Nine-year-old Jeremy came out of his Sunday School class with a big grin. As his mum hugged him, she asked Jeremy what he’d been learning. “The Passover!” he answered excitedly, “when God rescued the Israelites from the ‘gyptians.”
“Great—do you remember what it was all about?” Jeremy’s mum asked. Jimmy paused for a fair while, before responding thoughtfully with carefully chosen words. “Well mum…our teacher told us…how God sent Moses…behind enemy lines. He dug tunnels under the barbed wire fences, so God’s people could get away from the ‘gyptians. When Moses and the Israelites got to the Red Sea, the engineers built a pontoon bridge and all the people walked across safely. Then he had a Zoom meeting with HQ to order an air strike. They sent in bombers to blow up the bridge so that the ‘gyptians couldn’t follow them, and all the Israelites were saved.”
Flabbergasted at what she’d just heard, Jeremy’s mum said: “Now, Jeremy…that’s not really what your teacher taught you, was it.” Jeremy paused again, then answered: “Well…no, mum—but if I told it in the way the teacher did, you’d never believe it!”
The Passover celebration is the setting to today’s Gospel reading, and the backdrop to it is almost as hard to believe as little Jeremy’s creative retelling of the original. God had commanded his people to commemorate his salvation of them with a special feast throughout the generations. So each year God’s people celebrated the Passover, remembering God’s faithfulness and mercy in freeing their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. At the beginning of today’s text, Luke tells us that that’s what Jesus was preparing to do with his disciples: “Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover.”
But then we hear: “And the Chief Priests and scribes were seeking how to put him to death, for they feared the people.” What I find even more astonishing than little Jeremy’s version of the first Passover is that behind the celebration of God’s mercy and faithfulness in bringing freedom for his people, the sole focus of the religious leaders was planning a hit job on Jesus.
Yet it’s not unbelievable. It really happened. How had it come to this?
The Pharisees saw themselves as the righteous ones and the moral gatekeepers of the religious community. Righteousness, for the Pharisees, was achieved by strictly keeping their rules and traditions. They shunned the common people and had no concept of grace or forgiveness, or that they needed God’s grace and forgiveness themselves. They thought God would approve of them because of their pious performance.
When Jesus came on the scene, the Pharisees were horrified that he should associate with common people. They grumbled against Jesus, saying, “This man receives sinners and eats with them.” (Luke 15:2). The sinners came to Jesus because they saw in him a hope the legal structure could not give. They saw in Jesus divine peace, grace and favour, for those who are helpless to help themselves. They were those of whom Jesus said: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:3).
Jesus was a threat to the Pharisees’ whole religious system. When Jesus healed a man born blind (John 9) it was on the Sabbath day, a big no-no for the Pharisees, because no work was to be done on the Sabbath, and they saw healing as work. They thought blindness was a punishment for some kind of sin so this man didn’t deserve favour and blessing. They asserted Jesus had no divine origins because he didn’t keep the Sabbath. They reviled the blind man whom Jesus healed, when he defended Jesus. They cast the man out, symbolic of cutting him off from the favour and protection of the synagogue.
Later, after Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead, a large crowd came to meet Jesus and also to see the resurrected Lazarus. So the Chief Priests made plans to kill Lazarus as well, because on account of Lazarus’ resurrection, many people were going away and believing in Jesus. (John 12:9-12).
When Jesus rode in to Jerusalem and the crowd rejoiced and praised God, saying, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” the Pharisees in the crowd protested, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!” (Luke 19:37-39). The Pharisees rejected the claims Jesus made about himself of being God’s Son and couldn’t stand Jesus because they had lost the approval of the people and were envious of his popularity. And now, in Luke’s Gospel, as the rest of Jerusalem prepares to celebrate God’s mighty redemption of his people, the Chief Priests and the scribes were seeking how to put Jesus, the Saviour of the world, to death. Luke adds: “for they feared the people.”
Did you notice that their greatest concern is not what it would mean to put an innocent man to death—a man who just happened to be the Son of God; the promised Saviour from of old—but what they were most concerned about was what the people would think. They didn’t want the people disapproving and getting in the way of their plans. These words—“for they feared the people”—draws to mind Pilate’s capitulation to the crowds’ pressure at Jesus’ sentencing. Although Pilate had repeatedly told the crowd he found no guilt in Jesus, they cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” So Pilate delivered him over to them to be crucified because he feared the crowd and wanted their approval (John 19:15-16).
The need for approval isn’t limited to Jewish religious leaders or Roman governors. It is a part of our human nature. We all need approval. The need for approval from others is a powerful driving force behind our behaviours. It’s often appropriate to give and receive approval in the right circumstances. But fear of what people will think of us, and how they will react with us, and what we might need to do to meet their approval can be all consuming and crippling for some and can cause people to put themselves in all sorts of unhealthy, dangerous, and even deadly situations.
From a young age we are taught that if we achieve and perform and comply with expectations, then we will win the approval of others. This need to gain others’ approval is what lies behind children striving for perfectionism with school grades and good behaviour. It’s what lies behind young boys obsessing with being muscly and young girls struggling with eating disorders and addiction to plastic surgery, trying to match up to photoshopped images of celebrities. So often teenage girls desperate for approval become single mothers, and so often the babies they abandon are scarred for life, desperate for anyone’s approval to fill the hole of rejection. Teenagers hooked on drugs, or doing stupid stuff in cars and killing pedestrians or themselves, is so often because they were looking for the approval of their peers. The need for approval from others is what leads to people striving for perfectionism and becoming workaholics, so that finally they can earn that promotion and the recognition of others…even when it costs them their family and their whole life.
The need for approval is not foreign to us in the church either. Some Christians can strive to look like they have it all together on the outside with their bible knowledge and spiritual persona, while on the inside they are crying out to be affirmed. There is always the temptation to misuse spiritual disciplines like worship, bible study and charity with the intention of gaining affirmation and approval from others.
Yet the need for approval is not the only strong driver of behaviour. Another is love.
And in today’s text we see God’s own love. Even though it is the religious leaders’ plan to do away with Jesus, and Judas’ plan, and Satan’s plan…it is also the Heavenly Father’s plan. Against the backdrop of chaos and the stupendous selfishness of the religious leaders, God is still in control.
Because of his great love for us, God gave up his own Son to give you life. Jesus came to free you from the suffocating burden of trying to please others and constantly measure up to earn the approval of others. And he died to free you from the human struggle—the futile attempt—of trying to climb the never-ending ladder of reaching God’s holy standards and so earn his approval. Jesus himself is the ladder, the door, the gate to God’s righteousness and approval, and through faith in Christ you have it all.
When you were baptised in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, your Father in heaven approved of you just as he approved of Jesus at his own baptism: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Your father in heaven said of you “This is my son with whom I am well pleased”; “This is my daughter with whom I am well pleased.” Joined to Jesus there is nothing else needed for you to have the approval of your Father in heaven. What does it matter what others think of us? You are a child of the King who has been redeemed by the precious blood of the Lamb!
It was not merely a lamb that was sacrificed, but God gave his own Son to redeem you as his very own precious possession. Christ is our Passover Lamb who was sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7). You were not ransomed with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” (1 Peter 1:18-19).
So where can you find God’s approval? God’s approval of you is found at the Crossroads, and in his holy supper, where he brings all the benefits of the Cross to us personally—his divine favour, blessing, grace, forgiveness, mercy, and approval. This meal is the guarantee that your Father approves of you for Jesus’ sake, who, although he had no sin, became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). And so he welcomes you as his honoured guests to the foretaste of the feast to come, where there is set for you a place for you in his heavenly banquet hall forever. Amen.
