Sunday, March 17, Fifth Sunday in Lent
“Can You Drink the Cup?”
Psalm 119:9-16; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:32-45
Divine Service IV with Holy Communion
#437 “Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed”; #618 “I Come, O Savior, to Thy Table”; #563 “Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness”
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Jesus asked His disciples, “Can you drink the cup I drink?” What was in Jesus’ cup?
All the sin in the world, including yours and mine, was in His cup. Every sin ever committed, every rotten thing ever done by a human being; every murder, every massacre, every genocide; every injustice, every act of violence, every vile act against an innocent child; every miscarriage of justice, every hurt, every wrong, every trespass; every last bit of human hate, prejudice, and meanness; all the selfishness and awfulness and greed in the world, was in His cup. Every evil and covetous thought, every bit of human envy and jealousy, every act of retribution or revenge; every resentment we harbor , every bitterness we hang onto, every sin we leave unforgiven; every sin we’ve sinned in thought, word, or deed, everything we’ve done or left undone; every time we could have helped someone but didn’t, or should have loved someone but wouldn’t -- all of it was in that awful cup that Jesus had to drink.
Rejection and mockery from His own brothers was in Jesus’ cup. Betrayal by His friends and those who claimed to love Him; condemnation by His countrymen, His own people; death at the hands of the government; mocking, spitting, flogging, a cross – it was an awful, bitter cup He had to drink. “Father, if it is possible, take this cup from Me,” Jesus prayed in Gethsemane. Then when Judas and the mob showed up, Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?”
In Jesus’ cup was all God’s wrath, anger, and righteous judgment over sin, sin that couldn’t be let go or brushed off or overlooked, but had to be paid for. The cup of wrath should have been yours and mine, the price of our own sin, one we were condemned to have to drink. It was what we deserved, what our sins earned, what we had coming -- the full strength, undiluted, holy wrath of God. And Jesus snatched that
cup of punishment out of our hands, and drank it down to the dregs Himself, and said, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they’re doing.”
In our Gospel, Jesus tried to explain to His disciples what He was doing in the world, and why. He’d told them just before this: "I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age.” He told them they’d receive all those good things as their reward for following Him -- but also that persecutions would come along with the deal. He’d have to drink a bitter cup, to win those things for them; but they’d have to drink from a bitter cup, too, to get to where they were going. He told them, “Many who are first will be last, and the last first."
Jesus was leading them on the way up to Jerusalem, “the place where all God’s prophets go to die.” The disciples were astonished, amazed, terrified, frightened, “sore afraid.” Jesus, they knew, had gotten under the skin of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem. He’d called them out for their sins, and drove the merchants out of their temple, and called them liars, hypocrites, and thieves, even sons of the devil, which is exactly what they were. And they’d put out word that anyone who knew where He was, was ordered to turn Him in. Everyone knew that they wanted Him dead in that place. “Let us also go, and die along with Him,” said Thomas. And along the way, Jesus began to explain to them why they were going to Jerusalem, instead of staying as far away from that place as they could.
What Jesus told them was accurate to a “t”, and exactly what did happen. He knew all along what was in the cup that was waiting for Him -- condemnation and mocking and spitting, hatred and betrayal and death on a cross. He didn’t pull any punches in telling His disciples so. The unpleasantness seems to have gone right over their heads, though, or they just didn’t take it seriously. We do that too, don’t we? We only want the sweet cup, and shy away from the bitter one. We love to hear about blessings and good and pleasant things from God; but we shut our ears when Jesus talks about repentance, obedience, and suffering for His sake. We’re not nearly so eager to follow along, are we, when the road Jesus is taking us down leads to a cross? I’d like to skip right over the valley of the shadows myself, if I could, and proceed straight to the green pastures and the still waters. But Lord, have mercy, it just doesn’t work that way.
So, like they hadn’t even heard what Jesus just said, James and John, the sons of Zebedee -- the “Sons of Thunder”, Jesus called them -- came to Jesus with a request
“Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we may ask.” Remember how the disciples had been arguing about “who’s the greatest” as they walked along the road?
It looks like the sons of Zebedee were trying to get the best seats in the kingdom for themselves. (Matthew’s Gospel says they had their mother come to Jesus to ask the question for them!) It looks like they were also hoping to skip the awful valley and go right to the green grass.
Jesus asks them, “What do you want Me to do for you?” And they answer, "Let one of us sit at Your right and the other at Your left in Your glory." What they were asking for, I think, was all the glory without any of the pain, salvation without suffering or effort or sacrifice, an easy road to heaven. Everything Jesus had said about “pick up your cross and follow Me” must have gone in one ear and out the other. Again, that’s not how this works; and Jesus tells them so. "You don't know what you are asking," Jesus said. "Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”
We already talked about what was in the cup Jesus had to drink. Can you drink from that cup, too? Are you willing to taste that bitter, sour wine for His sake? The baptism Jesus talks about here is a baptism of fire, a baptism of hate and bitterness and rejection that will be thrown at you when you try to bear witness; a baptism of all the love you try to give thrown back in your face; a baptism of giving all the love you have to give, to people who refuse to love you back; a baptism of unrequited love; a baptism of people who’ll want to kill you just for telling them the truth. James and John, are you able to face even that for Me? And they answer, “Yes, we can; we’re willing and able,” not understanding yet what that answer would mean. Jesus tells them, "You will indeed drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at My right or left is not for Me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared."
If you’re going to follow Jesus, with any degree of dedication or seriousness or honesty, drinking from the bitter side of the cup isn’t going to be optional. James and John found that out as time went on. James was martyred, beheaded, for the sake of Christ. John ended his life alone and in exile, having lost all the things of this world for his Savior’s sake. Does it really matter if we get the “good seats” when we get to heaven? Heaven doesn’t have any bad seats! I’ll sweep the floors, wait on tables, wash feet, if that’s the job they give me when I get there. I’ll sweep floors, wait on tables, and
wash feet here one earth, if that’s what the Lord asks of me. All that matters is that I do get there. “I’d rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the house of the wicked,” the Psalm says. That’s the “spirit of servanthood” Jesus had been trying to teach His disciples all along. He even washed their feet when the time came for it.
The other ten disciples were indignant, angry, and incensed with James and John, when they heard what they’d done. “You’re trying to put yourselves ahead of us! This is a blatant power grab! Who died and left you two in charge?” A thing like this could fracture any group of human beings trying to work together – bring all the underlying tensions boiling to the surface; cause all the resentment and jealousy and sin, all that awful bitterness, to show itself and rear its ugly head.
So Jesus called them together, huddled them up, to “nip it in the bud.” He reminded them again what He was building His Kingdom and His Church to be. (They were the ones who were going to have to build it after He was gone, after all.) "You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,” He tells them, “and their high officials exercise authority over them.” Isn’t that how the sinful world works -- on authority, on control, on subjugating people, on privilege and the power of money and gold? (“Whoever has the gold gets to make the rules” is the sinful opposite of the Golden Rule.) Ever since the fall into sin, everyone has been fighting over who’s the greatest, or who gets to be the greatest. The history of this world has been an everlasting game of “king of the hill” – a game nobody ever really wins.
“Not so with you,” Jesus tells them. Not so with you, My disciples; not so with you, My children; not so with you, My Holy Christian Church. If you want to be great in God’s Kingdom, you have to put on your servant’s robes, and take on a servant’s attitude, and wrap yourself in a foot-washing towel. “Whoever wants to be first must be slave of all,” Jesus says. So no more arguing about who’s the greatest as we walk along the road together. No more complaining if the cup we’re given is bitter tasting, or inconvenient, or not to our liking, or not quite the one we had in mind. Jesus reminds them that He Himself didn’t come to be served, but to be the servant of all, to drink the cup of sin for us, so we could live.
The cup Jesus drank to save us was as bitter as a cup could ever be; so we could drink from a new cup, a better cup, a sweeter cup, one that would make everything we have to go through for His sake worthwhile, the bitterness forgotten for the sake of the joy coming our way. God tells us in Jeremiah about a New Covenant, a new cup God
has for us to drink, better and sweeter than the old one could ever be. The Old Covenant was a law covenant, a cup full of laws, rules, and commandments to keep; sweet if you were obedient to God and kept yourself from sin, but bitter with the punishment and wrath of God if you should fail. That Old Covenant brought condemnation, death, and hell, because it called on sinners to do what sinners cannot do: keep God’s law perfectly, be perfect as God is perfect, be holy as God is holy. Yet “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and “the wages of sin is death.”
Jesus came to bring us a New Covenant, a new agreement with God, based not on what we’re able to do, but on what Jesus has done for us. Jesus said, at the Last Supper, “This is My blood of the New Covenant, poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.”
And then He drank our bitter cup as He poured out His lifeblood for us on a cross.
What’s in the sweet cup, the New Testament cup, that we get to drink from today? What is it waiting for us on God’s altar this morning? It’s obvious enough that there’s wine in the cup, to go along with the bread; we can see it, smell it, feel it, and taste it. But what else is in the cup? Jesus Himself is in the cup, in blessed reality, just as He promised He would be. And not just in a symbolic or spiritual way, but the real and living Jesus Christ. We call that the Real Presence of Jesus. “This is My body, given for you; this is My blood, poured out for you,” Jesus says. “My body is real food and My blood is real drink,” Jesus said; and He meant what He said.
And because Jesus, full strength and undiluted, is really here, what else is in the cup, that makes it so sweet? Forgiveness is in the cup. Salvation is in the cup. Life itself is in the cup. Everything that makes life bearable and worth living, and makes life sweet, is in the cup. When we drink the cup with Jesus in it, we’re given the faith to believe God for His promises, and the grace we need to forgive others as we’ve been forgiven, and the help we need to love others as our Savior has loved us. There’s love, peace, and joy, and hope, in the cup.
What happens inside us when we eat the holy bread, the bread with the Word of God in it, and drink from the cup of salvation that’s waiting for us here? Does anything happen to us on the inside, aside from the normal process of digestion? Yes! What we’re receiving today is sweet medicine for our souls! Maybe it’s right that we should come to God’s table hanging our heads, and carrying the weight of all our sins; but when we walk away again, we should be grinning from ear to ear. We’re forgiven! We’re free! Hallelujah, praise Jesus, thanks be to God, we’re free! That’s sweet! And
feeding on Jesus will make us sweeter people; more loving, more faithful, more able to see hope in our own troubles, and to help others have hope, too.
Welcome to the Lord’s Table! Keep coming back! May what God has for us here keep us all strong and faithful, and full of love and grace, until we all eat and drink together with Jesus when we reach our home at last. In Jesus’ name; Amen.