Matthew 26:57-68 (Midweek 6)

Mid-week 6                                                           St. John, Galveston 4/9/25
 
“Ironies of the Passion”
“He is Deserving of Death”
Matthew 26:57-68 
 
+ In Nomine Jesu +
 
Grace and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

    Institutions designed to foster and to protect often fail miserably in their appointed task. Governments, whose chief responsibility is to protect and defend its citizens often fail as they consider the lives of some to be unworthy of such protection. The unborn are sometimes considered too young to qualify for the right to “life and liberty.” The elderly, on the other hand, are sometimes considered too old to be of value. In many ways, both find themselves to be outside of the protection that governments are ordained to provide. They represent the fringes of society, those whose rights as human beings have not yet been acquired, verses, those whose rights as human beings have slipped away.
 
    Religious institutions also fail to foster and protect that which has been entrusted to them. In many ways, the Christian church has failed in its call to faithfully steward of the Word of God. God’s Word, once held as sacred and true, has been compromised by those who doubt its authority. “Thus sayeth the Lord,” has become, for many, a phrase of a bygone era. Truth, we are told, is a relative commodity. It is, as the saying goes, “in the eyes of the beholder.” Like the Jews of the Old Testament, the Church has been entrusted with the Word, the oracles of God, as they called in the Scriptures. With that trust, a sacred obligation has been incurred. Embracing, and confessing that obligation, the princes of Luther’s day once said, “I would rather have my head severed from my body than give up the Gospel of truth.” The Gospel, the Word of God, is a gift of greater value than life itself and it has been entrusted to you and to me.
 
    All that being true, in some sense, we would have to commend the Sanhedrin, the tribunal before whom Jesus stood, because they defended what they believed to be true against what they saw as blasphemous assaults. The high priest said to Jesus, “I put You under oath by the living God; Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God! Jesus said to him, It is as you said…Then the high priest tore his clothes saying, ‘He has spoken blasphemy!  What further need do we have of witnesses? Look, now you have heard His blasphemy! What do you think? They answered and said, “HE IS DESERVING OF DEATH.””  
 
    The Sanhedrin was, on one the hand, completely wrong in their assessment of the situation, because their theology was all wrong. Their concept of the coming Messiah was driven by the opinions of men, and not by the Word of God. As to the prophecies of the Old Testament, Jesus was NOT deserving of death. He had rightly spoken the truth at His trial. Tell us, they said, if you are the Christ, the Son of God! It is as you said (Jesus responded).  So, on the one hand, the ruling counsel was all wrong in their claim that Jesus deserved death. Their task was to defend and uphold the prophetic Word, and yet, when the Word was made flesh and stood before them, they rejected Him as a man deserving of death.  
 
    This brings us to perhaps the chief of all Ironies in Jesus’ passion. The ruling council’s claim that JESUS WAS DESERVING OF DEATH, was correct.  This is our confession, is it not? “God made Him who knew no sin, to be sin that we might be the righteousness of God in Him.” Let’s be clear! Jesus wasn’t made to carry just the guilt of our sin. He wasn’t made to represent our sin. HE WAS MADE SIN. When we understand that Jesus was made sin, and that the world’s sin, our sin, deserves death, that it merits death, then we come to the only conclusion that we can – Jesus, the One who had been made sin, deserved to die. Indeed, “the deepest stroke that pierced Him, was the stroke that JUSTICE gave.”
 
    Now, I know full well, that to say such a thing about Jesus tugs at our sensibilities. We think to ourselves, surely Jesus’ wasn’t deserving of any of the atrocities that He suffered. And its true, Jesus was the righteous man who deserved a righteous man’s reward. And yet, if we are to foster and to protect that which has been entrusted to us, if we are to be a light set on a hill, a beacon of hope, we must boldly confess that Jesus, because of what He had become, deserved the wrath that He incurred. Jesus, you see, didn’t take away the sins of the world in some magical fashion, or simply by lessoning their gravity, or their seriousness. Rather, He became those sins that He might suffer for them, that He might atone for them by bearing them in His holy body. 
 
    As you struggle with your own sin and with the thought of what you deserve from God because of that sin, hear again the words of Jesus’ accusers. Ironically, they were exactly right in what they said, “this man is deserving of death.”  He was deserving of death because He became your sin.  
 
Indeed,

“What is the source of all your mortal anguish?
It is my sins for which you, Lord, must languish;
Yes, all the wrath, the woe that you inherit, 
This I do merit.”
 
“How strange is this great paradox to ponder;
The shepherd dies for sheep who love to wander;
The master pays the debt his servants owe him,
Who would not know him.”
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
 
The peace of God that passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting.  Amen.
 
+ Soli Deo Gloria +