Responses to Jesus II: Friends

How loyal are your friends? Have they ever hurt you, let you down, or perhaps even betrayed you? If you’ve been disappointed by someone close to you, then you and Jesus share something in common.

I have divided my  10-minute Palm Sunday sermon on Luke 22-23 into three blog posts. The first one was about how Jesus’ enemies respond to him, during Passion Week.

This post looks at the response of Jesus’ friends.

• How do Jesus’ friends, his disciples, respond to him?
  1. One, they argue in front of Jesus over who is the greatest (Luke 22:24-27).
     1. As Jesus is going to die, his disciples are bickering who will be considered the greatest after he’s gone.
  2. Two, they abandon Jesus while he prays (Luke 22:39-46).
     1. On the Mount of Olives, Jesus asks his disciples to pray with him, but they fell asleep (see image above).
     2. And in Mark’s gospel, they fall asleep three times (Mark 14:32-42).
  3. Three, they betray Jesus, with a kiss (Luke 22:21-23, 47-48).
     1. Despite being warned by Jesus beforehand, Judas betrays Jesus to his death, essentially handing him over to the Jewish leaders to want to kill him.
  4. Four, they deny Jesus (Luke 22:31-34, 54-62)
     1. Three times Peter denies being a friend of Jesus.
     2. And like Judas, Peter was warned ahead of time, and yet he still did exactly what Jesus predicted.

• Not Shocking Jesus
  1. The fact that Jesus’ enemies treated him negatively (mocking, accusing, and killing–see last blog) we can understand, but the fact that even his disciples, his closest friends treated him so negatively (arguing, abandoning, betraying, and denying) is shocking.
  2. Yet, most of these actions against Jesus were predicted by Christ himself beforehand and many of which were repeated three times.
  3. One thing people didn’t do to Jesus was to shock him.
  4. I’d like to think I wouldn’t have been among the people betraying, denying, mocking, and killing Jesus. But realistically, I’m sure I would have.
  5. In the final hours of Jesus’ life everyone rejected him, a microcosm of what happened in the Garden of Eden, and throughout human history, as all of humanity ultimately rejects Jesus.

In the final post, I’ll look at one often over-looked hopeful response to Jesus during Passion week.

Image from http://www.artbible.info/art/large/157.html