Hollywood makes a lot of love
movies--you know the type, where a guy or a gal is smitten by love
for someone everybody else figures is worthless. The other treats
the one who loves them so terribly no one could ever see what they
see in their beloved. Then comes the moment where the heroic lover
does something absolutely, incredibly outrageous for their beloved
and they live happily ever after.
Movies like that entice the young to
bring home the most awful choices to mom and dad and say, “We’re
getting married.” Because they just love the loser enough, they
will turn into Prince Charming or the Beauty within the beast.
Movies like that keep divorce attorneys, family counselors and
psychiatrists employed.
Where do people get these crazy ideas?
I wonder if the teachings at the heart and core of Christianity don’t
power all these stories of unrequited, heroic love finally winning
the day.
Smitten by Love.
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For the loveless (4).
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That we might lovely be (5).
There is one warning I’ve got to
share with you before we get started. Let’s never put Jesus on a
level with those psychotic lovers in the movies. Let’s not confuse
Jesus’ love with puppy love. He knows what real love is, even when
we don’t. He knows what one-sided, abiding love is, even if we are
fickle and self-seeking in our love relationships. He is the
embodiment of love. John, in looking back on Jesus’ life, wrote,
“God is love.” And “God so loved the world that he gave his
one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but
have eternal life.” And Jesus himself said, “No man has greater
love than this, that he give his life for his friends.” Movie
stars can only play at love. Jesus knows what real love is. On that
first Good Friday, he was smitten by love for the loveless.
“Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him and afflicted (Isaiah 53.4).”
Why did Jesus have to die on the cross?
That question has plagued many to the point of making them turn
their backs forever on Christianity. If God should treat his own Son
that way, what kind of God is he? If Jesus is the perfectly innocent
Son of God, holy in all he thought, did and said, how could God treat
him like this? What kind of parent would do that to his own child?
What kind of God would demand so much suffering, so much torture and
pain from anyone?
And that’s why I and Isaiah are
stating that we are the loveless for whom Jesus was smitten. “We
considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.”
Surely the loveless attitude of those around Jesus that terrible day
showed a belief that he was getting what he deserved. “He saved
others, but he cannot save himself!” the chief priests chortled at
the foot of the cross. “If you are the Christ, save yourself, take
yourself down off the cross and save us, too,” the thieves on the
cross taunted him. Above our Savior’s bleeding head was fastened
that placard from Pilate, the Roman Governor, which we have
memorialized with our INRI. Iesus of Nazareth Rex (King) of the
Iews, as if to say, “This is what we Romans do to anyone who stands
in our way.” In a way, Pilate was the symbol of them all—looking
for something for himself at Jesus’ expense. He wanted to keep his
political career going. The chief priests wanted to keep their
positions of authority in Jerusalem. The two thieves wanted to be
rescued from a certain and painful death. They were looking out for
themselves. They were the victims. But Jesus, Jesus was getting
what he deserved.
A lot of times we shy away from the
cross. The one objection I have consistently gotten about this
church for the past dozen years is the cross in front of it. It is
jarring, it is brutal, it is vivid. People don’t like it. They
don’t like to see their Jesus on the cross. In a manger, sure!
Holding the little children in his arms, of course! Healing the
blind, certainly! Resurrected, ascended, judging the world, anything
but hanging on the cross. And by feeling uneasy about that
representation of Jesus on the cross, we display a lack of
understanding for who he is and why he did what he did.
The greatest sin for lovers is for the
object of their love to misunderstand their intentions, to ignore
their actions, to not so much reject their love as to not even act
like it is real. Like a Romeo singing under Juliet’s window, Jesus
is nailed to the tree for us and we tell him he shouldn’t hang
around here, scaring people like that, nobody wants to see that.
Sing something pretty, like how our eyes dance like sparkling waters
or how our hair shines in the moonlight. But get off that cross.
You’re creeping us out.
“He came to that which was his own,
but his own received him not.”
Here’s the part of the movies where
the happy ending comes. The lover’s love changes his beloved so
they can live happily ever after. Isaiah put it this way.
“But he was pierced for our
transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment
that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed
(5).”
His love did something. He took our
transgressions away.
Let’s keep all the symbolism of a
love story, shall we? The loveless object of the lovers’ love
crosses into forbidden territory. There are drug bills, gambling
debts, second mortgages, a car title loan at the e-z cash store.
Credit card debt to the maximum limit allowed and then some. Each
step into that forbidden territory carried a debt. Fearful of the
loan sharks and what they might do, the loveless object of the
lovers’ love contemplates ending it all. A stolen gun, a
well-placed bullet. And the lover finds her, pulls the gun from her
hand as he tells her all her debts are paid. The nails in the hand.
The nails in the feet, the final insult of a side pierced with a
spear to see if he was really dead, that was the payment Jesus made
to take the debt of our transgressions away.
He was crushed for our iniquities. How
often are we confronted with problems and obstacles in life! The
healthy, normal person is equal to the task. A broken shoelace
doesn’t send us into a fit of despondency. A new bill in the mail
does not make us suicidal. But the loveless object of the lovers’
love is not equal to any task. The need to do anything is beyond
him. So the lover does the crushing work for him. Her fingers are
smashed, her arms and legs cut and bruised.
He was punished, he was wounded, the
spiritual and physical torment he suffered on the cross, the utter
abandonment by his God as he was treated as the worst sinner there
ever was, no, the only sinner that ever existed, his punishment
brought us peace. His wounds brought us healing.
He changed everything. He immediately
changed our standing before God the Father. From this point on no
human would be found guilty of sin, for all sin had been paid for by
Jesus on the cross. From this point on God would not be angry at
sinful mankind, for with sins forgiven, there was nothing to be angry
about. From this point on man would not be living in fear of God
coming and demanding an accounting and reckoning for all the bad
debts of sin, for in Jesus, that fear of punishment was taken away,
for the punishment was taken away. We are liable for nothing. There
is no sword hanging over our head, no “other shoe” which is ready
to drop.
At the end of that terrible Friday,
when they took his lifeless, pierced body off the cross, you and I
know now it was because of love that Jesus ended up like this. He
was smitten, not by God the Father’s anger, but he was smitten by
God’s love for mankind, a love so great that he called down upon
himself the suffering and punishment our sins deserved.
At the end of that terrible Friday,
when they took his lifeless, pierced body off the cross, the stage
was set for you and me to begin that wonderful transformation, that
transformation all those Hollywood love movies keep you in suspense
for, that moment of, not redemption, for Jesus bought us back from
our sins when he died on the cross, but for that life of
transformation, that life of faith-driven acts of love in response to
Jesus’ great love for us.
That I might be like him. Loving,
gentle, patient, compassionate, self-controlled, giving, sacrificing,
pure and holy.
Smitten by Love.
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For the loveless (4).
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That we might lovely be (5).
Right about now we’d like the credits
to start rolling so we don’t have to think about it any more, so
that the lights come up in the theater and we can go about our real
life, our daily life, and put what we have seen and heard out from
our mind. But this isn’t a movie. Unlike Hollywood, not
everything has a happy ending. At least not a guaranteed happy
ending. The lover has made the sacrifice. In the eyes of God the
loveless beloved is lovely. Will we receive it? Will we cling to
that cross as the highest emblem of love ever granted us? Or will
we, hearts untouched, love unkindled, pass by that cross as though it
meant nothing, nothing at all to us?
Rev. Don Pieper is a minister in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. He has devoted his life to sharing the Gospel of Christ to all of Gods people. For more information about the Green Valley Evangelical Lutheran Church visit us at
www.gvelc.com or call 702-454-8979 .
Ask for Pastor Don or Pastor Matt.
