TEXT: Matthew 26:38

SUBJECT: Our Lord's Mental Anguish

At the Lord's Table, we remember the suffering of Jesus Christ.

His most obvious pains were physical. Think of Him in the Garden "sweating great drops of blood"; We recall the punch He took at His trial; the beating from Herod's men; the crown of thorns pounded into His skull; and of course, the crucifixion itself with it's five deadly wounds.

These sufferings are immortalized in the Church's great hymns:

His physical pain was beyond anything you and I can imagine. Even Pontius Pilate, a brutal Pagan without pity, was moved by His suffering. As were the people who gathered for the grim spectacle. Even they went away "beating their breasts".

But as terrible as these pains were, they did not compare to the mental agony our Lord suffered. By its very nature, a wounded spirit hurts more than a broken body. Proverbs 18:14 says so:

The implied answer: No one.

We know our Lord suffered physically. But what about the mental side? Did He suffer in that way too? Yes He did. And how did they compare to His physical pains? His mental pains were much, much worse.

Let me prove that in one obvious way.

His physical pains were most mostly confined to His last eighteen hours. But His mental pains were life-long. Think of His family life. We don't know much about it, but what we do know is entirely negative! His parents misunderstood Him and His brothers thought He was a lunatic.

Add to that His poverty and the bad things that result from it. The schools I attended were right between some of the best parts of town--and some of the worst. Some of the students lived in mansions; others lived in shacks.

I remember one boy who got a new Corvette for his sixteenth birthday. And another who wouldn't take off his coat in class, because he didn't have a shirt under it. The well-off kids had a way of looking down on the poor. They were ignored; they were exluded; they were laughed at. One poor boy, I remember, was pushed into a garbage can.

Our Lord, coming from the poorest of families, must have suffered the same indignities. And worse.

His public ministry, of course, only intensified the attacks on His person, character, and background. The Jews once said "We know who our father is"--implying He wasn't so sure about His. They called Him a "Nazarene", which is something like a "Hillbilly", and implies dirtiness, stupidity, social clumsiness, and so on. They called Him "that fellow" which is a term of contempt and even "Beelzebub" who is the Devil himself.

This mental agony climaxed at the cross where three forces combined to break Him: human, demonic, and Divine. Men ridiculed Him; Satan abused Him; God forsook Him.

Make no mistake about it, He was "Despised and rejected of men--a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief". And not just now and then. But, as the Psalm says,

"I am afflicted and ready to die

from My youth up".

At the Lord's Table, then, recall the mental sufferings of Jesus Christ. His body was broken. But not just His body. His heart was broken too. Remember that.

And this too: Why His heart was broken. It wasn't for any fault of His own, but for someone else's. Whose?

Theology has its answer. "He died for the world" says one tradition. "He died for the elect" says another. Both are true, in a certain sense, but neither is adequate! Neither speaks peace to my soul.

But this does: The Savior's heart was broken for...me. That's how Paul looked at it. And you should too: Galatians 2:20.

God broke His Son's spirit so that I could have "the peace of God that passes all understanding [keeping my] heart and mind through Christ Jesus".

And so, in taking the Lord's Supper remember..."What Thou My Lord hast suffered/was all for sinners' gain/Mine mine was the transgression/but Thine the deadly pain.

God make it real to our souls. For Christ's sake. Amen.