his thoughts and ways.[2]
Only this man, Jesus Christ, could submit Himself to the bitter scorn, abuse,
torture, and death delivered by Judas, Pilate, Caiaphas, and the Jews when at
any moment, He could have called five legions of angels to deliver Himself.
The suffering and death of Jesus is profitable because He is
God in human flesh. His suffering and death are profitable to you because His
holy blood is more precious to the Father than all the blood of beasts. His
suffering and death fulfills the debt of every sin from the first taste of the
fruit in the garden to the sin born in the flesh of the last child conceived in
the womb. And only the body and blood of Jesus is never ending. The blood of a
human eventually runs dry. The body of a human eventually returns to dust. The
Blood of Jesus is life giving Blood. It never runs dry. It is the source of
life for all creation. The Body of Jesus never returns to dust. In Him is life.
His living Body encompasses all who believe in Him and this number continues to
grow with each passing generation.
Yet if the suffering and death of Jesus has fulfilled your
debt to God why is it that you still suffer? The idea that Jesus has taken away
the sting of death is commonly heard from Christian pulpits. The thought that
death is now a portal for Christians because the death of Jesus has ended
eternal death for all who believe is a comforting thought but it is something
far off. It is the end of this mortal life and something that we do not
necessarily face every day. But every day that we wake up in this life we have
some sort of suffering. Much worse is the great suffering which marks life on
this side of glory.
The daily suffering we all endure is simply the result of
the fall. Aches and pains, annoyances, fits of anger, lust, or greed. All of
creation experiences these. They are not unique to Christians. But what of the
great sufferings. What of the serious threat of poverty? What of the serious
threat of bodily harm? Or significant illness? Or threats of prison,
persecution, or execution? What of terrible wrestling with conscience in a
world that requires you to participate in your own demise? What of the struggle
to raise children in a world that will call you a bigot, racist, or Nazi for
choosing to protect your children from degeneracy?
This great suffering is caused by the devil and his ungodly
minions because you Christians hold to the Word of God. You hear it, read it,
learn it, and practice it. For this, our Ancient Foe would have you scorned,
abused, tortured, and killed. Satan is pleased enough if you are killed for
your faith but he is far more elated when he can destroy your faith for the
sake of his pleasure. You are hated because of the Word of God. Sometimes this
hatred is explicit, as in the murder of children and teachers at a Christian
school in Tennessee.
Far more common is an implicit hatred for you who love the
Word of God. From birth, you are trained to view Christianity as evil and the
teachings of Scripture as false. Satan and his ungodly followers love to abuse
the truth by giving you only part of it. For example, we have all been taught
in school and constantly throughout our lives that slavery is evil. We’ve even
been taught that slavery is sinful. And yet, how does St. Paul treat slavery
when he writes to Philemon, concerning the runaway slave, Onesimus? Not once
does he rebuke Philemon for sinning by having slaves. In fact, he encourages
Onesimus to return to his master as a dutiful slave. St. Paul does encourage
Philemon to free Onesimus and treat him as a brother in Christ and pay him a
wage as a laborer, but he does not rebuke him for the supposed sin of slavery.
Is it possible to commit grievous sins in the name of
slavery? Absolutely. It is possible to establish a sinful form of slavery in
which man is treated as sub-human, beaten and abused for the pleasure of the
master? Of course. It is also possible to establish a marriage in which a man
abuses his wife but that doesn’t make marriage sinful.
This digression into the supposed sin of slavery is not the
topic of today’s sermon nor the purpose for our gathering today. But it is
illustrative of just how skilled Satan is at teaching you to ignore the
Scriptures. Take a little truth and spread it thin over a great lie and
suddenly you can deceive the masses. Caiaphas said, “It is profitable for one
man to die for the people,” by which he either meant, “Killing this one man
will return power to me and my fellow Jews, by which the people will be easier
to control and have a manufactured peace,” or he was speaking blasphemously and
sarcastically. Either way, Caiaphas used a thin veneer of truth to hide his
wicked desires.
The suffering caused by the devil and the world is certainly
something which we experience, and which comes to us from the outside. However,
the suffering of Christians is also caused by God. It is caused by God on
account of our own sins.
“God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond
your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape,
that you may be able to endure it.”[3]
What is our strength? “Thee I will love, my Strength, my Tower; Thee will I
love, my Hope, my Joy; Thee will I love with all my power, With ardor time
shall ne’er destroy. Thee will I love, O Light Divine, So long as life is mine…for
Thou my Redeemer art.”[4]
God certainly is faithful and will not let you be tempted beyond your strength
because your strength is in Jesus Christ your Lord!
When you are tempted, when you are enduring the greatest
suffering you have yet known, the only source of strength you have left is to
look to Christ and the promise of salvation. Where do you find this strength?
Where do you find this promise? In the Word of God. In your Holy Baptism.
When you are enduring this terrible suffering on account of
the devil and the world or on account of your own sin, the only refuge you have
in this world is to remember that you are a baptized child of God. The blood
that Jesus Christ shed on Calvary has been sprinkled upon you and God has
promised never to leave you or forsake you.
What then? Should you stand up in your suffering and say,
“This isn’t so bad. Jesus died for me so I can do whatever I want and sure,
there will be consequences, but they don’t matter. I can do what I want!” Of
course not. You repent. You repent of your sins and cry out to your Father,
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned! Forgive me for the shed blood of Jesus!
Strengthen me to endure the suffering of this world and grant that Your Holy
Spirit would strengthen me to hold on to the promise of salvation!”
In this spirit, in the spirit of repentance and endurance,
you can then face your suffering and say, “Come what may, I am baptized into
Christ. Should all things fall down around me, I am baptized into Christ.” It
is in this spirit of repentance and endurance that we can suffer boldly. We can
suffer boldly because we know that such suffering is only for a time. Should
that suffering result in our earthly death, then we know we have eternity with
Christ to look forward to.
This sanctified suffering is not the suffering of your own
choosing. This is the error of the papists and fanatics alike. The papists believe
that by forcing themselves to suffer, by inducing a sense of suffering, they can
make themselves more holy. They fast and beat their bodies believing this
self-chosen suffering will please the Father. They have fallen prey to the
deceits of the devil. By inflicting their own pains, they are not suffering.
Suffering comes from outside and is experienced. They are doing it to themselves;
therefore, it is not suffering.
Christians fast and endure physical disciplines to train the
body. Christ expects that Christians would fast not to induce a sense of
suffering but to prepare the body for a time when eating the food given to
idols might be sinful or when food might be so scarce that feeding your
children is more important than satiating your belly.
The fanatics choose all sorts of manmade suffering but worst
is the suffering they induce in their own consciences. They believe that God
has so ordered their lives that they must work to retain their faith or that
they must make all decisions according to some secret plan of God. Their false
doctrines concerning the will of God induce unnecessary suffering that does
nothing but drive them away from the comfort of the promise of salvation.
The Christian, however, endures the suffering of this world
as he walks in the way of Jesus. Christ has promised to do something remarkable
with our suffering and thus we have trust that God is faithful.[5]
It is among the highest arts in the life of a Christian, which we must all
learn, to look to the Word and away from the trouble and suffering that lies
upon us and weighs us down. “Even though it hurts, so be it, you have to go
through some suffering anyhow; things cannot always go smoothly. It is just as
well, nay, a thousand times better, to have suffered for the sake of Christ,
who promised us comfort and help in suffering, than to suffer and despair and
perish without comfort and help for the sake of the devil.
“You should also accustom yourself to distinguish carefully
between the suffering of Christ and all other suffering and know that his is a
heavenly suffering and ours is worlds, that His suffering accomplishes
everything, while ours does nothing except that we become conformed to Christ,
and that therefore the suffering of Christ is the suffering of a lord, whereas
our is the suffering of a servant.”[6]
It is truly profitable that this one man, Jesus Christ, True Son of God and True Son of Man, should die on behalf of man, on behalf of Christians, on behalf of you. It is truly profitable that this day we should share in His suffering and death not by our own choosing or by evoking some emotion of suffering, but by receiving His suffering and death in His holy Word and Sacrament.
In + Jesus’
name. Amen.
[1]
St. John 18:14.
[2]
Genesis 6:5.
[3]
1 Corinthians 10:13.
[4]
Thee Will I Love, My Strength, My Tower, TLH 399, text: Johann
Scheffler, 1657, trans: Catherine Winkworth, 1865, alt.
[5]
St. John 16:33; 1 Corinthians 10:113.
[6]
Martin Luther, “Sermon at Coburg on Cross and Suffering,” (1530), AE
51:197-208, edited and translated by John W. Doberstein, general editor Helmut
T. Lehmann (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1959), 208.
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