Luke 23:26-34
26 As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. 27 A large number of people followed him, including women who mourned and wailed for him. 28 Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ 30 Then “‘they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!”’
31 For if people do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?”
32 Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. 33 When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. 34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.
God on Trial: Sympathy
Did you know that only 50% of Canadians would describe themselves as Christian? That’s down from 77% in 2001. The trajectory for Christianity in our country is kind of scary. But the perception of our religion may be even worse. In a recent poll, “Evangelical Christianity” was the only religion seen as being more damaging than beneficial by every other religious group in Canada. In other words, our non-Christian neighbours are more likely to describe us as misogynistic, transphobic, and homophobic than generous, friendly, and caring.
And these are just the statistics. What about the stories? A middle schooler is shamed by his teacher in front of his class for saying he believes in the biblical definition of sex and gender. A boyfriend loses his girlfriend or fiancée because of the high value he places in his faith. A store owner loses business because she doesn’t participate in very specific social causes. You’ve heard the stories. You may have one or two of your own. And we haven’t even mentioned the funny looks, barbed comments, and cold shoulders we get from unbelievers all the time. We poor Christians!
Should we look for pity? We won’t get it from the world. Many people are happy to see that Christianity’s cultural influence is fading. “Poor Christians!” Is that what we should say?
Is that what Jesus would say?
Jesus sure makes for a sympathetic figure on his way out to Golgotha. Actually, pathetic might be the better word. His back is shredded from scourging. His face must be bruised purple from the beatings he received. Blood drips down from the thorns driven into his scalp. After a night without sleep, he’s exhausted. His body crumbles under the weight of his cross, so the soldiers conscript someone from the crowd to carry it for him.
No wonder the women wept and wailed! Whether this group of people following Jesus were his disciples or simply citizens of Jerusalem drawn to the spectacle of that morning’s events, no one would have been able to help but burst into tears at the sight of a human being treated so brutally.
But what does Jesus say? “Don’t cry for me! No sympathy for me, please. Mourn for yourselves and your children!” In fact, just five days earlier, Jesus himself had wept for them. Because the people of Jerusalem had rejected the Messiah, they would experience God’s judgment. The time was coming when mothers would rather be childless than watch their children suffer. People would prefer to be crushed under the weight of a mountain than be starved, tortured, or captured by their enemies. And history records the horrific things that happened to mothers and children when the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem a generation later, things too terrible for me even to mention.
Sure, Jesus was innocent and the victim of injustice. He was facing a cruel death on a cross that he didn’t deserve. But as pathetic as his situation was, theirs was more pitiable, because they would suffer too, and, in general, the trajectory for the majority of the people of Jerusalem was an eternity of suffering in hell for their rejection of him. If the sinless one would have to suffer, imagine the suffering that sinners deserve? If the Son of God was put on trial and wrongfully condemned, imagine the judgment in the court of public opinion that awaits all of his followers.
When we hear about the decline of Christianity in this country, when we read about society moving away from godly values, or when we feel the sting of rejection or mockery ourselves, our natural reaction is to think of ourselves as victims in need of sympathy. But that reveals a problem of perspective. If we look at the big picture, what we experience now is nothing like what Christians around the world suffer, and nothing like what Christians throughout the ages have endured. The comfort and societal approval we Christians have enjoyed for generations are not the norm. More importantly, the woe-is-me mentality is sinfully self-centered. It leads us to complain, to lash out, to circle the wagons to try to keep the world at bay, to look to flawed human leaders and systems to recover what we think we’ve lost, or maybe even simply to give up hope altogether.
But here’s the thing: when did God ever tell us to play the victim? Self-pity is the opposite of what we see in Jesus. His pity is not for himself but for the women—and their children and husbands and all their countrymen who would suffer too. And his pity doesn’t end there. Follow his stumbling footsteps to the crest of that hill and watch him be lifted up like a criminal. What are his first words? “Father, forgive them.” Forgive whom? His disciples? Those poor women? No, the soldiers driving nails through his hands and feet!
Jesus’ words reveal a heart that is focused not on self but on others. He was thinking about the families of Israel. He was thinking about the soldiers who had no idea they were crucifying the Son of God. He was thinking about you and me. If Jesus had pitied himself, he easily could have escaped this fate. But he was pitying us wretched sinners who were facing an eternal destruction far worse than anything the Romans could dole out. We deserved to face God’s wrath but Jesus had pity on us.
Relish that for a minute. Jesus’ heart went out to you. But he didn’t just weep for you. He took God’s punishment for you. He died for you. He shed his blood to cover you, to hide you from the destruction to come. Through pain and fatigue and insult, you were on his mind.
To say that Jesus didn’t want sympathy for himself isn’t to say that he didn’t deserve it, i.e. that his suffering wasn’t so bad. That should be obvious. There’s a reason those women were moved to tears at the simple sight of him.
And to say that Jesus doesn’t want us to look for sympathy isn’t to say that he doesn’t have pity on us. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus knows your pain. He’s felt it. He can sympathize with you in your weakness. His heart still goes out to you when you suffer, including and especially when you suffer for his name.
But he doesn’t want us to wallow in self-pity. He wants us to look past ourselves and look to him. He wants us to let him help us carry our crosses as we follow him, and find strength in his Word and sacraments. He wants us to look past ourselves and look to him for help and healing.
But he also wants us to look past ourselves and have pity on those around us. We have brothers and sisters in the faith who are struggling with pain and temptation. We have fellow followers of Jesus who are feeling the attacks of the anti-Christian forces of this world. Our Savior would have us pray for them, reach out to them, and remind them of his love and promises.
And, as strange as it sounds, Jesus also would have us direct our sympathy even toward our enemies. There is a destruction coming that this world cannot fathom. And the people of this world, even the ones who make our lives harder as Christians, don’t know it’s coming! Many of those who put God on trial are like the soldiers crucifying Jesus: They have no idea what they’re doing. They think they’re fighting against outdated values or old-fashioned fairy tales—fighting for the rights of humans to live free. They don’t realize they’re fighting against the Son of God, and they have no idea how badly that will end for them.
What if we thought of these people not as our enemies, or obstacles for us to overcome, but as fellow sinners who have been so deceived by Satan that they are doing his bidding without realizing it? We can have pity on them, warn them, pray for them, and tell them about God’s forgiveness, just like Jesus did. We can point them to the Savior who has compassion on them.
In other words, let’s save the sympathy for others.
“Poor Christians!” Is that what we should say? What would Jesus say? We know the answer because he told us in a sermon on a different mountain three years earlier: “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:10). Blessed we are—happy—to suffer with Jesus. When the world treats us like it treated him, we’re reminded that the Father sees us like he sees his Son: righteous and royal. Pity? Why? We have the kingdom! Thanks be to God! Amen.