The Lutheran Hour
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"In the Middle"
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Text: John 19:18
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Years ago, in the middle of the week, my three youngest children presented me with what seemed like pocket change: five quarters, two dimes, a nickel, and seven pennies—a dollar and fifty-seven cents. They explained that it was the offering they had collected from their “church service.” They wanted me to give it to our “other church.”
“Our other church?” I asked. “Which church is that?”
They explained that the three of them had started holding church services in our basement. They were four, six, and ten at the time, which is weird, but not totally unexpected. See, I was the pastor of our local church, the church across the street from our house. And we were in the season of Lent, which, if you’re not familiar with it, Lent is the 40 days leading up to Good Friday and Easter—when Christians remember the anniversary of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.
During Lent, in our church tradition anyways, in addition to Sunday services, we have extra worship services on Wednesdays. And then, the week before Easter, called Holy Week, we have even more services—on Thursday, and Friday, sometimes even Saturday.
So, my kids, at the time were practically eating, breathing, and sleeping church. So, they decided to have their own mid-week service in our musty basement playroom, complete with handmade bulletins, Scripture readings, prayers, a sermon, and a $1.57 offering.
That was the moment I realized just how weird our family was, or was becoming.
I hadn’t always been a pastor. This was my second career. I had a different job for the first five years we were a family. So my wife and I and our two older children had once lived a routine that didn’t entirely revolve around services and activities at a local church. Before that, we’d attended church most Sundays, but usually not all the extra services. A few years later, however, when I had become the only full-time worker at our church, we were there pretty much there whenever anything was happening. Our life had become completely intertwined with the rhythms of the church, which sometimes feel like a grind, like any other job. But at this point, it was still new for us. It was our first Lent as a fulltime church-worker family. Church had become life. And sometimes it felt like we were completely caught up in the presence of God, at least on our good days.
It’s a strange world, the world of a fulltime church worker. Now, my wife helped me stay grounded. She helped me remember just how strange a world it is. In seasons like that, when I was consumed in all these sacred duties, she bore the burden of keeping the home fires burning. The people of our congregation also helped me stay grounded, visiting with them in the middle of the week, outside the church building. In that world, the world outside the church service, the “secular world,” as it’s sometimes called, I talked with people: people struggling to find work after being laid off. I met sons and daughters grieving as they moved their mothers into hospice care. I visited with an elderly man who lived alone and was doing his darndest to stay in his home and put off the inevitable move into a nursing home. And then there were the families smack in the middle of that secular world with their children, constantly driving around the city for sports and recitals and school functions. And I was frustrated with them when they didn’t make time to attend our midweek church services. How do I hold these two worlds together, the sacred and secular? I often asked myself that question.
My tradition within the Christian Church, the Lutheran Church, was born partly out of a struggle to answer that question. Martin Luther, after whom this program is named, had once privileged the sacred over the secular. He’d been a monk in the medieval Roman Catholic Church. He had started in a secular career. He thought he’d be a lawyer. But he couldn’t find peace with God in that life so he left the secular to join the monastery—not just one extra church service a week, but seven every day, all year ’round.
Luther thought that a life consumed with sacred duties would ease his troubled mind. But it didn’t. It made things worse. He felt more guilty and inadequate and angry at God. But then he started listening to the Bible, not just little bits of it, but whole books, something Christians had fallen out of the habit of doing at the time. From the Bible, Luther learned that God hadn’t left us to find peace for ourselves. Instead, God came to us. He had sent His Son, Jesus, into our secular world, in the middle of our struggles, to bear our burdens, to give us peace in His presence. God wasn’t cloistered up in heaven, waiting smugly for us to come crawling back to church. No, God showed up smack in the middle of life in Jesus with forgiveness and love and a promise never to leave us.
And when Luther learned it, he quit being a monk. But, in a sense, he never truly left the monastery. He married an ex-nun and they had lots of kids and lived in an old, secularized monastery. Luther brought the monastery into the world. And he labored to bring the world into the monastery, into a life lived in the presence of God.
We’re sort of continuing that work today on this program. We aim to bring God’s Word to you wherever you are, whenever you happen to be listening, whether you were planning to attend all the extra services at your local church this week, or some of them, or none of them. Whether you’re stuck at home, or in the middle of travel, let God’s Word meet you now, in these events from the final week of Jesus’ mortal life, as recorded in the Gospel of John. Listen, and see how Jesus did what we couldn’t, how He broke through the separation between us and God; and how He holds sacred and secular together.
We pick up the account in John chapter 12: The next day, the large crowd that had come to the [Passover] feast heard that Jesus was coming— “Jesus is coming? Jesus is coming to Jerusalem!” So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him, crying out, “Hosanna! [Save us!] Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord, [Blessed is] the King of Israel!” And Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it, just as it’s written, “Fear not, daughter of Zion; look, your King is coming, sitting on the colt of a donkey.”
His disciples did not understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified [when He was crucified and risen from the dead] then they remembered that these things had been written about Him and had been done to Him.
[Later, Jesus said] “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I am telling you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself, alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life will lose it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life. If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me, and where I am, there My servant will be also. My Father will honor the one who serves Me. Now My soul is troubled. And what should I say? Father, save Me from this hour. But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify Your Name.”
Then a voice came from heaven, saying, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. The crowd that stood there and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to Him.”
Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not Mine.” Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world [the devil] will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to Myself.” He said this to show what kind of death He was going to die.
Now it was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus, since He knew that the hour had come for Him to leave this world and go to the Father, and having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.
The evening meal was in progress, and the devil had already put it in the heart of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus. Jesus knew. He knew that the Father had put all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going back to God. So He got up from the meal, took off His outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around His waist. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash His disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around His waist.
[Afterward] Judas went out [from among them]. And it was night. When Judas had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him, and God will glorify Him in Himself, and He will glorify Him at once. Children, I am with you a little while longer. You will seek Me, and just as I said to the Jews [in Jerusalem], so I say to you now: where I go, you cannot come. A new command I give to you: love each other. As I have loved you, so you must love each other. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, when you have love for one another.”
Simon Peter says to Him, “Lord, where are You going?”
Jesus replied, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.”
Peter asked, “Lord, why can’t I follow You now? I will lay down my life for You.”
Jesus answered, “Will you really lay down your life for Me? I am telling you the truth, before the rooster crows, you will disown Me three times.”[Later that night, it happened just as Jesus had said. He was arrested, taken into custody. Judas had betrayed Him. The others abandoned Him. Peter denied Him. And the most sacred among them scorned Him. They brought Jesus to the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate]. By now it was early morning … Pilate went out and asked them, “What charges are you bringing against this man?” They answered, “If he had not done something bad, we would not have handed him over to you.” Pilate said, “Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.” The Jewish leaders said, “It is not lawful for us to execute anyone.” This happened to fulfill what Jesus had said about the kind of death He was going to die.
Then Pilate went back into his headquarters. He called for Jesus and said to Him, “You are the King of the Jews?”
Jesus answered, “Are you saying this on your own or did others tell you about Me?”
“I am not a Jew, am I?” Pilate answered. “Your own nation and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”
Jesus said, “My kingdom is not from this world. If My kingdom were from this world, My servants would fight to prevent My arrest by the Jewish leaders. But, as it is, My kingdom is not from here.”
Then Pilate said to Him, “So you are a king.”
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I have been born and for this I have come into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to My voice.”
Pilate says to Him, “What is truth?”Once again, Pilate went out to the Jews gathered there and says to them, “I find no basis for a charge against him. Now, it is your custom that I release to you one prisoner during the Passover. Do you want me to release ‘the King of the Jews’?” Then again, they shouted, saying, “Not this one! Give us Barabbas!” Now Barabbas had taken part in an uprising.
So, Pilate took Jesus and had Him flogged. The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head. They arrayed Him in a purple robe and went up to Him again and again, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And again, and again they struck Him in the face.
Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews there, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to show you that I find no basis for a charge against him.” Then Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate says to them, “Behold, the man.”
As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw Him, they shouted, saying, “Crucify! Crucify!” But Pilate says to them, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.” The Jewish leaders answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he made himself out to be the Son of God.”
When Pilate heard this word, he was even more afraid. He went back inside the headquarters. He says to Jesus, “Where do you come from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. Then Pilate says to Him, “Don’t you realize I have authority to set you free and authority to crucify you?”
Jesus answered, “You would have no authority over Me if it had not been given to you from above. Therefore, the one who has handed Me over to you had the greater sin.”From then on, Pilate was seeking to set Him free. But the Jewish leaders kept shouting, saying, “If you let this man go, you’re no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”
When Pilate heard this, he brought Jesus out. And he sat down on the judge’s seat at the place known as the Stone Pavement. Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was the sixth hour (around noon). And he says to the Jews there, “Behold, your King.”
But they shouted at him, “Away! Away! Crucify him!”
Pilate says to them, “Shall I crucify your king?”
The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” So then, Pilate handed Him over to them in order to be crucified.The soldiers took charge of Jesus. And Jesus, carrying His own cross, went out to the place of the Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified Him, and with Him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.
Near the cross of Jesus stood His mother, His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw His mother there, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to [His mother], “Woman, here is your son.” And to the disciple He said, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
After this, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus says, “I am thirsty.” A jar of sour wine was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. Then when He had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, He bowed His head and gave over the Spirit.
That’s from the Gospel according to John, excerpts from chapters 12, 13, 18, and 19. It’s how Jesus performed His most sacred duty. He did it to save us, to save you, to fight for you, to die and rise and to defeat the cosmic powers of the darkness—death, the devil, and the distrust that would separate us all from God forever.
Jesus was lifted up to draw you to Himself, to bring you peace, to plant a new creation, to testify to the truth, to fulfill the Scriptures, to be your King. He did it all in sacred glory that could only be from God.
And notice also the small, everyday kindness in the middle of it: the way He cared for His mother and His friend. The way He is invested in our secular concerns enough to know that His mom would need a son, and that His friend would need a mother.
Historian Andrei Cherny tells how he was visiting France years ago. He met two French women who had come in the middle of the week to Omaha Beach, near the site of the famous D-Day invasion, where thousands of American and other Allied soldiers made the sacrifice necessary to begin the invasion of Nazi-Occupied France, to liberate the French people, to defeat the Nazis and end World War II. And since then, these two French women had been visiting Omaha Beach to put flowers on the graves of these soldiers. Why did they come? Mr. Cherny asked them. Their answer surprised him.
They didn’t mention the historical and multinational importance of the D-Day invasion, the big, complicated operation that liberated them. No, they said they came because the young soldiers who marched through their village shared the extra rations stowed in their pockets—tins of coffee, dehydrated milk, and chocolate. And decades later, these women were still coming to honor the graves of the fallen because of simple, human kindness.i
That’s what inspires me the most in Jesus this year as we begin another Holy Week, to hear once more of the liberation He won for us. It’s the simple kindness He expresses, even as He’s dying—which isn’t all that unexpected from a guy who washed His disciples’ feet. Jesus was lifted up, above our everyday concerns, not to leave them behind, to bring them into God’s presence, with us and all His creation. I think my young children got that and expressed it in a way that made sense to them at the time, with their mid-week worship and their $1.57 offering. What they got was not that we should all aspire to fulltime church work, but that the God Who was crucified in the middle of two common criminals came to be in the middle with us. Somewhere between cosmic victory and pocket change, there Jesus is, holding it all together.
i Andrei Cherny, The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest Hour (New York: Berkley Calber, 2008).
Reflections for April 13, 2025
Title: In the MiddleNo reflection segment this week.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“All Glory, Laud, and Honor” from The Hymnal Project of the Michigan District of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Cross of Jesus, Cross of Sorrow” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.