Ash
Forgive
Our
Misplaced
Sorrow!
Luke
On the day that Jesus Christ died, there were very few
sympathetic faces in the crowd. Perhaps we can think of only a few: Mary, Mary
Magdalene, the disciple John, and the penitent criminal. On the other hand,
there was no lack of hatred for Jesus on that day. So you would think that it
would be no hard task to find six separate groups of Jesus’ enemies to speak
about in our six Wednesday evening services. And perhaps it is that very fact that
has led you to wonder why, of all people, we should include in this series of
meditations some of the very few people who actually felt sorry for Jesus. Why
are we about to listen to a sermon about the women of
Well, we of course don’t number these women among Jesus’
enemies! But we do number them among the many people who stood that day in need
of the forgiveness that Jesus earned for us all on the cross. While their
sorrow for him was sweet and admirable, especially in comparison to the mad
shouts of the mob just minutes earlier, the very man for whom they were
lamenting with such heartrending sobs told them they were crying for the wrong
reasons. Oh, their sympathy for Jesus
was heartfelt and genuine, but there were other tears these women should have
been shedding. And it can happen that we
too sometimes might cry the wrong tears. It is for this reason, that on this
Ash Wednesday service of confession and absolution, we must take to heart what
our Savior said to the women of
Forgive Our Misplaced Sorrow!
1. We often ignore true sorrow over our sins.
2. Father, make us truly repentant.
The sentiment that the women displayed on that day was
truly heartfelt. There is no reason to
think otherwise. They felt sorry for
Jesus as he struggled under the weight of the cross. And this wasn’t just a
sudden jolt of pity as you might feel as you pass the scene of an accident.
These ladies felt their sorrow deeply. Our
text tells us that they mourned and cried; no doubt connecting that with the customs
of their day of beating their breasts, throwing their hands up in despair, and
loudly crying out in misery as Christ passed them on the Way of Sorrows.
Yet, Jesus told them that the sorrow God truly looked for
was something different. “Do not weep
for me; weep for yourselves,” he told them. What God truly sought from the
people of
Jesus himself was the green tree, the very picture of
spiritual health, the one man in whom the Lord God was well pleased. And
The sin of rejecting their Messiah would have horrid
consequences for the people of
Yet even worse would be the eternal consequences to be
suffered by the nation that had rejected their Messiah. They had had every
opportunity to repent and believe in Christ, who had walked among them for
three years, preaching and teaching and performing signs and wonders. Yet they
had refused to do so and in the end had screamed for
his blood. On the day of judgment, when, as Scripture
says, they must look upon him whom they pierced as he comes in the clouds of
heaven, what excuse can they offer? How can they escape the eternal flames and
torments and regrets of hell?
You would have to be made of stone if the many pictures of
Christ’s suffering—the word pictures in the Scripture, the works of art,
sculpture, and films that we have seen about Christ’s passion—did not bring
forth some pity for the man who had to undergo such torments. If they did not,
we could hardly call ourselves human beings. Yet from us, as well, the Lord
wishes to see a different and deeper sorrow, a godly sorrow over our sins.
Our Lord would tell us, as he told the women, that he does
not seek our sympathy but our repentance. After all, it was our sins that
brought him to suffer in the first place. If our sins had not been as scarlet,
then it would not have taken the blood of Christ to make us as white as snow.
Do we give that fact the amount of thought it deserves? We have been so bad, have done such evil, that the only thing in all the
universe that could keep us from the eternal fires of hell was the sacrifice of
the Son of God.
What God seeks from us is a true and godly sorrow over our
sins, a sorrow that confesses our many wrongdoings. God wants us to say with
the psalmist, “Against you, you only,
have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right
when you speak and justified when you judge” (Ps 51:4). When the Scriptures
condemn all people as sinners against the commandments of God, it is not our
place to deny the truth of that statement. We too have done what is evil in
God’s sight, and it is our duty now to admit that.
Yet repentance is a hard thing. Not all of us are always fond of
participating in it. It is a sorrow that can be more than we want to bear. It is a sorrow that at times we want very
little to do with. Instead, we would
rather try to make light of our sins, as if they were not that serious a
matter. We would rather try to hide them behind the greater sins of others, as
if, in comparison, they are not that bad. We would rather distract ourselves
with the pleasures of the world so that we don’t have to think about our guilt.
We would rather try to convince ourselves that, by some scale of divine
justice, we have done more good than bad, so our merits can wipe out our guilt.
But none of that is what our Lord calls for. “Weep for yourselves,” he told the
women of
The sight of Christ upon the cross should impress upon us
once more the dead seriousness of our sins so that we might come to understand
what a serious matter they are before the Lord God. How could our guilt be
considered a slight thing when we consider the great cost of paying for them?
The ordeal was so great a thing that, on the night before, Jesus had prayed
fervently that the Father might find some other way, even at that late hour—but
there was none.
An unrepentant attitude would be an insult to Christ. The
cost of our salvation was great—greater than we could ever begin to imagine.
But Jesus paid that cost out of selfless love for us. In return, the first
thing we must do is confess our sins. In such confession we honor him who took
all our sins onto his back and paid for them with his innocent sufferings and
death. Don’t try to excuse them or rationalize them in any way. Just confess
that you too are one of the sinners whose transgressions were that great.
But the second part of Christian repentance must then also
follow: Trust in that Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world. He did
not, after all, offer up his life to make us feel guilty but to make us
guiltless in our judge’s sight. “God did
not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world
through him,” John
Believe this great promise and you are saved. The very
faith created in us through the Gospel will lay hold of the forgiveness Jesus
won for us and make it our very own. His Word has promised it to us, and we
know his Word is true. And once again we honor him when we place all our hope
and confidence in that beautiful gospel message.
Then, after all of this, the fruits of repentance will
come. These are the acts of obedience to God, out of love for him and our
fellow people, that demonstrate to all people that we
truly have repented of our sins. They show that we no longer wish to make
ourselves servants of sin but now want to be servants of God. Saving faith,
after all, is not just some lump inside us but is a living and active thing. It
must shine in our lives as surely as the sun must shine in the clear blue sky.
In the words of Scripture, we have become new creatures
through faith, created by God to do good works in accordance with his law. We
have been made new through faith in Jesus Christ. These good works are the
evidence that our sorrow has indeed been a godly and God-pleasing repentance, a
confession of sins coupled with faith in the forgiveness purchased by Christ.
And, once again, our new lives will honor him who so generously and graciously
gave his life for us.
“Do not weep for me,” Christ told the women of