The King Mocked
Lenten Season: Wednesday, 2 April 2014.
Rev. Bruce Skelton, Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Highlands Ranch, Colorado ☩ www.hclchr.org
With great cunning the Philistines had finally captured their formidable enemy, the Israelite judge named Samson, and they took out all their frustrations on their once seemingly invincible foe. They shaved off his hair. They gouged out his eyes. They bound him with bronze shackles. And they tossed him in prison where he was put to the hard labor of grinding wheat, pushing a large millstone around and around in a circle. But as if the maiming and torture weren’t cruel enough, they decided to add insult to injury by humiliating him publically. So as the lords of the Philistines gathered to offer sacrifice to their false god, Dagon, they brought out their defeated enemy to make a public spectacle of him and his God. 3,000 of them looked on from the rooftop as they brought out the blinded hero to mock and laugh at for their entertainment.
But God is not mocked. And neither is the One He chooses and anoints to rescue His people. So He saw to it that Samson was conveniently placed between the two pillars of the building that just happened to hold the place up and that Samson had the strength to push with his right hand on one pillar and his left hand on the other pillar and bring the whole building down upon the unsuspecting Philistines heads. Of course, Samson died too, but in his death he won his greatest victory of all.
It was several years later a young, red-haired Israelite shepherd boy brought food to his brothers who were serving in Israel’s army which was fighting against the Philistines. He watched as a giant warrior named Goliath strode out from the lines of the enemy into the valley that lay between the two armies and mocked the Israelites and their God. Incensed that no one dared take up the challenge of the disdainful enemy soldier, David went down into a valley to face the giant armed with only his shepherd’s staff, a pouch containing five smooth stones and a sling in his hand. As the young lad approached the fierce well-armed warrior, Goliath thought it was a joke. He laughed at the faithful young man and made sport of him. He mocked David in front of the two armies looking on: “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” He roared.
But God is not mocked and neither is the one He chooses and anoints to rescue His people. The joke was actually on Goliath and the Philistines. For God gave David courage, faith, and expert aim. And all David needed was one smooth well-slung stone to prove that that his God could do the impossible. And the little red-haired shepherd boy left the valley that day carrying Goliath’s head as a trophy.
God is not mocked. And neither is the One He chooses and anoints to rescue the world. So we might ask what’s going on in our Gospel reading this evening with the mockery of Jesus, God’s Anointed, the Messiah, the King who was sent from heaven to rescue the world? He is made a laughingstock, a public spectacle. The cruel Roman soldiers are making sport of Him as they strip Him, crown Him with thorns, and place a mock scepter in His hand. They get a good belly laugh as they kneel before Him in mock homage and make fun of Him, insult Him, spit upon Him, and strike Him on the head.
But we know that God is not mocked, so where is the part in this scene where Jesus, God’s Anointed, has had enough and uses the divine strength in His right hand and left hand to get revenge? Where is the part where Jesus shows His enemies who they are messing with and does a Chuck Norris on them shutting their mocking mouths for good? Where’s the payback we wonder, but this scene doesn’t end the way we want it to. No, St. Matthew simply records, “they put His own clothes on Him and led Him away to crucify Him” (27:31).
Jesus who is fully God is mocked and does nothing. He puts up no fight at all. Not once does He flash His divine power. He doesn’t even rebuke or insult those who mock Him. God is mocked and nothing happens and we are left deflated.
Yet, even though we are disappointed and this text flies in the face of our sense of justice and our sense of right and wrong, it is still good news for us. Why? Because Jesus had to bear all that disrespect, blasphemy and mockery in order to rescue lost sinners like us. Imagine for a moment if God used his divine power to punish and get revenge upon everyone who mocked Him and His Anointed.
Where would that leave us? Now, some of you might be thinking that you would never do such a thing as that, you would never think of mocking God, but when was the last time you rolled your eyes at or and scoffed at the demands of God’s Law? Let’s start with the first commandment: “You shall have no other Gods.” And Luther explains it this way, “We should fear love, and trust in God above all things.” How do we measure up against that? Do we do that all the time? Or, if you don’t like that, how about your prayer life? Do you pray to the Lord as though He were your bellboy and not the King of heaven and earth? Have we not all at some point taken God’s blessings for granted?
The sad fact of the matter is that we all have taken our sins way too lightly. We have all treated them it they were merely a few inconsequential mistakes instead of what they truly are, which is outright rebellion against God, contempt for His law and mockery of his Lordship over us. If God were to truly give us what we all deserved, we would all get what we think those Roman soldiers should have gotten. We would all be instantly killed and our souls would be sent to hell forever.
And yet the Lord does not do that. No instead he does with us just as he did with those cruel Roman soldiers, he bears it all willingly and silently. So what is most obvious in this scene described for us by St. Matthew is the incredible love God has for sinners like us. Amazingly, God in the person of Jesus is mocked, yet He is willing to be mocked in order to save us. He absorbs into His holy flesh all the mockery and all the disrespect and all the sin that humanity can dish out, and He takes it to the cross to destroy it and to wipe it out of God’s sight forever.
And then He leaves it in the grave as He rises from the dead three days later, not to get payback or revenge or to mock humanity, but to proclaim peace and reconciliation with God our heavenly Father. He was willing to be mocked and to be led to the cross to destroy sin and spare us from the devil’s eternal mockery.
What a scene it is at the beginning of this Gospel, St. Matthew’s Gospel, when Gentile Wise Men surrounded the baby Jesus and fell down and worshiped Him as the King of the Jews. But what an even greater scene is found here in Matthew’s passion, as Jesus is surrounded by Gentile soldiers who kneel before Him in mock homage saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” But He receives the greeting with no retribution, for He came into the world just for that purpose: to find His glory in being our mocked and crucified King.
And so He is, Jesus, our blessed saving King, who was willing to be crowned with thorns, to atone for all our sin, yes, even all our mockery of God so that one day we may be crowned with heavenly glory and honor. Our blessed King, who allowed himself to be dressed up in a scarlet robe, that we might be baptized and adorned with royal garb that covers all our scarlet sins. Our blessed King, who was pleased to hold a mock scepter in His hand and to be mocked, so that we might receive his body and blood in, with and under the bread and wine of Holy Communion to receive God’s forgiveness, life, and salvation, and a Kingdom without end.
Yes, Jesus, the Greater Samson, stretched out His right hand and His left hand at the cross so that through His death our enemy Satan and his power over us would be destroyed. Jesus, the Greater David, fought not with five smooth stones, but with five jagged wounds on his head, hands and feet to crush the devil’s head and to give us a share in His eternal victory.
And all of this serves to put our suffering and our being mocked for being Christians in the proper perspective as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews points out as he points to the sufferings the Old Testament saints:
Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.
Beloved, what can we do but rejoice even when we are mocked and reviled because of the name of Jesus Christ, who was and is God in the flesh, and who for us was mercilessly mocked, so that we might reside in God’s everlasting kingdom, where St. John tell us that we will all one day sing:
“Worthy is the Lamb, Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing... “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”
You see all the mocking and the mockers will be no more, as every tongue in heaven and on earth and under the ear confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord to the Glory of God the Father. May that day come quickly, in Jesus name. Amen