“Pondering the Passion”
Text: Luke 18:31-34
2-18 -2026
In the name of Him who loved us and gave Himself for us, dear friends in Christ. St. Augustine once said, “He who sings, prays twice.” What he was pointing to is the way in which putting words to music causes the singer to reflect more deeply on the thoughts expressed in the words. This is especially true when the mood and tempo of the music fits the message. That is to say a song with a snappy beat and a cheerful lilt lifts the spirit and reinforces lyrics that convey joy, while music that’s dark and somber helps the soul to express sorrow or grief. In addition to this, singing has a more lasting effect on the mind because song lyrics tend to be more memorable than just words alone. I regularly point this out to my confirmation students who complain that they can’t memorize parts of the Catechism. And yet they can almost instantly learn the long and complicated lyrics to their favorite pop songs.
St. Augustine had it right when he said, “He who sings, prays twice.” That’s why for this year’s Midweek Lenten series we’ve chosen to take a closer look at some of the classic hymns of the season. You see, in the forty days of Lent we are supposed to be pondering the passion of our Lord. We are to be reviewing the facts and history as recorded for us in the Scriptures so that we know what happened. We should be inquiring into its meaning and its role in God’s plan of salvation so we know why it happened. And we should be exploring its continuing significance in our lives as believers in Jesus so that we can learn to trust Him completely and understand what it means to take up our own crosses and follow Him.
With that in mind, we turn our attention to this evening’s selection: “Jesus, I Will Ponder Now”, the hymn we just sang. I’d encourage you to keep your bulletin open to this hymn because I’ll be making reference to its words a little later. It’s an oldie. It was written by a German Lutheran named Sigismund von Birken, the same fellow who wrote “Let Us Ever Walk with Jesus.” It first appeared in a hymnal published in1653, and it’s been a favorite in the Lutheran Church ever since. The reason is that like so many other great hymns, it’s more than just words set to music; it’s also a prayerful meditation. Kind of like a little sermon. And like all sermons it’s based upon texts from Scripture. The main Bible passage for this hymn is Luke 18:31-34, which is our Gospel reading for tonight.
Isn’t it amazing? In that text Jesus tells his disciples in unmistakable terms exactly what is about to transpire, and they don’t get any of it. And it isn’t because they were dimwitted or slow. No, the passage actually says that the meaning of his words was hidden from them. They couldn’t understand. Something was preventing it. What was that something? The same thing that blocks all human hearts and minds from understanding the things of God: it was their sin. The Scriptures tell us that the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not understand the things that come from him nor can it do so, for such things are spiritually discerned. Without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the message of the cross is utter foolishness. No one can understand it. The sinful human heart naturally gravitates toward what is attractive, pleasurable, and brings glory to itself. It turns away in disgust from shame, disgrace, humiliation, and pain, and so it simply cannot understand the cross. It’s not until after His resurrection when the atonement for sin has been completed and Jesus breathes on His disciples the Holy Spirit, they begin to understand what it’s all about.
When you think about it, we too suffer from the blinding effects of sin. And as we consider the history of the church, or as we look around today, we can see all kinds of examples of people failing to really understand what the Lord’s suffering and death was all about.
You may not know this, but in the Middle Ages, retelling the passion story often led to the persecution of Jews. When Christians thought about the terrible things their Lord had suffered at the hands of His fellow Jews, they were enraged. And they imagined they could show their devotion to Jesus by taking revenge on the descendants of those who had handed Him over to death. Obviously, we condemn that. There’s nothing Christian about it. But sad to say, in some places the idea persists. You may remember that when the film The Passion of the Christ was about to be released in 2004, it was strongly opposed by Jewish groups who feared it would provoke violence against them. I’m not aware of any incidents where that fear became a reality. But hopefully you see the problem here. Jesus doesn’t need me to rescue him, and He certainly doesn’t want me to seek revenge for the way He was treated. It defeats the whole purpose of Christ’s suffering and death!
Another common but mistaken approach to pondering the passion is to focus upon its grim details merely to create feelings of sympathy for Jesus. Now, on one hand, it’s only natural. When we see the brutality of His beatings and the horrors of the cross, we’re compelled to feel bad for Him. We’d feel bad about seeing anyone suffer like that. Again, if you saw The Passion of the Christ in the theater, you know how deeply it affected people—even non-Christians. We feel sorry for anyone who endures such awful pain. It’s compounded by knowing that it was undeserved. I mean, we want to see bad guys get their due and we don’t mind seeing them suffer a little; but we always feel sad when we see somebody innocent being hurt. It’s just so unfair. That’s true; but the mistake is to stop there. You see, the reason we feel bad about it is not so much because we understand Jesus’ passion; rather it’s that we’re identifying with Him as the victim. We’re mentally placing ourselves on His side against His enemies, except instead of actively lashing out against them like before; we now act as though we were also receiving the attacks. The result is that we can soothe our consciences and feel good about how much compassion we have for Jesus; but it misses the point.
And while I’m talking about ways to wrongly ponder the passion, I should mention one more. These days in some Christian circles it’s become popular to see the passion of our Lord as sort of a moral example for the rest of us. When this happens, Jesus is portrayed as someone who was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for what He believed in, and inspired by Him we should be willing to do the same. The thought is that Jesus was something of a radical peacenik who promoted ideas of social equality and justice far ahead of His time, and so He was killed by the establishment that was fighting to preserve the evil status quo. Following Jesus, then, is all about continuing His cause to stamp out poverty, injustice, discrimination, and war no matter what the cost. People who see it this way do not attribute any atoning or redeeming value to the Lord’s passion. In fact, they’re usually offended by the idea that the God of heaven would be so barbaric as to demand some kind of sacrifice for sin.
n all this, I hope you see how easy it is to ponder the passion of our Lord and still gain no spiritual benefit from it. That’s why this hymn about pondering the passion of our Lord is really a prayer—a prayer that begins with a request that the Lord will send his Spirit to help us understand what it’s all about: “With your Spirit me endow for such meditation”, we sang. These words acknowledge that we cannot properly apprehend its significance without illumination from above. But it’s vital that we grasp it because, as the first verse continues, if we don’t properly understand the cross and cherish what the Lord did for us there, we will certainly perish.
In the second verse, our attention is directed to the details of the Lord’s suffering. Named are the instruments of his anguish: the bonds, the scourge, the nails, the spear, the crown of thorns. Even the mocking and brutality of the soldiers is hinted at. It’s all quite vivid, as it should be. We need to see what terrible suffering our Lord endured—and yes, it should shock us and move us to pity. But the crucial thing is that we not stop there. We have to ask the question, “Why? Why is the Lord made to suffer so?” The answer is given in verse three: “I also, and my sin wrought your deep affliction.” We miss the point of the passion entirely if we fail to grasp that He suffered for us, in our place. And more than that, even though we were not physically present, through our sins we really are the ones inflicting the pain on Jesus. The hymn writer directs you to see yourself in the angry, mocking crowd; spitting, cursing, hitting Him, and driving in the nails. When you see the suffering Lord we are led to think, “I did that to Him.” That’s what it means to say, “He died for my sin.”
That thought should move us to yet greater repentance, which is the idea captured in the first part of verse four: “Grant that I your Passion view with repentant grieving.” Looking at the suffering of Jesus, we should see the frightful price God’s justice demands for sin and it should produce in us a certain amount of horror to know that every sin we commit, no matter how slight it may seem, directly affects the Lord Jesus. The prayer here is that God would use that truth to break our sinful hearts. The rest of verse four is a prayer that seeing the suffering of Jesus in that light should also be motivation for us to try to stop sinning in the future. In fact, the next line, where it says, “Let me not bring shame to you, by unholy living” was quite a bit stronger in the old TLH version. There the same line goes, “Nor Thee crucify anew, by unholy living.” The idea is that if we fall into the cycle of sin, repent, sin, repent, without making an honest effort to change our ways, we are effectively crucifying our Lord over and over again, which would be a truly heartless thing to do. The trouble is, we all do exactly that.
Of course, if that’s where our pondering of the Lord’s passion ended, we’d be in a sorry state indeed. But having now seen how our sin and guilt brought suffering and death upon Jesus, in verse five we are invited to see the Good News. Yes, my sin killed Him but at the same time, His suffering was a sacrifice for me and my forgiveness. So, the prayer here is, “Now that I’m terrified by my sins, show me, Jesus, how your cross and passion are the assurance that because of your great love all my sins are atoned for.” The prayer is for peace, pardon, and continued trust that through the cross God always forgives all my sin. He cannot do otherwise, because the same Jesus who prayed, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do” continues to pray on my behalf. And the Father always hears and answers the prayers of his beloved Son.
Finally, in verse six, the prayer concludes with the request for a clean new heart to live as a child of God, for strength to bear the crosses that he assigns, for humility, and for perseverance in times of trial and loss. It’s a prayer that the Lord will keep us in the saving faith all our days. And then, having journeyed through the depths of death and despair and being raised up again with Christ, the hymn writer leaves us where all good Lutheran hymns end: in heavenly glory with the Lord.
So, all together what we see in this sermon set to music is a prayer to the Lord that largely answers itself. In the process of asking for the Lord’s help to ponder the passion correctly, it takes us through all the steps that are necessary to do just that. I can think of no better way for us to begin our Lenten journey together. May our merciful God and Father who gave His Son to die for us, and who sent us his Spirit so that we can understand and receive this precious gift, keep us now, rightly pondering the passion until in His grace He brings us home. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!