19th Day of Lent
Today we are at almost the half-way point in our Lenten journey with our Lord to His cross and suffering--a journey, though, that will end with His resurrection and triumph over sin and death. What great cause we have to rejoice because, like we are doing tonight, we having been gathering around our Lord and His word and listening to Him and taking to heart what He has been telling us/ revealing to us about Himself. How our faith is strengthened and we grow in our knowledge and love of our dear Lord Jesus! Time spent around Him and His word is never wasted but the best way to spend our time! The thing is, Jesus wants to tell us about Himself; He wants us to grow in our knowledge of and faith in Him.
And that’s why when we hear something Jesus tells us in Scripture that we think about it and ponder it. We must not let it quickly pass from us, but let it soak in like a gentle rain on parched soil. This is also the true beauty of Lent and the extra services we have in church--it allows us to take time and spend it around Jesus, thinking and meditating on Jesus and who He is and what He has done for us. This is important for us also when it isn’t Lent. Let us all through the year hear Jesus speaking to us in His word, the Bible. And let us take the time to think about and ponder that word. Take a word/ a verse from your devotion in the morning or from the Sunday readings and spend time thinking on it throughout the day. Apply it to your life; think about what Jesus is saying about Himself or doing for us. Always thank Him. Even when the word of Scripture that we may be pondering is difficult, don’t give up on it. Instead, meditate on it longer and more intensely; the Lord is trying to drive you deeper into His word so that your faith may be more firmly grounded and Satan have a more difficult time trying to disrupt/ destroy it. May our fervent prayer be: Lord, open my ears to hear and believe Your holy Word; Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief [Mk 9.24].
Think about today’s reading from our Lord’s Passion. In it we see Jesus on trial before the High Priest, before the Sanhedrin, before Pilate, and before Herod. But even though they all had Jesus right in front of them and speaking with them, it did not serve for their spiritual good. Why? Because they were not listening to Jesus and letting His word “soak” into their hearts; they didn’t want to listen to Jesus, but had their own agenda. Jesus spoke openly during His public ministry about who He is and His work, the leaders of the Jews weren’t listening/ weren’t thinking, pondering, taking His word to heart. Jesus told the high priest: I have spoken openly to the world. I always taught in a synagogue or at the temple… They asked Jesus point blank: Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God; are you then the Son of God. Jesus answered clearly: It is as you have said; I am what you are saying. But what happened after that? –They deemed Jesus worthy of death.
The warning for us, today, dear Christian is clear: we may very well have Jesus and His word in our midst, among us, but are we listening; are we taking it to heart; are we mixing it with faith in our hearts; are we meditating on it and applying it to our lives? If not, then let us use this upcoming second half of Lent and start doing exactly that! Where Jesus and His word are ignored or not listened to, He is silent. As we see in our reading tonight, after a certain point Jesus no longer spoke; He remained silent. When He was being accused by the false witnesses: but Jesus remained silent; when He was brought before the Jewsish council and demanded, If You are the Christ, tell us, Jesus said: If I tell you, you will not believe, and if I ask you, you will not answer me or release me; when Jesus was before Pilate, He still did not answer anything, so Pilate was amazed. And then in our text, where Jesus is before King Herod, Herod questioned [Jesus] with many words, but Jesus answered him nothing. The greatest grace is to have Jesus and His word, but the greatest punishment is when He is silent and we don’t have Him and His word. To put it differently, where there are no ears to hear, Jesus has no mouth to speak!
The simple fact is that those who don’t want to hear Jesus, won’t--no matter what He says and does. Our text: Now when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceedingly glad; for he desired for a long time to see Him, because he heard many things about Him, and he hoped to see some miracle done by Him. This Herod was the son of the King Herod that wanted to kill the baby Jesus. He was not interested in the truth. He saw Jesus as some sort of novelty, like part of a freak show at the carnival. All he was hoping for was to see some miracle of Jesus. Maybe he was thinking that Jesus would do a miracle in hopes of being released. He did not have Jesus come to him with the hope of hearing Jesus and finding out whether what He was saying is true, whether He really is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. Herod would not recognize Christ; he would never understand Jesus’ words or miracles because He was not interested in the truth.
Don’t we see here a picture of so many in our age today? Self is the center of one’s attention; everything has to serve me, entertain me. Things are looked at for their entertainment value--a far cry from the truth, which does not entertain. Instead, seeking the truth requires humility and effort--not self but truth is the focus. Seeking the truth is difficult; entertainment is mind-numbing. This is why it is vital we keep our Lord and His word center and keep thinking and pondering Him and His word! Yes, we are Christians; yes, our trust is in Jesus; yes, Jesus loves me and I love Him--but the more we love someone, don’t we also want to know them better? Of course! That’s why we will want to keep hearing Jesus’ word, pondering it, and growing in our faith and love. We will keep seeking Jesus and His word and listening to Him.
There’s another danger and another type of person that we see with Herod. Many people are not interested in Jesus and the truth. Instead, they are more interested in what Jesus can do for them. [Herod] heard many things about Him, and he hoped to see some miracle done by Him. There are people who are interested in Jesus because they think if they say they are Christians then Jesus will bless them in all sorts of earthly ways with wealth, health, etc. But at the first hint of trial or trouble, they turn away from Jesus because He isn’t doing for them what they want. How can this type of person seek the truth of Christ? Will such a person think about/ meditate on the words of Christ and apply them to their life? Will such a person humbly love and serve God and neighbor? Hardly! Again, notice: “self” is at the center. This Lent, let us earnestly examine heart and conscience to see if there is in us any of this “what is Jesus doing for me now?”/ “I’m a Christan as long as Jesus does what I want Him to” mentality. Let us repent and turn from it and humbly seek out Jesus, His word, truth!
There’s even more here for us to be on guard against. Because of our frail, sinful corrupt human nature, we so easily exchange the truth for trinkets; the hard truth, the hard work of seeking truth, the truth that leads to salvation we exchange for something for the here and now, immediate gratification. While we say we would like to have time for prayer and the spiritual life, the reality is that the cares and difficulties of this life so often take first place and demand and take all our energies so that little or no time is left for prayer, for Scripture, for pondering the word, and even for church. The material and secular/ the here and now is certainly no substitute for the heavenly and eternal. The more we are concerned with the material and secular, the less we will want to hear Jesus, the truth, of the things heavenly and eternal. And so, like Herod, we won’t.
Dear Christian, we have truth. We have Jesus. We have His word. We have Him speaking to us in that word. He comes to us bodily and unites with us in the Holy Sacrament. Why would we want to give that up? Dear Christian, Lent now gives us the glorious reminder and opportunity to seek and take to heart once again that which is truly vital--the things of Jesus, the heavenly and eternal.
Remember, Herod had already heard the truth/ the Good News about Jesus from St. John the Baptizer but he rejected John, eventually killing him, and the truth he was proclaiming--Jesus--and he hardened his heart against Jesus and the truth. And then we read: And the chief priests and scribes stood and vehemently accused Him. They, too, hardened their hearts against Jesus. Fearing that Herod might release Jesus, they stepped up their attacks and accusations against Jesus. They certainly don’t want to hear, so they won’t; and there’s no reason for Jesus to say anything!
What was Jesus’ response to Herod--to all those who are not seeking the truth? [Herod] questioned him with many words, but [Jesus] answered him nothing. Those who don’t want to hear won’t--so Jesus is silent.
Yet, as Jesus remains silent before those who don’t want to hear, we, who want to hear, hear Jesus in His silence. Jesus’ silence is loud preaching to us. What do we hear as Jesus remains silent before Herod? We hear Him announcing a great judgment! Through the OT prophet we hear [Am 8.11,12]: “Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord God, “That I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LOrd, but shall not find it.” It is a punishment when God no longer speaks. Here we see Jesus’ judgment on Herod and the Jews. By Jesus not speaking, He is not speaking the words of eternal life; He is not speaking a word of grace calling them to Himself; He is not speaking His Spirit-filled, life giving word. When that is the case, how can anyone come to faith? In His just judgment, God gives those who do not seek His word and truth/ who do not want to hear, exactly what they want. Even if they wanted to hear the word/ seek the truth they couldn’t--God is silent! This is the most terrible judgment of God against them. The only time they will hear Jesus’ word is in judgment/ the final Judgment. We heard in our reading: But Jesus remained silent. Then the high priest said to Him, “I place You under oath by the living God: Tell us if You are the Christ, the Son of God!” Jesus said to him, “It is as you have said. But I tell you, soon you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Jesus’ judgment of silence on those who don’t want to hear Him speaks to us--we hear Jesus in His silence--and it makes us realize the true treasure His word is. We know that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life; we know His word is Spirit and truth. That’s why, then, we will seek His word out all the more; we will want to hear the words of eternal life and apply them to our life; we will strive to be where Jesus promised to meet us--in church, in His holy word and Sacrament. When Jesus is silent before those who don’t want to hear, let us use the silence of Lent to ponder all the more our Lord, His Passion, His word.
Let us, who want to hear Jesus, also hear Him with His silence before Herod, the Jews and Pilate saying He is completely in control. Let us hear Him humbly submit to the Father’s plan. With His silence, hear Jesus saying He is the Suffering Servant, the Messiah, that Isaiah prophesied long before [53.7]: He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. Let us who want to hear, hear Jesus proclaiming that He is willingly offering Himself up for us. What great joy for us to hear Jesus as He speaks and as He speaks by silence. INJ