When
we turn the page to Matthew 26, we have reached the climax of the story. Jesus
the teacher is done teaching. (If you were to look at the ending of Jesus’
large teaching blocks, you’d find the refrain, “When Jesus finished saying
these things,” or some variant—see Matthew 7:28; 11:1, 13:53, 19:1. Now, in 26:1,
that concludes, “When Jesus had finished saying all these things.”) Jesus
hasn’t performed a miracle since chapter 21, and that ‘miracle’ was to curse a
fig tree. And in 26:2, Jesus not only predicts his death but also puts a time
frame on it—at Passover, in two days. At dinner, a woman pours oil on Him and
He explains it as being anointed for burial, and Judas makes arrangements to
betray Jesus. Everything is set. We have seen Jesus gathering the stories of
Adam and Abraham and Moses and David together in His life and ministry. Now
only one story remains—the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. As Jesus says in 26:24,
“The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him…”
I
know it was a strange Holy Week, but we did just go through a lot of this only
two weeks ago. The point is familiar but important: if you want to get down to
the brass tacks of Jesus’ life and ministry you don’t look to Him as a miracle
worker; you don’t look to Him as a great teacher; you don’t reduce Him to one
of Israel’s prophets. He is, indeed, all of those things. But His most basic
vocation was to be the crucified and risen One.
Among
American Christians, I think this is one of the things that really makes
Lutherans stand out. We understand that there is a place for expecting healing and
miracles; we know there is a part of the faith that is about teaching and
ethics, But when we are up against it and we have to say something about Jesus,
we preach Christ and Him crucified. I mentioned this in a sermon a while back,
but years ago I was taking a class populated mostly by
Baptist/non-denominational sorts of pastors. One of them asked how often we preached
evangelistic sermons. I asked what he meant and he said something like, “You
know, the kind of sermon where you preach the crucifixion and atonement and
salvation.” And I was shocked. My answer was, “Every week.” That’s the Lutheran
difference.
And
that Lutheran difference pays careful attention to the story of the Gospel. These
last three chapters, covering a period of only about 3 days, are clearly the
thing that the Gospel has been building toward. This is the climax, the heart
of the story. This is what Jesus came for: to, as He put it in chapter 20, give
His life as a ransom for many. There’s nothing more important.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.