April 8, 2004 — Maundy Thursday
Christ Lutheran Church, Columbia, MD
Pastor Jeff Samelson
Matthew 26:21-28
“Surely Not I, Lord?”
I. It’s a question that comes from troubled hearts
II. It gets an answer that calms troubled hearts
Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. Amen.
The Word of God for our study this evening is found in Matthew 26:21-28, which is printed in your bulletin and will be read as we go along through the sermon:
[While they were eating, he said, "I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me."
They were very sad and began to say to him one after the other, "Surely not I, Lord?"
Jesus replied, "The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born."
Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, "Surely not I, Rabbi?"
Jesus answered, "Yes, it is you."
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take and eat; this is my body."
Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. (NIV)
This is the Gospel of our Lord. ]
Dear Christian Friends:
I wonder if you’ve ever had an experience like this — it happened to me more than once when I was still in school. You get to class, get settled in, and the teacher or professor says that your tests have been graded, and that he is very disappointed, or frustrated, or just plain puzzled by some people’s poor performance. Before handing anything back, he begins to go through the test, pointing out one individual’s lousy answers, showing that that student — as the worst representative of all the others — just didn’t “get” whatever it was they’d been studying for the last weeks or months.
Now it always seems to happen that some time has passed between the taking of the test and its grading — maybe a long weekend, spring break, or just a busy time for the teacher. And so as he is going through the test and sharing that one student’s embarrassingly wrong answers, every student in the class is asking him- or herself, “Wait, that’s not my test he’s reading from, is it? That can’t be me, can it?”
But for at least one person in the class, once the papers are handed back, the answer will be, “Yes, it is you”.
Something similar, but much more serious, was going on in that upper room on Maundy Thursday, the night before Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus announced something much more than disappointing, something beyond puzzling. “One of you will betray me,” he said.
There was more than a grade on the line. Jesus was announcing the results of the testing of their hearts before the test had even been given. He was saying, “One of you will fail. One of you will show that nothing you have learned these last three years has made a difference. One of you will trade your trust for treachery.”
Now, since Jesus was speaking in the future tense, the disciples in that room would not have known whose heart he was reading. And so we find them, naturally, wondering, “That won’t be me, will it?” and with troubled hearts, each then asked their Teacher, “Surely not I, Lord? Surely not I?”
I. Jesus made his stunning announcement while he was eating the Passover meal — the last Supper — with his disciples. But this wasn’t the first time Jesus had spoken of his betrayal — early in his ministry he had already told them “One of you is a devil” (John 6:70). At that time not even Judas would have known whom Jesus was referring to. And earlier this same Maundy Thursday evening, as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, he declared: “You are clean, though not every one of you” (John 13:10). One wonders if Jesus looked at Judas when he said that — because he was obviously trying to let Judas know that he was aware of his plan, and was calling him to repentance.
But Judas obviously didn’t respond as he should have, and so Jesus had to abandon his indirect and perhaps somewhat cryptic language in favor of something more direct: “One of you will betray me.”
Try to imagine what effect that statement would have had on his disciples’ hearts. Maybe we’re so close to the center of American politics here that this kind of treachery doesn’t shock us as much as it should. Or maybe our society’s postmodern relativism has turned the black and white of betrayal into shades of gray — “Well, we can’t fault Judas, can we? I mean, he did what he thought was right for him, didn’t he?” But for the eleven other disciples, the idea that one of their own — someone who had shared meals with them and Jesus, sat at his feet, and traveled with him all over Palestine — the idea that one of them could do something so shameful and faithless was beyond imagining.
And yet Jesus said it was going to happen. And they knew that what he said was always true. They couldn’t wish his words away. And so they each began to ask him, “Surely not I, Lord?”
Let’s note, to the disciples’ credit, that they didn’t start pointing fingers at each other right away. They didn’t begin a witch-hunt or whisper, “I bet it’s him, over there — I never really thought he was as loyal as the rest of us!” No, each looked within himself — “Surely not I?” was directed as much to themselves as it was to the Lord. The matter was intensely personal.
Now, the way they asked the question assumes that the answer will be “no.” They needed to be reassured — they wanted Jesus to tell them that they would not do such a thing. They had searched and examined their hearts, their motives, and their actions, and failed to find any evidence that they were going to do this.
Still, each of them asked the question, because they needed to hear it from their Lord — because the examination of their hearts led each one of them to realize, to their great dismay, that it could indeed be any of them. In their hearts, when they looked, they saw sinful pride — you know what they’d just been doing? They’d just been arguing about which of them was the greatest. They saw all kinds of fears, foolishness, weakness, and doubt, and they remembered what Jesus had taught them about how all the evil deeds and words of men proceeded from a sinful heart. And so, though none of the Eleven had plans to betray Jesus, they knew they were capable of it. That’s why their troubled hearts needed to be reassured — that’s why they were saying, “Tell me I’m not the one! Surely not I, Lord?”
Self-examination should lead us to the same conclusions and the same need for reassurance from our Lord, because there are more ways to betray Jesus than Judas’ way. A Christian child or teenager looks at a fellow church member or family member who went off to college, or the military, and promptly forgot his faith and says, “That couldn’t happen with me, could it? Surely not I, Lord?” A married man on a business trip sees one of his colleagues slipping off his wedding ring before heading out for a night on the town and wonders if he could do the same thing if his marriage got worse. A young, ambitious woman starting her career sees how other women in her field have had to use sex, lies, and betrayal to get ahead and worries that her desire for success might lead her to do the same — to follow in their footsteps instead of Christ’s.
You see, it doesn’t really matter what the sin or temptation is — at some point we all ask, “Surely not I, Lord?” And it doesn’t do any good to look around us and point fingers or compare ourselves to the treacherous Judases around us, because, well, no matter how awful, arrogant, or abusive — no matter how ungrateful, unholy, or unforgiving another sinner or his sin might be, we recognize that we are capable of the same. We are kept from betraying Jesus only by the grace of God.
II. And it is the grace of God that provides an answer to our troubled hearts when we ask, “Surely not I, Lord?”
But don’t expect it to necessarily be a direct answer — although it will always be the best answer. Look how our Lord answered his disciples — he didn’t tell anyone, “No, it’s not you” or, “It’s Judas.” Instead he simply said, “the one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me.” Now, while these words might sound like a direct identification of the betrayer, they really weren’t. And they weren’t intended to be. Jesus simply said that the betrayer was someone who was eating with him. And as Jesus ate the Passover with his disciples, all of them dipped pieces of bread into the bowl of spicy sauce that was served with the Passover lamb. Maybe Jesus was indirect again because he wanted them to do so more soul searching. It’s more likely, though, that Jesus, in his perfect love, which always hopes, avoided naming Judas in the presence of the other disciples to give him room to give up his wicked plan — he wanted him to repent.
That desire for repentance — that hope of regaining his lost sheep — led Jesus to issue a very stern warning to his betrayer. He said,
“The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”
You might think that such sharp language, warning the betrayer of the terrible judgment he would face for his sin, would have had some positive effect on Judas. You’d hope, as Jesus did, that it would move him to sincere repentance and send him to his knees begging for the Lord’s forgiveness.
But by now Judas’ conscience was too calloused to prick. His mind was made up and his heart was cold, and in brazen hypocrisy he asked the same question the other disciples asked, “Surely not I, Rabbi?” He was not only a traitor but a fool — like Adam and Eve after the fall, or Jonah on his way to Tarshish, he actually thought he could hide himself and his sin from the all-knowing Lord. So finally Jesus spoke clearly and directly. You can picture his eyes burning into Judas’ as he said: “Yes, it is you.” Judas had rejected God’s grace, so Christ gave him the law. When Judas chose sin, he chose judgment instead of forgiveness, and death would be the price of that treacherous and faithless choice. That was Jesus’ answer to him.
But what about the others? Could Jesus leave them wondering about their faithfulness or doubting their love? Well, I suppose he could have, but he wouldn’t. Not only would his love for them not allow him to leave them with their worries unanswered, but he also wanted to teach and show them that the place to find strength and certainty was not in their own hearts or decisions, but only and entirely in him. And so he gave them, and us, a wonderful gift of love and reassurance:
“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat; this is my body.’ Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.’”
In other words, our Lord’s answer to his disciples’ anxious, self-doubting, troubled question, “Surely not I, Lord?” was the Sacrament of Holy Communion. He gave them his love and grace in a tangible, tastable form — he gave them salvation, strength, and forgiveness for all their sins by giving them his own body and blood, which, very soon, were to be given and poured out on Calvary’s cruel cross. He gave them everything they would ever need.
Now, it would be fair to assume that they had no idea at the time what a tremendously valuable — priceless — gift he was giving them. They might each even have been somewhat disappointed that he didn’t give the assurance they asked for — “No, don’t worry, you’re not the one who’s going to betray me.” But this was an infinitely better assurance, because its foundation was unshakable and eternal. If Jesus had told any of them, “It’s not you,” that would have been true for a minute, an hour, maybe a day. But soon enough they all would be turning away from him, forsaking him in his time of need, giving up, running, denying, crying — faithless acts betraying their promises and his trust in them.
Sinful people need the assurance that their sins are forgiven. Weak believers need the life and strength that only God can give. And so Jesus gives his disciples his body and blood in the Sacrament, just as surely and just as lovingly as he gave himself on the cross for all people.
So when we examine our own hearts and actions and find that the answer to “Surely not I?” is a disappointing, “Yes, of course, it is I — it’s me, I am the sinner. I am the one who betrays you, Lord”, then we can change our focus from “me” to “Him”, because surely Christ gives us pardon, power, and peace with his body and blood in the Sacrament. And when we look into our hearts and are frightened by the lack of faith we find there, we can have our faith strengthened by the visible gospel in the bread and wine. Doubts and adultery, weakness and pride, greed and irresponsibility — every kind of anxiety and every kind of betrayal — they are all answered, all dealt with, and all forgiven in our Lord’s gracious Supper. Surely they are.
And so we know what to do, and where to go, with troubled hearts that ask, “Surely not I, Lord?” or say, “I’m sorry that it was I, Lord.” Jesus says, “Come to me.” He invites us to take and eat — to take and drink — to have what was given and poured out for you for the forgiveness of your sins. That’s his answer. That’s our answer.
And so then, we remember and proclaim, that it is our joy and privilege to partake of this wonderful gift and taste his glorious grace as often as we can and as often as we need it. So then, come, come often, feed your faith, and find rest for your soul. Amen.
"May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word." Amen. [2 Thessalonians 2:16,17, NIV]
