What
shall I do, then, with Jesus, which is called Christ? Matt. 27:22.
THERE is a passion
today that has taken possession of persons of high and low standing, a
madness that distorts all true values and drives heedless men and women
relentlessly on and on. It is the craze for greatness, the passion for
doing big things, the mad clutching after power and authority.
Seventeen years ago this frenzy cast the whole civilized world into the
whirling maelstrom of bloody war; but even the appalling total of
thirty million lives that were offered up as sacrifices to the grinning
idol of greatness have not cured a self-seeking world of this insane
affliction. It still grips the rulers of nations and holds up before
them the mirage of world dominion; it whispers into the ears of the
wealthy and breeds grasping avarice in their hearts; it beckons to the
men of the laboring chss and tempts them with the will-o’-the-wisp of
industrial upheaval and revolution; its siren songs lure the scholar
and enfiame within him a selfish desire for recognition and
preeminence; and, my friends, no matter what your individual position
and station in life may be, you, too, feel that pulling, tugging appeal
that would draw all of us to the shimmering shrine of bloated
greatness; you know that only too frequently do we all kneel down and
worship at its altars.
But, oh, what a
contrast to the tinsel and the glitter and the glamour of this cold and
artificial greatness is the sinking weakness of the eternal Son of God,
who “humbled Himself and became obedient unto death,” even that
unfathomable, indescribable, immeasurable death on the cross! When on
this Thursday, in solemn anniversary, you see Jesus under the
olive-trees of Gethsemane, kneeling and imploring Heaven, with anguish
that almost breaks His grief-torn heart, terrified by the torturing
soul agony of that crushing conflict; when tomorrow you behold Him with
a crown of thorns pressed into His bleeding head and hear the sullen,
hate-swollen mob cry, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!” when with your mind’s
eye you “Behold the Man,” “despised and rejected,” “a Man of Sorrows
and acquainted with grief”; when, over the rumbling darkness of that
first Good Friday, you hear the shriek of death terror form itself into
the groaning “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani,” — to human vision there is
nothing powerful, nothing dynamic, nothing wonderful and magnificent
about that emaciated and fever-racked frame that dies on the accursed
tree; nothing masterful and mighty about all this, nothing indeed —
unless you know and believe that this suffering, bleeding, dying
Christ means more to every one of you than the sum total of all the
most vital human issues in your individual lives; that here in the
Christ and in His Cross is a power so divine and penetrating, so
comprehensive and conclusive, that it brings to every one who has ever
heard the story of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday the one, inevitable
question of human existence, the ultimate question of the Lenten
season, “What shall I do with Jesus?”
It was vacillating
Pilate who gave to the world the words of this immortal question.
Hardly twelve hours had passed since that never-to-be-forgotten anguish
of Gethsemane. Hardly twelve fleeting hours, and yet what an eternity
of suffering for Christ! Judas had sold Him, Peter had denied Him, His
disciples had forsaken Him. And now He stands before Pilate, — Pilate,
who wants to shift the responsibility of making a decision in regard to
Christ and who therefore suggests that they take Christ away from him
and prosecute Him according to their own laws; Pilate, who endeavors to
evade the duty of his oflice by asking for a popular choice between
Christ and Barabbas; who finally tries to rid himself of Christ by
washing his hands of the stain of innocent blood, — all hopeless
expedients in the desperate attempt to avoid the necessity of answering
this inevitable question, “What shall I do with Jesus?” But blinded
Pilate did not know that you cannot get rid of Jesus in this way. He
did not understand that his silent and inflexible prisoner is a
personal issue in every human life, that, though he might wash his
hands, he could not wash his conscience clean of Jesus. He did not
realize that Christ is the inevitable figure of history and that the
question, What shall I do with Jesus?” must be answered personally,
directly, unavoidably, by every one who has ever met Christ in His Word.
THE
ANSWER OF UNBELIEF.
And there were
others who persuaded themselves that they could escape the
responsibility of acknowledging or disavowing Christ. Judas thought
that the jingle of thirty pieces of blood money could drown out the
voice of Jesus in his conscience; but, again, Judas did not know Jesus.
He did not know that there were not billions enough in this world to
purchase release and exemption from the necessity of answering this
question, “What shall I do with Jesus?” So we see Judas haunted by the
suffering of the livid Man of Sorrows, whom he had tried to forget and,
driven by a wild and hopeless despair, fade out of human history as his
body dangled in the moaning winds. There was Peter, who on that very
Thursday night cursed and swore that he did not know Christ and who
tried to reassure himself as he hovered over the warmth of the fire in
the high priest’s court that his foul and infamous oath would remove
the dangerous necessity of acknowledging Christ. But unwittingly Peter
spoke the truth when he said, ~I know Him not”; for he did not
understand Jesus; he, too, did not realize that he could not get rid of
Jesus in this way. A few moments later, when he gazed into the blanched
face of that majestic Sufferer, we see the rough Galilean fisherman
shaking in convulsive sobs, beginning to realize that he cannot avoid
the inevitable Christ.
Now, there are some
of you who have been trying to get rid of Christ, some of you who may
have tuned in tonight, apparently by the merest chance, but in reality
by the unsearchable direction of your God, who have deluded yourselves
into believing that you do not have to make a decision one way or the
other in regard to Christ, that you can ignore Him, that you can leave
this question, ~eWht shall 1 do with Jesus?” to others. To you I want
to say tonight with fire-winged words, which, pray God, may burn their
way through all the obstacles of self-will into the very center of your
sin-sick hearts: Once you have ever read or heard of Christ, once you
have been told in the words of the infallible Truth, ~While we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us”; once your gaze has been directed to the
Cross and you have seen the Innocent condemned for the guilty,
Divinity suffering for humanity, the Creator sacrificed for the
creature; once you have asked, — Whence come these sorrows, Whence this
mortal anguish? and have heard the answer, — It is thy sins for which
the Lord did languish, you are unalterably confronted with the
question, “What shall I do with Jesus?” You may think what you will
about Caesar or Napoleon, about Washington or Lincoln, about Roosevelt
or Wilson, without having your knowledge or your ignorance influence in
any way the spiritual truths of your life. But here in this bruised,
lacerated, pain-torn figure hanging on Calvary’s cross is your destiny
for time and eternity.
Remember, too, that
there is no other issue in life in which a choice is so unavoidable. A
business man can buy or sell, a statesman can choose to run or not to
run, and in uncounted thousands of questions in your own life you can
follow the dictates of your own desires and conveniences and answer or
refuse to answer; but here is one issue in your life that is beyond the
reach of your acceptance or rejection, the question that you must
answer, ~What shall I do with Jesus?” Ignore Christ? Get rid of Him?
You can more easily ignore the sternest reality of your own existence
than ignore Him; more readily get rid of the past of all ages than get
rid of Him. You must deal with this question, ~What shall I do with
Jesus?” Push it aside today, if you elect to do so, but let me tell you
in all the earnestness of this sacred hour that tomorrow you will meet
Christ, and this eternal, insistent question will confront you. Laugh
Him out of Scriptural existence, as modern atheism and infidelity
vauntingly does; yet a recent publication lists no fewer than 350
modern biographies of Christ; and some day the laughter of scorn will
change to tears of remorse.
THE
ANSWER OF TRUSTING FAITH.
And you must answer
definitely and decisively. A nation can maintain its neutrality in
war; a scientist can refuse to commit himself on any scientific issue;
a jury can disagree; you can answer ten thousand questions with a
noncommittal “I don’t know” and another ten thousand with an evasive
compromise; but you either accept Christ or you reject Him; you either
believe in Him and regard Him as the Savior of your soul or disbelieve
His Word and find in Him only a poor, pathetic caricature of what He
claims to be and what He is; you either cry, “Hallelujah, Hallelujah!”
or, “Crucify Him, crucify Him!”
Now, what will you
do with Christ? Tonight, on the anniversary of the last night of the
Savior’s natural life, that Thursday when He instituted the Sacrament
of His very body and blood, given and shed for the remission of your
sins and mine, tonight God sends this question into the innermost
recesses of your soul; and before you try to evade or to postpone your
decision, come with me to behold the cross. To the morbid crowds at the
murder scene it was only two pieces of dead wood, this cross on
Calvary; and in the annals of corrupted Roman criminology that
emaciated victim who felt the tearing anguish of the nails of death
crush through His hands and feet was only one of an uncounted number
who had been executed by this legal torture. Even for us who live in
an age in which Christian compassion has helped to temper the pains of
capital punishment the possibility is by no means remote that we pass
too lightly over the brutality of that instrument of death and minimize
the horrors of crucifixion, a punishment so excruciatingly painful that
because of the violent tension of the body, the burning and festering
nail- wounds, the exposure to the sun and the elements, the swelling of
the heart, the burning and raging thirst, the inLmmatory fever, the
soul-racking agonies, has universally been considered one of the most
brutal modes of torture men have ever known.
And yet, only once
in the seven words which He spoke on the cross is there a cry of
physical pain and bodily anguish, for there is a deeper sorrow in the
crushing, cracking weight of sin. We learn much of sin and its
consequences in history, but there is nothing in all the annals of
human depravity that even approaches this. For here, on this cross, is
One who bears the aggregate of all sins that have ever been committed,
the transgression of every one of the uncounted myriads of millions of
men who have ever lived or who ever will live on this earth of sin and
crime. 0 wondrous Love, 0 divine Love! Jesus, as the holy, spotless
Lamb of God, takes away your sins and mine. The eternal Son of an
eternal Father, He who “knew no sin, became sin for us that we might be
made the righteousness of God in Him.” He who is adored through all
the eternity of eternities ~was wounded for OUT transgressions and
bruised for our iniquities” to give us a forgiveness and a faith and a
hope which will prevail even against the gates of hell — and with all
this a new, regenerated life and all the blessings of a
Christ-dedicated existence.
As you stand
in spirit beneath the cross, I ask you, ‘tWhat will you do with this
Jesus?” To reject Him, to crucify Him anew, to attempt the impossible
by endeavoring to get rid of Jesus, to be too preoccupied to receive
Him, too self-satisfied to want Him, too independent to need Him, all
this, if protracted by impenitent unbelief, is but the preliminary to
darkness, to never-ending death, to hell; for here is the unavoidable
verdict of Christ, “He that believeth not shall be damned.” My
fellow-sinners, I beseech you, “Harden not your hearts”; let not that
holy, precious blood be shed in vain for you. Come to the Friend of
friends, the Savior of your souis, as guilty, as polluted, as
spiritually paralyzed as you may be, and believe that He who promised
to the penitent crucified with Him the open gates of paradise, He whose
death brought a rude pagan captain to the faith, has promised you that,
“though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” He
asks of you for your salvation no effort, no contributions, no
cooperation, only — thank God for this, — only faith, only repentance
and trusting acceptance of Him and His salvation.
What, then, will you
do with Jesus? What else can you do if you know and believe the depths
of His love as revealed to us by this Passiontide than to grasp Him, to
cling to Him, to fall at His wounded feet, and with a heart that lives
anew with faith and hope and love to cry out: —
Thou
hast borne the smiting only
That my wounds might all be whole;
Thou hast suffered, sad and lonely,
Rest to give my weary soul;
Yea, the curse of God enduring,
Blessing unto me securing.
Thousand, thousand thanks shall be,
Dearest Jesus, unto Thee!
Amen.
[The preceding sermon first aired in
1931, and is in the book “The Lutheran Hour”.]