March 14, 2012 Two Sorrows
Luke 23:27-31 A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
John 19:25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
Dear friends in Christ,
When Jerusalem’s temple was being rebuilt for the first time people were crying. Some were crying tears of joy and some were crying tears of sadness. Some were happy to have a temple, while others realized it was but a shadow of the old temple. There were two types of sorrows that accompanied the death of Christ, tears that are still shed today. We will look at them both, and ask for the latter of the two.
Two Types of Sorrow at the Death of Christ
I. The tears of the sympathetically polite
Psalm 113:9 says, “He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children. Praise the LORD.” This is a happy reflection of the way that God decided to populate the earth through the union of a man and a woman. God’s Word says in Genesis 1:28, God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” God meant children to be a blessing, not a curse.
But Jesus predicted a time when the women of Jerusalem would mourn the fact that they had children and look at the barren women as blessed. These were supposedly Jewish women who looked at children as a great blessing. What would change their minds? Suffering and death would.
One of the most shocking things that happens is when children suffer. Think about what demons did to children in the Bible. One man described that his son “has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water.” Think about how awful that is; for an evil spirit to maliciously torment a boy in such a way! The worshippers of Molech in Canaan had child sacrifice where they would put an infant in the red hot metal hands of their god. The child would be burnt alive. This was a demonic religion if there ever was one. It happened regularly in Canaan as a part of their worship.
It isn’t easy to talk about, but there are instances in the Bible where even children of the inhabitants of Canaan were supposed to be put to death by the Israelites. When Sihon king of the city of Heshbon dug in his heels and refused to flee from Israel, Moses wrote that “the LORD our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, together with his sons and his whole army. At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them—men, women and children. We left no survivors.” (Deuteronomy 2:33-34) These deaths would have served as a warning for those who were going to stick around and fight against the Israelites. Yet nonetheless, the children were not spared from God’s judgment on the cities.
It is a difficult reality to face, but children also suffer in this world of sin. They are not exempt from God’s judgment of death on this world; young and cute as they may be. Neither did God always protect them from demon possession. That’s what the Scriptures say; like it or not.
What does this have to do with tonight’s text? The women of Jerusalem decided to mourn for Jesus. It was their way of perhaps protesting against the violence of the Roman death penalty. Perhaps it was their way of being sympathetic, somewhat like when people show up at a funeral of someone who dies in an untimely or cruel way. The Bible says that they “mourned and wailed.” The words can mean to beat one self and also to sing sad songs. It was quite a production they were putting on.
We tend to be polite with people who mean well. If they felt sorry for us and sent us a condolence card at the death of our friend, we would say it was a nice gesture, even if wasn’t a Christian and the card didn’t have a Christian message. But Jesus wasn’t polite with them. He didn’t want them to feel good about what they were doing; to think that they were doing the right thing. They were putting on a show and somewhat using Jesus as a prop to reflect their own compassion; for they didn’t even really know who Jesus was and they probably didn’t really even care. Jesus was not going to give them points for good intentions or make them feel good about how compassionate they thought they were.
It might come off as rude, but it’s not. It’s real and it’s honest; not letting someone get by with their “good intentions” of speech and actions. We let ourselves and others slide by on that way too often. Under the guise of compassion we let people condone evil and say nothing to them. We would rather leave conversation at the polite stage and not call people out on their hypocrisies. It seems rude and judgmental to tell someone that Scouting promotes a self-righteous and work-righteous attitude. We find it completely fine to mourn with unbelievers over the result of sin and death without ever broaching the topic of what the cause of it is. We keep away from the touchy subjects. We even comfort ourselves with words like, “I know he wouldn’t listen anyway. He wouldn’t understand. I don’t want to offend them.”
Even on the way to the cross Jesus cared for these women too much to let them deceive themselves in this way. Jesus knew where He was going after death, but they did not, so Jesus wanted none of this disingenuous sympathy. He probably would have rather had the women spit at Him rather than to feign love of Him. “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” What was Jesus doing but warning them of bad times to come for them AND for their children? Their tears and compassion would not exempt them from the judgment to come. When the Romans would come in about 40 years later they would level Jerusalem to the ground. They wouldn’t say, “Are you against the death penalty? Yes? Oh, ok. We’ll be nice to you and your children then.” Of course not. The temple would be destroyed and the women and children left in Jerusalem would die; all of them. At that point it would be awful for mothers to see their children starve to death and die.
Jesus compared Himself to a green tree and them to dry branches. Green branches are still full of life. When you put them in the fire they take a long time to burn because the water has to seep out of them. Even then they take hours longer than a tree that has been dead and dried out for a year. Jesus was the green branch that was slowly and methodically having the life beaten out of Him as He was then crucified to death. It took a lot of work for sinful and weak humans to beat the holy body of Christ down. But it would take no time at all for sinful and weak humans to be put to death and burned in the fire. Burning would come naturally; it would seem like what the dry tree was meant for. This is what Jesus was threatening would happen to the women and their children. Instead of mourning for Him, they should mourn for themselves and for those who had children.
Notice that Jesus did say they should mourn. Death is supposed to bring about tears. The death of children especially shows that something is wrong with our world; that a child would have to go through such suffering. Death has to happen in a world that is under God’s curse as a result of sin.
Yet the fact of the matter was that the tears of the women were not changing the results of what was happening to Jesus. He was still going to die whether they cried for Him or not. Their tears did not make His pain feel any better. Jesus wanted them to mourn for themselves; for they would feel a more personal loss of their own children. They who felt such joy at holding their children for the first time would feel ten times the sadness when they watched their children breathe their last. The worst thing was that they would have no hope if they didn’t really know who Jesus was and believe in Him. Jesus was letting them know that death would not just be this impersonal thing where they would cry for someone they didn’t know. They would cry for a child that they did know. They would feel and taste death first hand. Then they would cry for real. How they would have hoped that Jesus was the false prophet the Jewish leaders were claiming He was! But He wasn’t!
Even though Jesus predicted it and warned it and knew it would happen, we don’t want to think of Him as enjoying it. In Ezekiel 18:32 God says, “I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!” The kind of mourning for Lent that Jesus calls for is not a feigned type of crying, “Oh, it’s too bad what happened to Jesus. He sure did get cheated out of a long life.” In order to truly appreciate Lent we have to first of all face death and realize that it is a personal and a sorrowful thing that happens to all of us; even our children; because we all sin. Until we really face the reality of sin, any mourning over Jesus is just sympathetic; and that’s not what God is seeking. He wants a personal sorrow that treats death as a real threat, not just a political statement.
II. The tears of friends and family
There were other women mourning this night; women who personally knew Who they were mourning for. One had been given birth to Him and put Him to bed; fed Him and hugged Him and kissed Him. Another had seven demons chased from her by Him. John 19:25 says, “Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
God’s Word says that they “stood” there. But the silence of tears does not mean that there were no tears present. When Simeon held the Christ child as an infant he looked at Mary and said, “A sword shall pierce though thy own soul also.” (Luke 2:35) How could a mother not weep at the loss of her son? All of these women were mourning for a friend, a child, a Rabbi, a Savior; someone they hoped would be their Messiah. This was more than personal. This was spiritual. There must have been tears seeping from their eyes.
God’s Word refers to the woman as the “weaker vessel.” Physically that is true most of the time. Yet tonight, in the weakest vessels we find evidence of the love that is stronger than death. They went to look at something they never wanted to see; the most traumatic thing they could see; they saw the death of God.
Johann Gerhard wrote of Mary, Jesus’ mother, “She sees Him suspended, but can not touch Him; sees Him nailed, and may not loose Him; she sees Him dripping with blood, but can not remove it; sees Him wounded upon His entire body, but can not bind up His wounds; she hears His complaint: “I thirst,” and may not give Him to drink. As many torments in the body of Christ, so many wounds in the mother’s heart, as many piercing nails and burning stings in the flesh of the Son, so many shafts are forced through her virgin eyes into her very heart.”
It is an irony of sorts. Jesus warned the women on the way to Jerusalem not to mourn for Him, for they should save their tears for them selves and their own children when they faced death them selves. Jesus could not tell Mary not to weep; for it was her own Son and her own Savior that was hanging on the cross. Tonight was her night to weep with real tears and real sorrow over a real tragedy; the death of the most holy and loving Person to have ever lived; the death of God.
Imagine the hurt in Mary’s heart as Jesus then, in love, looked after her future as well. John 19:26-27 says, When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. This was it. Jesus called her “woman”, just as He had at the wedding at Cana. It was a designation that clearly reminded her of Jesus’ two different hats; one as son; and one more importantly as Messiah. Now it was time to be the Messiah.
When you are sick, the first person you usually turn to is your mother. She is the more compassionate of the two. She gets you medicine and feeds you and cares for you as only a mother could. Yet Jesus realized that from the cross His mother could do nothing for Him. She couldn’t act as His mother at this point. He had to be her Savior. He couldn’t let the emotions of the moment keep Him from doing what He had to do. He who had taken on the role of Messiah had to be Mary’s Messiah as well. He would no longer function as Mary’s protector and son on earth. The finality of it all must have been piercing to Mary’s soul. Her Son and her Savior was really dying. This was it. Cry as she may; deny it if she wants; but it was inevitable. Jesus was about to die. By calling His mother “woman” He was reminding her of WHO was up on that cross. This was not just HER son, this was also her GOD; the One who came from heaven above to die for her. It sounds cold and calculated, but even with the words of “woman” He proved Himself to be a very personal and caring Savior.
There are times where God has to address us as we are. Sometimes the names He calls us are very blunt. They remind us of who we are. We love the ones that call us God’s children, His sons and daughters; beloved in the Lord. Yet God’s Word also calls us sinners, rebels, dead, blind and hostile. God’s Word says this so that we will love Him and see Him as He wants us to see Him. As we look at Jesus hanging from the cross we dare not just look at Him as our physical brother and our friend. We need to see beyond this tight relationship and understand that He is our God and our Savior; and we are His sinners and His guilt. We must hear what the Father says of Jesus, “This is MY Son, whom I love, with Him I am well pleased.” We have to see why Jesus is hanging there, because of OUR sins, not His. We don’t just mourn the death of our friend. We mourn the death of our God. We cry tears of sorrow, yet we also cry tears of joy. When Jesus is hanging there He is proving Himself to be our Savior; the obedient Son of God who came to die for humanity; with the best kind of love we could ask for; a sacrificial kind of love that is willing to love us to death.
Those with a German heritage tend to pride themselves on how unemotional they are. We admire those who can have a stiff upper lip and not cry so easily. I like to think of myself that way, but oddly enough I find myself tearing up at some of the most simple and sentimental things. I fear I am getting soft in my old age.
Jesus was not against crying. He wept at the grave of Lazarus. But He does not welcome the tears of those who feel sorry for Him; who weep and act as if He is some hapless victim who is just getting the short end of the stick. The tears that Jesus calls for are the tears of His friends and His family; the tears of wicked and rebellious sinners who know who they are; the tears of those who believe that Jesus is their Messiah; who is dying there on the cross willingly for them. Those are the tears of family; the tears He dries with His message of forgiveness and hope in the cross, death and resurrection of Himself. Those are tears not to fear, but to embrace. Amen.
