To listen to this homily click here.

I have always been haunted by the fact that Jesus didn’t really win the argument, that he convinced only very few. What I mean is that all along and throughout his ministry, although at times he attracted countless many, his disciples, when all was said and done, were few.

Take, for example, in John’s Gospel, Jesus’ experience at Capernaum; at the end of his teaching in the synagogue there, that his flesh is true food and his blood true drink, all but the Twelve, it seems, left him, “no longer accompanied him,” John writes.[1] The five thousand is reduced to barely twelve, all after Jesus opened his mouth, after he taught and preached. You see, they didn’t like what he said; “who can accept it?” they asked.[2] He didn’t win the argument.

Near the end of the synoptic gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—Jesus doesn’t seem to win the argument either. Matthew’s account I like the best: at the end of several arguments and debates in the Temple, there in the final days leading up to Good Friday—arguments about Jesus’ authority, the resurrection of the dead, and taxes to Caesar—no one seems particularly convinced by what Jesus was saying. The conversation simply comes to a stop. “No one could think of anything to say,” Matthew writes; “no one dared to ask him any further questions.”[3] There is no account of mass conversions, of Pharisees or Sadducees or scribes changing their minds and changing course. Instead, Jesus calls them all hypocrites; “how can you escape being condemned to hell?” he asks.[4] “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you.”[5] That’s how Jesus ended his preaching ministry in Jerusalem; you see, he didn’t win any arguments, his words weren’t all that persuasive. Which is what, as I said, as a Christian and a preacher, I find so haunting, that Jesus didn’t win many arguments, that he convinced only very few.

It’s also haunting that it’s at this point—when Jesus had seemingly lost the argument—that he begins to talk about destruction and the end of all things. “[T]he days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone,” he says.[6] He talks about disasters and wars and men dying of fright before the coming of the Son of Man.[7] Jesus the rustic carpenter and radical preacher is now an apocalyptic prophet. He didn’t convert them, didn’t change their minds, so now he simply warns them—“pray that you have the strength to escape,” he says.[8] This is the sort of Jesus we don’t normally like to remember, this wild voice warning of tribulations to come. As I said, he’s haunting—this Jesus Christ of the New Testament.

But, of course, it’s what Jesus says to his followers, to those who do believe, that is relevant to us; however, this too is quite haunting. He talks of persecution, you see, of the followers of Jesus handed over to prisons and kings; he says Christians should expect to be betrayed by those closest to them, even family members. In John’s Gospel Jesus warns of the world’s hatred for Christians; Jesus even says that some people will hate Christians so much that when they kill them, they will think they’re worshiping God. That is, the haters and killers of Christians, Jesus said, will take a sort of euphoric religious pleasure in it.[9] Haunting stuff, as I said. It’s why, ever since the Book of Revelation, we have praised martyrs, “for they loved not their lives unto the death.”[10] But it’s also why so many Christians have proven false in times of trial, why so many Christians in word have not been Christians in deed. Because Jesus said his followers would be hated, and we don’t want to be hated. Because so many of us choose the praise of a world we see than of a Christ we don’t.

And so, what does this mean for us? It means, I think, that if Jesus didn’t win any arguments but instead suffered crucifixion, then we Christians should expect the same. We shouldn’t, in all our apologetics and rhetorical defenses and even in our preaching, expect to change the minds of the rulers of the world; we shouldn’t expect to win very many arguments nor be so foolish as to think we’re going to win the culture back. Instead we should prepare for Good Friday, by drawing near to Christ in the Upper Room, around the table with Passover bread and the blood of the Lamb. That is, we should prepare to be hated, to suffer and even die; we should be prepared to be measured as Christians by our capacity to suffer for the name of Christ. And that’s because Christ’s definitive word, you see, wasn’t what he spoke in synagogues and the Temple; rather, it was his sacrifice on the cross, his death and resurrection. Which is the difficult thing for we Christians, the hard invitation, the truth we want always politely to forget: “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”[11] That’s what we don’t want to accept, why we Christians sometimes talk too much and why we’re sometimes so defensive. Because although want to speak, we don’t want to sacrifice. Because we don’t want to offer the testimony Jesus asks us to give in Luke’s Gospel today—the testimony of suffering and death. Because we fear it; we fear Good Friday, the cross and crucifixion Jesus said belongs to those who really follow him, to you and I. Because we won’t forsake our comfortable false Christianity, that worldly socially acceptable charade.

It was the philosopher Wittgenstein who said, “At the end of reasons comes persuasion.”[12] This is what we Christians want to do: to persuade the world to believe in Christ, to “make disciples of all nations.”[13] But to do this, this is what we must understand: that the definitive word Christians offer isn’t our philosophy or our history or our political theories (however much these have shaped the world), but rather our sacrifices, our patient sufferings, our martyrdoms, our deaths. That is, when we love like Christ would have us love, no matter what, and when we suffer for that love—when the world hates us for it and persecutes us for it—then we will finally have something meaningful to say to the world. “Father, forgive them…Amen, today you will be with me in Paradise.”[14] Which are, of course, the only words that matter, the only words that are credible, those we speak while the nails are still in our hands. Amen.

[1] John 6:66

[2] John 6:60

[3] Matthew 22:46 (NJB)

[4] Matthew 23:33 (NJB)

[5] Matthew 23:37

[6] Luke 21:6

[7] Luke 21:25-27

[8] Luke 21:36

[9] John 16:2

[10] Revelation 12:11 (KJV)

[11] Luke 14:27

[12] Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty 612 (81e)

[13] Matthew 28:19

[14] Luke 23:34, 43

© 2019 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield