Today we continue our Lenten series “Were You There…” by reflecting on Luke 23:26-31 Were You There… as a Sympathizer. As Jesus walks down the road to the place where he is going to be crucified, he comes across a number of women who are weeping for him and for what’s happening. Jesus tells them not to weep for him, but to weep for themselves and what’s coming up. Jesus likely has in mind the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70, as well as pointing ahead to the day of judgement when the king will return to judge the world.
Today we continue our Lenten series “Were You There…” by reflecting on Luke 23:26-31 Were You There… as a Sympathizer. As Jesus walks down the road to the place where he is going to be crucified, he comes across a number of women who are weeping for him and for what’s happening. Jesus tells them not to weep for him, but to weep for themselves and what’s coming up. Jesus likely has in mind the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in AD 70, as well as pointing ahead to the day of judgement when the king will return to judge the world.
Were You There… as a Sympathizer
Luke 23:26-31
Were you there? Injustice and death can connect us together in powerful ways. Life isn’t always easy or fair and it really hit me as I watched Jesus stumble down the road under the weight of the beam the soldiers were forcing him to carry; the beam that they were going to nail him too. The painful death waiting for Jesus brought tears to my eyes. It was so hard to watch!
Luke shows Jesus’ heart for those around him, even as he walks to his own death. He’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, the weight of our sin is so much heavier than the weight of the piece of lumber scraping against the broken skin of his back. While Simon being forced to carry the beam offers Jesus some respite from the pain, the only reason the soldiers do this is so that Jesus can stagger under his own power to Golgotha, the place of his execution. Jesus has been beaten so badly that he’s no longer able to carry his own cross. What a powerful visual to when Jesus called his disciples to take up their own cross, that the cost of following Jesus may cost. But Simon carrying Jesus’ cross is only a brief reprieve.
I sometimes wonder why there aren’t more tears and weeping when we watch Jesus travel the rod to the cross. Is it because it’s just another story, or do we hide our emotions and feelings behind the familiarity of the story, or behind our theology, hating to think of Jesus as a human being that is hurting like this because of our sin? we too often fail to appreciate what’s happening as Jesus carries his beam to the hill outside Jerusalem. The women watching Jesus stumble in exhaustion and pain do understand, at least in part, which is why they weep and mourn for Jesus. They see an innocent man filled with compassion and mercy for others experience such great hatred, cruelty, and injustice at the hands of the powerful.
Jesus notices the women and in another reminder of his compassion for us, even as he’s undergoing extreme suffering and pain, he urges the women, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children.” Mourning for Jesus isn’t wrong, in many ways it’s right because they love him and hate what’s happening to him and their sense of loss in his upcoming death. Jesus knows all this, but he also knows the reason why he’s doing this, and that’s more compelling and important than his suffering. Jesus doesn’t need our pity because he knows that his Father’s in charge, even in this moment. Jesus is following his Father’s will in order to save his people. Jesus knows that while he’s fully human, he’s also fully God and so through his death he’s going to defeat Satan, crushing the serpent’s head, defeating sin, and washing away its stain on our souls and lives through his blood, and even defeating death, the great punishment for our sin.
My big question is, “Why weep for ourselves and our children?” I needed to listen to the Old Testament to understand what Jesus is doing here. We hear an echo back to Jeremiah 9, “This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come; send for the most skillful of them. Let them come quickly and wail over us till our eyes overflow with tears and water streams from our eyelids. The sound of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How ruined we are! How great is our shame! We must leave our land because our houses are in ruins.’” Now, you women, hear the word of the Lord; open your ears to the words of his mouth. Teach your daughters how to wail; teach one another a lament.” Jeremiah’s calling the people to repent from their sin because their sin is the reason why Jerusalem and the temple are going to be destroyed and the people sent into exile. In calling the women to weep for themselves, Jesus is calling them to repent of their sin.
This helps us understand why Jesus goes on, “For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless 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 people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?” Jesus is pointing ahead to the destruction and Jerusalem and Herod’s temple in 70 AD by the Romans because of the Jews defiance of Rome. This is going to be an extremely brutal time since Rome was unforgiving towards rebels and their enemies, treating them with devastating harshness to teach anyone else thinking of rebelling a reason to have second thoughts. It was so brutal, it brought back memories of how Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and the slaughter that occurred, a slaughter that will be happen again by the Roman legions. God allows this destruction to happen as a result of Israel’s sin, of Israel’s choice to walk in their own paths instead of God’s and Jesus’ path. During the time of Babylon, they failed to care for the orphans, widows, poor, and oppressed. The rich oppressed them, rather than caring for, and loving them. Tin Jesus’ day, they failed to follow Jesus and accept him, even after he said that he was the way, the truth, and the life. We get a glimpse here of a warning about the Day of Judgement, Jesus’ return to claim all of heaven and earth for himself and completely defeat Satan once and for all.
For Israel, the weeping of women was a sign of their sin and a call to repent. It’s about remembering their history and God’s faithfulness to his people in spite of their sin and unfaithfulness. The root of our sin lies in wanting to be God of our own lives, wanting to trust in our own wisdom rather than God’s wisdom. Adam and Eve trusted their own wisdom rather than God’s and so ended up separated from God. This has led to much weeping and the need for repentance, a need to turn back and walk in God’s way and fully trust in him.
The call to repentance is a big part of Jesus’ ministry. Its radical nature, as a complete turning around and return to the Father, is emphasized by the parable of the prodigal son. Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and tax collector praying in the temple, where the Pharisee is so full of pride, not recognizing his need to God’s mercy and forgiveness, shows us that repentance means admitting that we have no possible claim upon God, and we’re called to submit ourselves completely to God’s mercy. The call to turn our lives around to embrace Jesus’ values and the life-style he teaches is emphasized by his encounters with the rich young man and Zacchaeus and their responses to his call on their lives, or non response.
Jesus is calling the women and us to weep for ourselves and repent of sin that leads us to think that we’re equal to God, that our wisdom is equal to God’s. Yet how we can ever have the wisdom to understand a God who forgives so completely, understand Jesus who took our sin to the cross and lived a perfect life in our place. A big part of repentance is recognizing how sin has crept into us in so many ways. I appreciate how Rev. Dr. Laura Mendenhall challenges us, "I know I have sin of which I must repent, but I am such a product of my era, so captive to my fears, so dominated by my own need that I cannot even recognize my sin.” She recognizes the need for self awareness in each of us who follow Jesus, but also recognizes that many of us are not very self aware when it comes to ourselves, we much more easily pick out the sin in others, we see the speck of dust in someone else’s eye, but completely miss the plank in our own eye that we keep trying to look around. Without working on self awareness, without going to God and asking the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to our own sin, we seldom feel any great urgency for repentance.
What should we be mourning over, repenting from? Part of our mourning should be for how many people today in our own communities and lives are unaware of who Jesus really is and their need for him. We should be lamenting the brokenness and injustice around us. we should be mourning for the effects of sin in the world, in every part of our lives and relationships, for those especially touched by the sins of others and the hurt that is all around, so often silent and unseen. We should be lamenting how often we don’t care enough to even pay attention to this.
Part of our turning around to embrace God’s call in our lives is to live as Micah calls us, “to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” We may not be able to change systems, but, as Mother Theresa says, “At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done. We will be judged by "I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in.” As we walk Jesus’ path of loving God and neighbour, we also share with them who Jesus is, “making disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything Jesus has commanded us.”