An Easter message from our President
“His blood be on us and on our children!”
Matthew 27:25
In the midst of holy week it is all too tempting to rush ahead to Easter Sunday and focus on upcoming joy of the resurrection. This is not a bad thing, but that joy is intimately connected to the events that occur on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday and so we should not pass over these things too quickly.
As I listened to the passion narrative from Matthew’s gospel which was assigned for Palm/Passion Sunday, I was struck that the most unlikely characters remind us of the reason for our joy.
While Peter is busy denying the Lord, it is Pilate’s Roman wife who testifies to her husband that he should ‘have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream’ (Matthew 27:19). Through this unlikely person, the Holy Spirit reveals that Jesus is the Righteous Man who has fulfilled God’s Law and is therefore the only One who does not deserve death. And yet He stands before Pilate and the crowds, with the cross looming large in the distance. As we meditate on Christ’s suffering and death, our salvation is secured in this Righteous Man who suffered and died undeservingly, that we unrighteous ones might be forgiven and saved. And so, the Lord uses Pilate’s wife to remind us of where our hope lies.
Heeding his wife’s warning, Pilate famously washes his hands and declares that he is innocent of Jesus’ blood, at which point the crowds make the most shocking of declarations: ‘His blood be on us and our children!’ (Matthew 27:25). This bloodthirsty crowd was prepared to accept anything to secure Jesus’ death, but the irony is their murderous words actually reveal what Jesus would accomplish in the next hours.
While they were happy to have the guilt of Jesus’ blood on their hands and the hands of their children, Jesus offers up His blood for a better purpose, even for those who called for His death. As the letter to the Colossians says, Jesus has made peace between sinners like us and our Heavenly Father, through the blood of the cross (Colossians 1:19-20). And so we do pray that the blood of Jesus would be on each of us and our children, because this blood, this death, offers forgiveness and freedom to all who believe.
And finally as Jesus dies and the earth shakes and the dead are raised, it is a Roman centurion who declares ‘Truly this was the Son of God!’ (Matthew 27:54). As he utters these words this soldier bears witness to the fact that Jesus’s death is no ordinary death, and that hidden in human flesh and blood is God Himself, crucified and dead for our sake, that we might live for His sake.
Three unlikely characters all proclaiming the profoundly comforting and joyful reality of what Jesus’ death accomplishes for you and me. In the midst of murderous cries for blood, injustices and brutality, the Lord accomplishes His purposes so that we may face the uncertainties of these days with absolute certainty in the forgiveness and life that is ours through all that our Lord endured.
God bless your Holy Week observances in these next days, that you may recognise the Righteous One, the very Son of God, whose blood covers your sins and has secured peace with God for all who believe.
Christ is risen!
Pastor Matt Anker
President, Lutheran Mission - Australia