Dear Christian Friends,

Think about the man who jumps on a grenade and saves over a dozen lives. How does that make you feel? What about the animals killed for scientific research and the advancement of medical technology? What about the Christian who is ridiculed by influential people because he or she will not compromise Christian principles? Do these things make you sad or glad? What about Jesus' suffering? Does it make you sad or glad? If you consider the big picture, it will be both. Isn't that why we call the Friday on which Jesus died "good"?

This evening, continuing in our series "Places of the Passion," we will listen to these women who wept on the Way of Sorrows and to Jesus. We will discover how easy it is for our emotions to become conflicted, especially when we ponder the pain of our Savior. Yes, Jesus' suffering does cause us to shed a tear, but it is not without a great degree of relief and rejoicing. This portion of Scripture teaches us that Jesus' suffering is our joyful sorrow.

1. Because Jesus suffered, he carried our sins away

Luke takes us to the place where Jesus carried his cross, sometimes called the Way of Sorrows, and begins, "As they led him away" (vs. 26). That's noteworthy-that Jesus was led "away" from the city. You might remember the riotous mob that killed Stephen; they "dragged him out of the city" (Ac 7:58) before stoning him. Why? Because anything or anyone unclean, according to the laws God gave the Israelites, had to be taken outside the camp either to be destroyed or to fulfill part of a purification process. Luke is telling us that Jesus was considered unclean not only by the Roman authorities and not only by the Jewish leaders, but by God.

A picturesque ritual that God prescribed for his Old Testament people was the Day of Atonement. On this day, one of the events centered on a special goat. This goat, rather than being sacrificed on an altar, was "presented alive before the LORD to be used for making atonement by sending it into the desert as a scapegoat" (Lev 16:10). The priest would lay his hands on the goat's head, as if he were collecting all the unclean sins of the people and depositing those sins on the goat, and then send the unclean goat outside the camp into the wilderness to take those sins away. It was as if all the sins would perish in the wilderness with the scapegoat and bother the people no more. This was God's own picture designed to provide the visual image of what happens when he forgives our sins. They go away.

This picture was fulfilled in the true Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. Jesus took our uncleanness outside the camp as he was led "away" into the wilderness of a lonely death. So we sing before remembering our Savior's "scapegoat" sacrifice and receiving his very body and blood, "O Christ, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world." Because Jesus suffered, he led our sins away. He took them out into this spiritual desert, where no person has ever gone, where the devil can't go, where God himself dealt with his anger against us by accepting the scapegoat of his Son. Jesus' suffering is our joyful sorrow.

God redeemed you through the crucifixion of his Son. Doesn't that make you glad? It makes Jesus and the angels glad, who rejoice over each repentant sinner. I'm afraid, however, that Lent is sometimes abused as a time to turn on the crying violins, a time to jerk the tears of people who love Jesus by describing the gory details of his suffering, so much that we forget about the gladness and glory behind the cross. God's Word doesn't intend for us simply to look at our suffering Savior and be sad. God's Word urges us to respond to Jesus' suffering with gladness, by realizing he was accomplishing our forgiveness by receiving his many blessings through faith, and by responding with the fruits of good works that follow. Hebrews 13:12,13,15,16 explains: "Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood [forgiveness]. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp [faith], bearing the disgrace he bore. Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise-the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased [fruit]." Forgiveness, faith, and fruits are for real-life Christians.

2. Because Jesus suffered, he carried our sentence out

St. Nicholas church in Amsterdam is known for its beautiful bells. A man wearing wooden gloves sits in the tower of the church pounding on a keyboard to make them ring, and if you are in the tower with him, all you hear is the clanging of the keys and the deafening noise of the bells over your head. No harmony. No meaning. The people outside, however, standing a few blocks away, hear a beautiful sound coming from those bells because they are in a position where they hear all the sounds together in harmony from a wider perspective.

The problem with the wailing women at the Way of Sorrows is that they didn't back up to see Jesus' suffering. They didn't harmonize Jesus' powerful, glorious deity with his humiliation and submission to the Father's will. They didn't consider the bigger picture of God's eternal plan for salvation, and, most unfortunately, they didn't see themselves in that picture with Jesus. While their eyes were filled with tears, their hearts were not melted by sorrow and repentance for their own sins and the sins of their people who had rejected Jesus. They didn't look to Jesus in faith for their salvation. So Jesus rebukes these women, not demanding that they refrain from weeping, but telling them to weep for the right reason. His suffering is our joyful sorrow.

The only land of weeping left for these women was the wailing of people subjected to terrible judgment. Jesus came to love and save them, but these women, their husbands, their children, and their neighbors rejected Jesus as their Savior and only pitied him as a poorly treated teacher. Their judgment would be the wrath of God on their sins-of which Jesus gives unmistakable warning here. "The time will come when you will say, 'Blessed are the barren women' " (vs. 29). These shocking words speak uncharacteristically in praise of childlessness, since children are a blessing from the Lord. However, when the city of Jerusalem would soon be surrounded, besieged, and destroyed, the physical suffering and emotional agony would be so great that Jewish women would say, "It's a mercy of God that I have no children who must suffer this!"

Jesus then widens his scope with a quote from the prophet Hosea, using the local reality of Jerusalem's pending destruction as a description of the personal reality of judgment day. By wishing the mountains and hills to crash down on them, the people enduring such destruction reveal their urgent but unsuccessful attempt to end their suffering immediately with a sudden catastrophe, rather than experience any prolonged punishment from an enemy. Finally, Jesus quotes this proverb: "If men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?" (vs. 31). If a green tree, still ripe and growing, is somehow burned, just think how those flames would consume a dry pile of twigs and branches! Here Jesus is the green tree, enduring such intense suffering; so unbelievers, including these women and many of their people, should expect to receive much worse than this.

There is a lesson here for us today. Jesus' suffering and death is more than good drama, more than a good movie where we walk out in awe only because our emotions have been conflicted from start to finish. We aren't spectators to Jesus' suffering; we are participants. You and I were in the picture of Jesus carrying the cross, not just Simon of Cyrene. You and I were put to death with Christ, we were punished by the wrath of God, our sins were eternally condemned, and therefore since the just punishment of God has been satisfied-we are at peace with him. For believers in Christ, there is no more wrath of God left for us to fear. The suffering of our Savior doesn't just move us, it changes us. It changes who we are, how we think, and what we do. The Holy Spirit leads us to respond to the story of our Savior not just with stirred emotion, but with strengthened faith-the kind of heroic, energetic trust in this dying and rising Lord that makes us laugh at Satan, stare down temptation, and charge into a life of good works with reckless abandon. It's a faith that feels most at home on its feet in worship praising Jesus for his love and on its knees pondering Jesus' sacrifice for sin. It's a faith that can't help but share the joy of Jesus with others and finds fulfillment in humbling itself to treat others with a sacrificial love. Jesus isn't looking for sympathy; he's looking for faith. His suffering is our joyful sorrow.

Our sins should make us sad, and we're blessed when we pause and ponder them, as we do during Lent, but our Savior makes us glad. So it's okay to smile, even for Lutherans, even during Lent. Amen.