Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – St. Justinian

 

14 Nov 2023

Text: Matt 26:36-56

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Our Lord’s passion begins with prayer.  And this time, He prays to His Father alone.  Having just shared the cup of His blood with His disciples, Jesus must now drink a different cup alone: the cup of His Father’s wrath, the cup of pain, the cup of abandonment by all, even by the Father who art in heaven.  And showing us the meaning of the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer (“Thy will be done”), our Lord prays, “Not as I will, but as You will.” 

And Jesus is alone, as His three drowsy disciples, Peter, James, and John, could not watch and pray with Him for a single hour.  Our Lord gives them another petition to pray, the sixth petition from the Lord’s Prayer: “that you may not enter into temptation” for “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”  Jesus prays “Thy will be done” three times.  And then afterwards, “the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.”

Judas the betrayer has led the detachment “from the chief priests and elders of the people,” a “great crowd with swords and clubs.”  And our Lord is betrayed by the betrayer with a kiss.  Judas had just shared in the communion of the cup of the Lord’s blood, and now he is exchanging the cup of forgiveness for the cup of God’s wrath, a cup that he will drink.  For Judas wishes to spill, rather than partake in, the Lord’s blood.

The other disciples who drank the cup of our Lord’s blood in the intimate communion with Him, are now fleeing from Him who saves them, leaving Him alone to drink the cup of wrath.  Peter makes a desperate attempt to impose his own will over the will of God, to take the cup away from Jesus by means of a sword.  But Jesus tells him to put it away.  Rather than live and perish by the sword, St. Peter is to live by the Word and blood of the Lord, sharing the cup of salvation with others, and eventually drinking the cup of martyrdom.  But on this day, Peter joins the rest, for “all of the disciples left Him and fled.”

The cup of the Lord’s blood that Peter and the rest drank at the Last Supper, the same cup that they would continue to drink, and would share with others after the Resurrection is the same cup that we drink.  It is the “cup of salvation” (Ps 116:13) that Jesus drinks with us anew “in [His] Father’s kingdom” (Matt 26:29) “for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt 26:28).  The disciples who fled will all share in the cup of suffering for the sake of the blood of Christ in one way or another, nearly all by the cup of martyrdom. 

For when we have drunk from the cup of salvation, the blood of Christ, when we pray time after time the petition: “Thy will be done,” we live and die not by the sword, but we live by the Word, by the blood, by the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, by the cross.  For though “all the disciples left Him and fled,” He does not flee us.  He is the Good Shepherd.  He does not flee His Father’s will to save us.  He does not flee the cup that He must drink.  He does not flee His cross to redeem us.  He does not flee Satan and Judas and the crowd of sinners that arrested Him, even though legions of angels stood at the ready to take the cup of God’s wrath from Him and pour it out upon us poor miserable sinners who betray Him, deny Him, and flee from Him.  Jesus drinks that cup on our behalf, and then shares the cup of salvation with us in its place.

Let us pray with Jesus, “Thy will be done.”  Let us pray as our Lord has taught us to pray: “Lead us not into temptation.”  Let us pray time after time to “Our Father who art in heaven.”  Let us partake of the cup of our Lord’s blood.  Let us join in the communion of His body.  Let us live by the Word and the cup of His blood, the cup of salvation that we share with the world.  Let us flee neither Jesus, nor the cross, nor whatever cup our Lord wills that we drink for the sake of the “kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.”

Amen.

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