Quinquagesima Luke 18:31-43 (2022)

Seeing From God’s Perspective

Luke 18:31-43

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.

St. Luke 18:31-33  31 Then He took the twelve aside and said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon. They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again.”

Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord…  Some of us in this room today have varying degrees of difficulty seeing.  Some of us have glasses, some have contact lenses, some need and use reading glasses occasionally, and perhaps some need glasses or contacts but have been putting it off or just trying to make the best of it.

But even if your eyes work correctly – either with or without help – that doesn’t mean you always see straight; it doesn’t mean you always see things correctly, because there are different kinds of seeing.  There is seeing with your eyes, but that, I submit, is not the most important kind, for some day your eyes along with the rest of your body will decay into dust.  But your soul will not be decaying; so being able to see more than what your eyes can see now – things like faith, hope, love – is much more important than being able to see what is on the paper in front of you.  The most important kind of seeing is to see things from God’s perspective.  The most important kind of seeing is to see yourself as God sees you, to see your neighbor and the world and God’s plans as He sees them.

In today’s Gospel, as Jesus and His disciples approached Holy Week, there are several different perspectives represented, several different kinds of sight and blindness and recovery of sight.  And through these the Holy Spirit teaches us to see things from a divine perspective, which will be especially helpful for us as we enter the Lenten season this Wednesday on our steady approach to Holy Week.

Jesus took His twelve disciples aside and told them very clearly how He saw things: “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be accomplished. For He will be delivered to the Gentiles and will be mocked and insulted and spit upon.  They will scourge Him and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again.”

Jesus saw the road to Jerusalem very clearly; He saw exactly what it entailed and exactly where it led: to the cross, and then to the empty tomb.  This would be His final trip to the holy city.  And He saw these things as clearly as He saw exactly what the Old Testament prophets had seen and foretold: His death and His resurrection.  You remember that just a few weeks ago we heard the Gospel of the Transfiguration, where Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus, talking with Him about His departure to Jerusalem and to the cross.  Jesus saw it all clearly; He knew exactly how horribly difficult His suffering and death would be.  But rather than avoid it or delay it any longer, He headed straight for it.

Why did He head straight for it?  He did so because He saw the world through a lens of love, the same kind of love that St. Paul described in today’s Epistle from I Cor 13.  He saw a world full of people who had rebelled against Him.  Some people hated Him.  Some people were indifferent toward Him and couldn’t have cared less about Him.  Some people loved Him only half-heartedly.  But, as Paul wrote, “love is patient,” it “suffers long” and it “does not seek its own.” Instead, it seeks the well-being of another.

So, in spite of all the hatred and apathy and half-hearted love Jesus saw in the world, in spite of the suffering that He knew was waiting for Him in Jerusalem, He saw the path to mankind’s salvation: He saw His own torture, He saw His own suffering and death, things that would pave the way so that all might be justified by faith in Christ, who, as Paul wrote (Rom 4:25) “was delivered over to death for our sins and raised for our justification.”  That is what Jesus saw; that is what He focused on. Such was His perspective, which was, therefore, also the divine perspective.

But that is not how His disciples saw things even after He told them. As Luke writes, “They understood none of these things; this saying was hidden from them, and they did not know the things which were spoken.”  The twelve heard the words but couldn’t see how they made sense.  They figured Jesus must be speaking in riddles or parables as He sometimes did.  What does He mean that He will be “handed over to the Gentiles, mocked, insulted, spit upon?”  Surely not Jesus!  What does He mean they will scourge Him and kill Him?  If that were true, why would we be heading toward Jerusalem?   Rising from the dead?  It must be a figurative saying.  And where did the prophets speak of any of this, they wondered?  

Even the twelve disciples still saw Jesus from an earthly perspective; they still saw a glorious path for their Lord and for themselves, and couldn’t grasp what Jesus was saying.  Peter, James, and John still had the vision of the Transfiguration dancing in their heads from just a few months earlier.  How could a good God let His Son fall into the hands of sinners and die?  Not only could they not see the purpose, they couldn’t see the need.

That’s a problem for us, too.  We usually don’t see ourselves as being all that bad.  We usually don’t see ourselves as being so lost and so corrupt and so sinful that God’s Son would have to be tortured and humiliated and killed in order to bring us back into God’s favor.

Recall again that description of love that St. Paul gave in today’s Epistle.  See how well you measure up against each phrase.  “Love is kind.”  Do you really think that describes you all day long, every day?  “Love suffers long,” that is, it gladly puts up with other people’s failures for a long time, without becoming angry or frustrated or bitter.  “Love is not puffed up, doesn’t parade itself.”  Do you never yearn for the credit and the thanks you think you deserve for the things you have done for other people?  Satan would convince you either that you aren’t so bad, or that God has no right to expect anything more of you, or that you are able to redeem yourself.

But the truth is, from God’s perspective, your one hope, your only hope of redemption is the bitter suffering and death of His Son.  And that’s exactly the price He paid for you.  He saved your sorry hides by His innocent suffering and death in your place.  He took ally our sins upon Himself on that horrid cross and paid for them all too – a debt you owed but couldn’t pay, a debt He paid on your behalf, a debt of deep love for you and me.

Now, Jesus’ disciples didn’t yet see that.  But what they did see, even through the fog that was in their heads at the moment, was Jesus – the same Jesus who had never lied to them, never misled them, never disappointed them.  They didn’t see how deep their need was; they didn’t see His path of suffering, death, and resurrection. But they still saw Him enough to keep following Him to Jerusalem, enough to keep trusting that He wasn’t lying, and that He knew what He was talking about even if they didn’t.  They knew that it would still be worth it to follow Him even though they couldn’t yet see what following Him would lead to.

And that’s the message for us.  Keep following Jesus.  Keep listening, even when you don’t see everything yet from God’s perspective.  Rejoice in your God-given faith, and by that same faith cling like crazy to God’s Word and promises for you, and you will see and experience the truth of God’s word.  Eventually the light will become brighter…

…which is exactly what happened for the blind man in the second half of our Gospel.  There we meet a man who couldn’t see at all with his eyes, and yet in a different way he saw things much more clearly than the crowds around him.

The blind beggar heard the commotion as a large procession of people was now following Jesus to Jerusalem.  The excitement was palpable.  They sensed that this journey to Jerusalem would be momentous, although they had no idea why.  The beggar heard the commotion and asked what was going on, so they told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by!”  So he started crying out immediately, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”  

That title “Son of David” was a title of the promised Christ, who would be the offspring of David.  This was a confession that practically no one in Israel was ready to make.  You remember when Jesus asked His disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”  They told Him that people were saying other things, but not that He was the Christ, the Son of David. The twelve had confessed Him to be the Christ, and now this blind beggar who, with a much better perspective, had far better sight than the crowds.

So how did the beggar know that Jesus was the Christ?  God, through His word, had already given the beggar understanding to see Jesus as the Christ, who is merciful and has mercy on the poor in spirit.  The crowds, on the other hand, not only failed to see Jesus as the merciful Christ, they failed to see the beggar as their neighbor; they failed to see him as a human being who had value, as a man who mattered.  They failed to see him as the shining example of faith that he was.

He kept crying out to Jesus, and they warned him that he should be quiet.  They saw a noisy beggar who was getting in their way, a noisy beggar who was a nuisance to them, whom, they thought, Jesus would surely not care about.  They were so blind, weren’t they?  They were all puffed up, full of themselves, parading themselves around, behaving rudely – not at all the definition of love that St. Paul wrote about.

But the beggar kept crying out in faith, and Jesus stood still and commanded him to be brought to Him.  “And when he had come near, He asked him, saying, “What do you want Me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, that I may receive my sight.” Then Jesus said to him, “Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.”  So now, the beggar sees Jesus, not only with his heart and soul, but also with his eyes.  As was mentioned at the beginning of this sermon, which sight was more important?  Wasn’t it the sight of faith?  Wasn’t it the hope that the beggar never lost that Jesus would be merciful?

And then, after seeing Jesus display His love toward the beggar, the crowds recovered their sight as well.  They saw the result of the beggar’s persistent faith.  They saw that his hope in Jesus was not disappointed.  And then they, too, “rejoiced in the truth.”  All the people saw it and gave praise to God.  Their sight was restored: their faith increased, their hope was reinforced, their love for God and for the beggar was renewed.

“And now abide faith, hope, love, these three,” Paul wrote.  These are defined as three “theological virtues.”  Faith is the sure trust and confidence in the true God: that He exists, that He is good, and that His word is always true.  We saw such a faith in the beggar, didn’t we?  Hope is the eager expectation of some good thing God has promised in the future.  The beggar hoped in God’s mercy and wasn’t disappointed.  Love is self-sacrificial devotion to another, with genuine concern for the other’s well-being.  We saw such a love perfectly in Jesus in today’s Gospel.

So, dear fellow redeemed, with vision that has been corrected today by the Holy Spirit through His word, you get to use the coming Lenten season to grow in faith, hope, and love.  The greatest of these, Paul says, is love. Why?  Because faith is for this life, where we live by faith and not by sight; we’ll have that perfect sight at the resurrection.  Hope is for this life, because all our hopes will be fulfilled in the next.  But love will endure forever.  Heaven will be characterized by perfect love.

So be renewed in these three essential Christian virtues by spending extra time with God’s word, both at home and here at church.  Use this time to rehearse, to practice, to grow into people who are ever more characterized by faith, hope, and love.  And as you do, your neighbor will be helped, and so will you, because as you grow in faith, hope, and love, you’ll find your own perspective being shaped into God’s perspective, and you’ll see things better and better.

And along the way, as always, have God feed, strengthen, and nourish you by daily remembering your Baptism, regularly hearing Christ’s preaching, and receiving Christ’s body and blood as often as it is offered.  God grant it for Jesus’ sake.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.