Jesus suffers the injustice of the priests

Sermon for Holy Tuesday

What we heard about in this evening’s readings, especially how the Jewish leaders targeted Jesus in order to bring Him down, sounds, in many ways, so much like what we saw in today’s headlines. Political targeting of an opponent. Hauling your political opponent in front of a kangaroo court. Seeking out a crime to accuse someone of because you hate them and what they stand for and you want them out of the way. And justifying it all by claiming, falsely, that you’re just following the law.

Let me be very clear: I’m making zero comparisons between Donald Trump and the Lord Jesus. The comparison is between what corrupt national leaders are doing now with what corrupt Jewish leaders were doing then.

Jesus threatened the political power of the Jewish priests, their hold over the Jewish nation. They held their power, their dominion over the people of Israel, by claiming to be experts in their field. Why did they view Jesus as a threat? Well, He revealed them not to be the experts they claimed to be. He revealed that they had twisted the true religion of the Old Testament into something unrecognizable. They made sins out of things that God never called sins. They made their own traditions more important than God’s word. And they missed entirely the genuine humility and the heartfelt mercy God sought from mankind, obedience that begins in the heart and that flows from perfect devotion to God. Instead of cringing at God’s Law, which was supposed to reveal mankind’s sin, the priests bragged about God’s Law, as if they had been keeping it quite well. And because they sold themselves as experts, they were able to hold their power over the people and convince the people that they, the priests, had to be followed, because they, the priests, were so much better than everyone else.

But Jesus had exposed them for the charlatans they were. He gave the Word of God back to the people, exposing the bad interpretations of the priests. He gave the people a path to God, a path to righteousness that actually worked! The path of repentance and faith in God’s mercy in Jesus, the Christ. Instead of the people being beholden to the priests to make atonement for them day after day and year after year, they were invited to trust in Jesus, the very Lamb of God, to make atonement for them by His own blood. Instead of playing on the nationalism of the Jews, as the priests had done, Jesus made the entire Jewish culture and Old Testament priesthood irrelevant going forward, since it had all been pointing ahead to Him as its fulfillment. In doing that, Jesus was ripping away the priests’ iron grip on the people and on their power.

So Jesus had to be gotten rid of. More than that, Jesus had to be made to suffer. They had to make an example of Him, to make the people afraid of ever disagreeing with the priests, of ever questioning their authority.

Of course, Jesus could have refuted them, refuted their charges. He could have fought back against them, could have called upon 12 legions of angels to defend Him, could have called on His Father to strike them down with a plague or with leprosy or with blindness or any number of things that God did, at times, in the Old Testament when His people were being threatened.

Instead, He suffered it. He stood there and took the hatred aimed at Him. He took the abuse, both verbal and physical, the slaps, the spitting, the beatings. The unjust condemnation by His own people, by the leaders of the religion He had created, by the very men He had created. He took it in silence. The only charge He finally did answer was whether or not He was the Christ, the Son of God. To that He admitted. And for that they condemned Him.

Jesus suffered it, as the One sent to bear the sins of the world, and part of bearing the world’s sins was being on the receiving end of the world’s sins. Mankind has been behaving unjustly since the beginning of time, since the fall into sin, behaving unjustly toward other men, but even more, toward God. And so true justice would require sinners to suffer for their injustice. True justice, God’s justice, demands payment. But God, in His mercy, sent His Son, the Righteous One, to be on the receiving end of man’s injustice, the Just suffering for the unjust, to bring men to God. For all the false religion that has been spread in the world, for all the political targeting and personal targeting that all men have done, for all the abuse and violence that men have done, for all the hypocrisy men have shown, Jesus suffered it.

Watch Him suffer it. Watch Him endure it, in silence, for your salvation. Repent. Believe. And make it your daily goal to avoid all injustice and unfairness in your own behavior, and to suffer injustice yourself without bitterness, without complaint. Rejoice in that day when you are treated unfairly, and be glad, for so they treated the prophets who were before you. So they treated the Lord Jesus Himself. Leave it to Him to mete out justice in due time. And learn from Him to endure the world’s hatred with patience, knowing that your Lord endured it first, for you. Amen.