Luke 23:27-31 * April 1, 2009 * Midweek Lent 6 * Prof. Mark Braun

FORGIVE OUR MISPLACED SORROW

Many of us have been expected to, or had the opportunity to travel for our jobs. One of the side benefits is that after you have visited the prospective client or made the sales call or completed the training seminar or presented the study paper or preached the guest sermon, you can take some time of your own to visit the local sights.

Fifteen years ago or so, the largest conference of biblical scholars and archaeologists and religion teachers assembled from all over the world was held in—Kansas City, Missouri.

Nothing against Kansas City; it is probably a lot like Milwaukee. But there are no quaint old colonial neighborhoods in Kansas City, like in Boston or Philadelphia. It is not the center of our government. It’s not the Big Apple. But there is one attraction in Kansas City which many tourists visit—the King Center, the international headquarters for Hallmark Cards. I took the tour. A key feature of the tour is getting to watch many of the best-known Hallmark commercials that have been on television over the past five decades. And, let me tell you—that tour is a weeper! Big, burly guys cry like babies watching emotion-triggering commercials featuring characters they do not know, played by professional actors, in situations they know nothing about.

It is more OK to cry today than it used to be—especially for men. The most famous recent public weeper locally has been Brett Favre—which goes to show how tears one day can turn to something very different only weeks later.

Of all the horrible things we hear happened during the final 24 hours of our Lord’s life, there are—surprisingly—hardly any references to anybody crying. But there is this one, which only Luke’s gospel recorded for us:

A large number of people followed [Jesus], 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?”

I

It seems like an oasis in the desert. After the treachery of Judas, the spinelessness of Peter, the cowardice of the disciples, the contempt of Caiaphas, the skepticism of Pilate, the brutality of the soldiers—here are some people showing compassion and simple human concern for Jesus. If even half of what we know about Roman crucifixion is true, the sight of it must have moved strong men to tears, or made them look away. These women mourned in a typically Middle Eastern way—beating their breasts, throwing their hands up in despair, wailing loudly, miserably, pitifully. Their tears seemed entirely appropriate.

And Luke is clear that these women following, mourning, wailing, were doing this for Jesus. We know there were some women very loyal to Jesus—some, Luke tells us elsewhere, who supported Jesus and the disciples financially (Luke 8:4). There were women like Mary and her sister Martha who welcomed Jesus as a frequent guest in their home as their teacher, their friend, their Savior (Luke 10:38-42). There was Mary Magdalene, who no doubt loved Jesus deeply—not in a scandalous, slanderous Da Vinci Code kind of way. Jesus had freed Mary Magdalene of being possessed by seven demons (Luke 8:2); of course she loved Him. She owed Him her life.

And so there is something abrupt, almost cruel-sounding, in Luke’s telling that Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me.” He was saying they were crying the wrong tears, and we must consider whether sometimes we cry the wrong tears too. Go back to the Hallmark tour. Why do people like me become so emotional watching old television commercials about make-believe people, while people like me can so easily ignore genuine tragedy and pain right at our doorstep? Why can I become emotional watching a well-produced appeal for donations to feed children in faraway lands, but I whisk past homeless people on my own streets, careful to make no eye contact because then I must acknowledge their presence.

Jesus does not want us to feel sorry for Him. He does not want us to go to His cross because we need to have a good cry, nor to come away from it thinking we have done our religious duty. He does not want us to measure our religiosity by the salty ounce. Jesus reminds us that a lot of our tears can be selfish, self-serving, self-pitying. We cry because we don’t get what we want. We cry because when we think life is not fair to us. We cry because other people get what we want. We cry over sports teams or American idol.

This Lent, we must pray: LORD, FORGIVE OUR MISPLACED SORROW. We have cried too much over many inconsequential things.

II

Perhaps there is a generational difference here, but many of us my age received some fairly tough parental admonition about crying. We were told, “Big boys don’t cry!” When something went wrong which we could not repair, we were told, “No use crying over spilled milk.” And—my favorite; I heard this so many times!—when I was crying over some inconsequential thing: “I’ll give you something to cry about!”

Isn’t Jesus saying almost that very same thing? “You’re crying for Me? I’ll give you something to cry about!” “Weep for yourselves and for your children.” Why? “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!”’

Those young enough to be alive forty years later would experience the agony Jesus described. A band of revolutionary-minded Jewish nationalists rebelled against the Roman government. Their “sin” of rejecting Rome would have horrid consequences. Their beloved Jerusalem and its temple would be leveled and burned. Josephus, the Jewish historian, watched it and wrote about it:

Titus’ [the general] troops captured any who ventured out to look for food. When caught, they resisted, and were tortured and crucified before the walls as a terrible warning to the people within. Titus pitied them—some 500 were captured daily—but dismissing those captured by force was dangerous. . . . Out of rage and hatred, the soldiers nailed their prisoners in different postures, and so great was their number that space could not be found for the crosses. Jewish Wars 5:450-51; Maier, 347.

The lucky ones would be the ones who never had children to face that. Happier to have the hills swallow them up than have to live through that.

This political disaster would foreshadow a far greater spiritual disaster: the sin of rejecting their Messiah, their only Savior, and the consequences for that would be so much more horrid. They had had every opportunity to repent and believe in Christ, who had walked among them for three years, preaching and teaching and doing miracles. Yet they had refused Him; in the end they had screamed for His blood. On Judgment Day, when, as Scripture says, every eye will see him, even those who pierced him (Revelation 1:7), what excuse can they offer?

From us, too, God looks for a different kind of sorrow, a godly sorrow over our sins. Jesus does not want our compassion but our repentance. Repentance is a hard thing; by nature we do not want to do it. We prefer making light of our sins, or hiding behind what appear to be the greater sins of others. We would rather distract ourselves with cheap toys and cheap thrills and not have to think about our guilt. “Weep for yourselves,” Jesus said. “Repent of your sins. Don’t hide them. Don’t ignore them. Don’t try to make them less serious than they are. Confess them.”

LORD, FORGIVE OUR MISPLACED SORROW. We have cried too little over our sins and our very great need for forgiveness.

III

And Jesus asked, “For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” It was apparently a widely known proverbial statement, like, “If gold rusts, what shall iron do?” If they could treat Jesus with such disdain, such violence, what can we expect will be done to us?

But Jesus’ question pulls our attention back to Him. What makes Jesus cry? And what do His tears matter for us?

The best-known reference to the tears of Jesus may not even be true. It comes from the children’s Christmas song: “The cattle are lowing,/ the poor baby wakes./ The little Lord Jesus,/ no crying He makes.” Says who? Did Jesus never cry as a baby? Why not? Is a baby’s crying always sinful? If Jesus became our Brother and was according to His human nature like us in every way—yet without sin—why would He not have cried as a baby?

There are surprisingly few references to His crying as an adult, but here is one: When Jesus saw [Mary] weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” (John 11:33-36). Jesus had a compassionate heart for those whose lives were scarred by loss and death. An impersonal force type of God does not cry at funerals.

Here is another: As [Jesus] came to Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace” (Luke 19:41). He had come to rescue and redeem them. He loved them. They rejected Him.

During all the gruesome episodes of Jesus’ suffering and dying, there is no direct mention of His weeping in the Garden or before the Sanhedrin or in Pilate’s judgment hall. But He suffered there. He allowed wicked men to accuse and abuse and crucify Hum for us. If tears ever came come to His eyes during that terrible night and early next morning, they were shed for us.

The second part of Christian repentance means that we trust in the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world. He did not offer up His life to make us feel guilty but to make us guiltless in our judge’s sight. “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him” (John 3:17).

LORD, FORGIVE OUR MISPLACED SORROW through your tears It is through His wounds and suffering and betrayal and denial and rejection and dying and burial and resurrection and tears that we are healed. Amen.