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This image depicting Matthew 26:63 is by French painter and illustrator James Jacques Tissot (1836-1902), rendered in opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper, owned by the Brooklyn Museum, and used from this site.
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Have you spent much time around sheep, maybe even when the sheep are being sheared? When I was in grade school, every year they brought in sheep and demonstrated shearing. I am not exactly sure why, though; maybe they figured we city children needed to witness some aspects of country life. Despite those annual demonstrations back then, I could not tell you today, whether or not the sheep we saw being sheared made any noise (well, it was a long time ago). However, the silence both of a sheep before its shearers and of a lamb led to slaughter is used by God speaking through Isaiah to prophesy of the Messiah, during His Passion (Isaiah 53:7). As we tonight continue our special Lenten midweek sermon series with the general theme “Passion Prophecies fulfilled for you!”, we reflect on that prophecy and on its fulfillment by the Messiah, Who, in saving us from our sin, was “Patient and silent in all His suffering”.
All four divinely‑inspired Gospel accounts report examples of Jesus’s patience and silence before His accusers. St. Matthew reports and especially emphasizes Jesus’s silence before the high priest Caiaphas, the scribes, the elders, the chief priests, at least part of the Sanhedrin (Matthew 26:63; confer Mark 14:60-61). And, St. Matthew reports and emphasizes Jesus’s silence before Pontius Pilate in the Praetorium, the governor’s palace (Matthew 27:12-14; confer Mark 15:4-5), which report was included in tonight’s reading of “The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ” as “Drawn from the Four Gospel [accounts]”, and is pictured on the front of your service outline, again with an illustration from artist J-J Tissot. (See also Luke 23:8-9.)
To be sure, Jesus was not—and, in order to fulfill the prophesy, did not need to be—completely silent. When the High Priest Caiaphas put Jesus under oath, Jesus confessed the truth (Matthew 26:64). When the governor Pilate asked Jesus about the specific charge that would lead to His conviction, sentence, and execution, Jesus confessed the truth (Matthew 27:11). Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed King of the Jews, though His being their King did not mean He was resisting or trying to overthrow the Roman government. Jesus confessed the truth, but He did not refute the false evidence or answer the false charges. None of the words Jesus spoke to those who mistreated Him shows any impatience or sinful protest. Rather, like an unaggressive lamb and its mother sheep, Jesus showed inner nonresistance and essentially outward silence—so much so that the governor Pilate was greatly amazed (Matthew 27:14), which amazement itself arguably was also prophesied by God through Isaiah (Isaiah 52:15).
Jesus’s being “Patient and silent in all His suffering” is all the more amazing when we consider ourselves. By nature we are impatient and anything but silent when it comes to suffering. We resist and complain when we think we have suffered the slightest wrong. Instead of letting what we think of as injustice go, we take upon ourselves God’s role of exacting vengeance. By nature we are sinful, and so we sin in these and other ways. We fail to fear, love, and trust in God above all things, and that failure results in countless failures to love our neighbors as ourselves. For our sinful nature and all its resulting sin, we deserve both to die here in time and to be tormented in body and soul for eternity. However, God does not want for us to die in those ways, so He calls us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin. God forgives our sinful nature, and He forgives the sins that flow from it. He forgives whatever those sins might be. God the Father forgives all our sin, for the sake of His Son, Jesus.
In the earliest days of Jesus’s public ministry, John the Baptizer identified Him as the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29, 35). That title “Lamb of God” goes back not only to Isaiah’s prophesy, but that title “Lamb of God” also goes back to the Passover lambs whose blood saved the Israelites in Egypt, only now it is the blood of Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, that delivers us. Jesus is, as we sang in the Office Hymn, the “Lamb of God, pure and holy, / Who on the cross didst suffer, / Ever patient and lowly, / [Himself] to scorn didst offer, / All sins [He] borest for us / Else had despair reigned o’er us” (Lutheran Service Book 434). We need not despair at all! Jesus has mercy on us, and His peace is with us. For us and for our salvation, Jesus was oppressed and afflicted willingly. For us, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:8). As St. Matthew reports Jesus’s passion, Jesus tells Pilate He is the King of the Jews, and then Jesus does not speak again until He cries out on the cross. A lamb even by opening its mouth could hardly stop its slaughter, or a sheep stop its being sheared, but Jesus with only a thought could have stopped—and yet did and said nothing to derail—His conviction, sentence, and execution. Jesus died on the cross for you and for me, but He did not stay dead. Jesus rose from the grave, still bearing the marks of His crucifixion for us, something reflected even in the Revelation to St. John, when John sees a lamb looking like it had been slain (Revelation 5:6). In effect, Jesus came to power through death and resurrection, and now He uses that power to freely give the benefits of His death and resurrection through His means of grace, by which means of grace He forgives our sins and the sins of all who believe in Him.
If there is any doubt that Isaiah’s prophecy about the sheep’s silence on the way to slaughter pointed forward to and was fulfilled by Jesus, an incident in the book of Acts should put such doubt to rest. God sent His servant Philip down from Jerusalem toward Gaza, where Philip heard an Ethiopian man reading from Isaiah. In the course of their conversation, Philip began with that very passage and told him the Good News about Jesus and baptized him then and there (Acts 8:26-39). For most of us, the Word and water of Holy Baptism are the first connection we know for sure that we have with Jesus’s patient and silent suffering for us. At the Baptismal Font, God works forgiveness of sins, rescues us from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe. Likewise, God through pastors individually absolves those who privately confess the sins they know and feel in their hearts, and that forgiveness from the pastor is as just as valid and certain as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself—indeed, for that is how He has chosen to deal with us! And in the same way also Jesus gives us forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation in the Sacrament of the Altar. There, on the altar, in, with, and under bread and wine is Jesus’s body and blood. As Pilate said to the Jews, and as we will echo in tonight’s closing hymn (Lutheran Service Book 444), there, behold, behold your King! There, behold, behold your King!
As prophesied, Jesus was “Patient and silent in all His suffering” for us—for our failures to be patient and silent in our suffering and for all our sins. However, when it comes to being like a silent sheep about to be slaughtered, Jesus is not the only one. Perhaps even before Jeremiah, echoing Isaiah, spoke of himself in such terms (Jeremiah 11:19), a psalmist wrote of all Israel being regarded as sheep to be slaughtered, being killed, as it were, all day long, for the sake of the Lord (Psalm 44:22). And, in his letter to the Romans, St. Paul wrote something very similar about us. In our lives, you and I at times may also suffer on account of our faith. We should expect such unjust suffering, for it carries us along towards our goal, and we should bear it as our Lord did, patiently and silently (see 1 Peter 2:18-25; 3:1, 5). When we do not bear such suffering patiently and silently, then with repentance and faith we all the more live each day in the forgiveness of sins. For, as St. Paul concludes from that psalm reference, nothing—not our sin, not suffering, no—nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, now or for eternity (Romans 8:35-39).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +