This evening’s lesson comes in an interesting place in the Gospel story. Jesus has already been doing ministry. He has explained where He stands on ethical quandaries, performed miracles that demonstrate His power, and preached a Gospel of repentance and hope of eternal life in God’s Kingdom. He has taught the disciples and sent them out and now He has gone out to teach and preach, too. He has done everything to reach out in love and grace, and for His efforts, He has received rejection. Jesus has been rejected in the very cities where He performed miracles.
In our verses for this evening, Jesus is condemning rather than welcoming. He is cursing rather than blessing. He is denouncing the very people and places He’d tried so hard to save.
It seems inconsistent, almost schizophrenic, this rapid change from one kind of message to another. Has Jesus suddenly changed? What happened to turn the other cheek? What happened to love your enemies? What happened to bless those who persecute you?
God is never inconsistent, my friends. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The fact that we don’t understand that right away does not mean that God is different – it just means that we don’t understand.
Throughout Scripture, we see God seeking to redeem his people. He reaches out through Noah and Abraham and Moses, through Jonah and all the prophets. And God is rejected at every turn by those who do not have ears to hear or eyes to see. God reaches out to His creation from the very beginning, giving all that is needed and more besides, and creation rejects Him by wanting ever more. God reaches out by continuing to provide, and creation goes so far astray that only one family is deemed worthy of saving from the great flood. God agrees to save Sodom and Gomorrah if even one righteous man can be found in those wicked cities and the men there attack angels, so God rains down hellfire and brimstone. God reaches out and frees His people from slavery in Egypt then gives them commandments to help them hold onto that freedom, but Moses hasn’t even gotten down the mountain with the God-inscribed tablets before the people have rejected God, and so many are destroyed. God seeks to save Ninevah, and even though He has to forcibly guide his prophet there, when the city repents, He saves it. God sent prophets to all the tribes of Israel, to kings and rulers, to carry God’s message of a choice between repentance and restoration or rejection and suffering. Those who repented were restored; they who did not suffered mightily.
In the New Testament, God sent his messengers John to convince the people to turn from their wicked ways and be baptized. But John was “austere and severe, and they didn’t feel comfortable with him,” so they killed him and would have to suffer for their sin. Then God sent His very own Son, Jesus, to not only preach a message of repentance and restoration, but to live it out, demonstrating how to live according to God’s will. “Jesus was friendly,” eating and drinking with those He sought to save, and He was condemned as a friend of sinners a glutton, and a heavy drinker and for breaking the laws of man. He was not recognized as the Messiah and those who fail to recognize Him suffer still as they wait for one who has already come.
Jesus Himself will exhort folks to try repeatedly to correct bad behavior, in Matthew 18:15 telling them to seek restoration of relationship with the one who sins against them. But He also says that if they fail to repent and be restored, they must be rejected.
God’s message to His people is very consistent throughout Scripture: repent or suffer the consequences of unrepentant sin. And tonight’s passage is not different in that way. But it is a turning point in Jesus’ ministry. Tonight’s passage is an indication that the time for repentance and restoration is limited, and Jesus will waste no more time in fighting to restore those who reject Him again and again and again. He has made a decision and will allow them to be condemned for their stubborn insistence on continued sinfulness.
Jesus compares their behavior to the worst of the cities and the most debased of people, and He rules that the ones considered the worst by the world and history’s standards would have behaved better. And Jesus goes on to say that the punishment these cities and people will receive will be greater than that of the cities and peoples the supposedly faithful, the supposedly religious have viewed as the worst there has ever been.
Jesus is our Gentle Savior. Jesus did take on that which only He alone could do. Jesus does give us chance after chance after chance. But Jesus is also Judge and King. With continual rejection of Him, rejection beyond even the last moments we have, Jesus will have no choice but to judge, and judge harshly. See Jesus is God and God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He does not change and cannot be inconsistent. The God who lovingly created all that exists is the same God who forced Adam and Eve out of the Garden when they sinned. The God who sent His only Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish is the same God who will cast those who don’t believe into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
This same God calls us – all of us here and all of us throughout the world – to repentance. Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a time to focus on repentance and restoration of right relationship with the loving God who created us and who saved us in Christ Jesus. It is a time to remember that same God is the one who will ultimately judge us. But most importantly, it is a time to focus on Jesus, who has taken on our very own sin, washing us clean in His blood, that we may be dead to sin and alive to all that is good.
Because of what Jesus did for us, we are able to be saved. Because of what Jesus did for us, though we all deserve to be stained with sin, we are washed clean in His own blood, set free in the grace of His own life, and restored to right relationship with the very same God who created us in love. Jesus already took the judgment for all the sins we commit. He took them into His own body on the cross, suffering for what we have done and will do, and making the perfect sacrifice that our debt might be paid in full.
Jesus Himself is not thrilled that He must pronounce judgment, but He acknowledges the sovereignty and consistency that is God’s very nature. He praise the Father for even the things He does not understand, even for those who were kept from acceptance of the gift of grace offered them. Jesus understands that His Father’s plan is perfect, even when His own knowledge is limited by His earthly humanity. He praises the Father and acknowledges His own role in salvation, saying, “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.”
Our passage ends with an invitation: “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest… For my yoke is easy and my burden light.” Jesus has now turned from seeking to redeem all of Israel – the whole nation of God’s chosen people – and will now concentrate His efforts on the individual. He will now focus on saving souls one at a time, teaching us how to share the Good News of Salvation. Jesus demonstrates for us a new way – reaching out to the individual rather than the whole nation, forming personal relationships rather than corporate mandates. Jesus teaches us how to relate to others, to help bring them to faith, and also how to relate to Him – as guests invited.
Earlier tonight, we had the opportunity to receive ashes, a visible reminder that we are stained with sin. And now we come as guests invited to share in the feast of Communion, even still stained with ash as a reminder that we are stained with sin. This is mark reminds us that Jesus gave Himself for us while we were still sinners. It is a tangible way to acknowledge that we do not deserve the grace we are given, the grace we are about to receive in the Lord’s Supper. We cannot deserve it. Nothing we can do can wash away that stain.
And still Jesus says, “Come.” So come – all who are weary, all who are struggling, all who are hurting and needy and stained with sin. Come, because this table belongs not to us, but to the Lord alone, who offers it freely as a gift. The table is among us, not removed from us, but easily reached, symbolic of the easy yoke we are promised by our Lord even while we are yet stained with sin and undeserving. Come, and receive the blood of Christ that washes away the stain of our sin.
Jesus alone could do what He did. Jesus alone could wash away our sins and grant us the opportunity to be judged not for what we have done, but for what has been done for us. We have been marked with ashes as a visible reminder that we are stained with sin. But we have received grace in the blood of Christ which has washed us clean. As we go out into the world from this service, the ashes will be washed off at the sanctuary doors– showing the world that we are washed clean in the blood of the Lamb.
As our benediction tonight, truly hear the words of the assurance of pardon: In Jesus Christ, and Him alone, we are forgiven and redeemed. Glory be to God forever and ever. Amen.