The Mourners' Encounter

The third person we meet beneath the cross of Jesus is actually a group. As Jesus trudges up Calvary, a group of women follow, “mourning and lamenting for him.” In this culture, mourning was a loud, showy ordeal: weeping, crying out, beating the chest, tearing clothes. In a way, it’s a relief for these mourners to show up in the story. After Pilate, Herod, the Jewish leaders, it’s nice for someone to show some sympathy! But Jesus stops and says, “Don’t weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children.” That’s a strange way to say ‘thanks for caring’! Then, he predicts terrible calamities about to come on them, and finishes with a strange proverb about green and dry wood. They were just trying to pay their respects!

This strange episode, probably the least familiar of Good Friday, teaches us how to have the right kind of sorrow at Easter.

We might assume at first that these women are Jesus’s disciples, the women who visit his tomb on Easter. But this is a different group: “daughters of Jerusalem.” These are mourners from Jerusalem—a place that Luke has repeatedly stressed rejects and misunderstands Jesus. (cf Luke 9:13, 13:33–34) For example, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, his disciples from Galilee cheered him, but the Jerusalem leaders growled, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples.’ Afterward, Jesus wept over Jerusalem’s hard heart: “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace.” (Luke 19: 39–44) Jerusalem is the Jewish capital, full of religious people who ought to welcome Jesus. But while they look good on the outside, their hearts are far from God.

Jerusalem is where people miss the point about Jesus, and these mourning women are a part of that. They don’t scream ‘crucify him!’ with the others; they are moved by his suffering. They get emotional and weep and mourn. But that’s as far as it goes. And Jesus, on his way to die, says, “That’s not what I’m looking for. You’re nice ladies, but you don’t understand what I’m doing, or what it has to do with you. If you did, you wouldn’t be weeping for me; you’d be weeping for yourselves.”

I remember going to see The Passion of the Christ in theaters. It graphically portrays the physical suffering of Jesus. Across the theater, men and women wept openly. Some Christians predicted that the Passion would bring a national spiritual awakening. But did it? It seems that millions of people were truly moved by what they saw. But then they wiped their eyes and returned to life as usual. That’s the kind of thing Jesus is addressing here: “Don’t weep for me; weep for yourselves.” Apparently, there’s a way to get near the cross, and to be moved by the cross, yet miss the point of the cross. To fail to grasp what Jesus is doing, why he’s doing it, and what it has to do with me.

Jesus wants us to see that he is not simply a good man who is suffering and looking for sympathy; he’s a Savior who’s dealing with our sin, looking for repentance.

It is not easy for me to see my sin from God’s perspective. I tend to think that my sin is not such a big deal, as long as I avoid committing major external sins, or if I stack up a big list of all the good things I do, or if I focus on people whose sin is more obvious than mine. But the cross confronts me with the truth about my sin.

The truth is, God made me to love him with all my heart, mind, and strength, and love others as I love myself. That is God’s standard. Yet in a billion tiny ways each day, my heart demands that I come first, instead of God and others—when I envy others for having what I think I deserve, when I use my words to tear others down to raise myself up, when I use deceit to cast myself in a better light, when I nurse bitter thoughts toward others for doing the very things I’ve done, when I get angry because things aren’t going my way. Sin is deeper and more pervasive than a few bad deeds: it’s the self-exalting, self-serving, self-worshipping impulse in my heart that shoves God and others aside to grasp what we want. And God takes it seriously. Because he is holy and loving, God is committed to annihilating sin and restoring himself to his rightful place of honor in the world. Which means I should be annihilated.

The only way out is if God does the unthinkable: if he piles every bit of our vile sin on his Son, and annihilates him in our place.

That’s what Jesus is talking about at the end: “if this is what God does to your sin when he sees it on his Son, how seriously must he take it? What will he do to the unrepentant on judgment day? When you see this cross, don’t weep for me. See the weight of your sin on my shoulders. See the price of that sin. Stop minimizing it, comparing yourself to others, making excuses. Own up to your need before God, and then come to me in repentance.”

Seeing your sin at the cross will make you weep. But if you believe the gospel, it won’t leave you weeping. Jesus said in Luke 6:21: Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh! This is what the gospel does for us: it begins in tears, but ends in laughter!
 
Heavy as the weight of my sin is, Christ has borne it all for me—past, present, and future! At the cross, I can be totally honest about my sin, and at the same time totally certain that God is for me. I can kneel at the cross and weep, but Jesus sends me away with laughter.

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Article by Eric Smith
Senior Pastor, Sharon Baptist Church