"I looked, but there was no one to help" Holy Wednesday 2026
01. April 2026
Holy Wednesday
Luke 22:1—23:53 | Isaiah 53 | Isaiah 62–63
This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.
"No One to Help” Isaiah saw it before it happened. Many centuries before Calvary, he asked the question that hangs over everything you have heard this morning: "I looked, but there was no one to help, and I wondered that there was no one to uphold." Look through the Passion, and you will see that he was right. There was no one.
Not among the twelve. They argued at the table about which of them was greatest, while Jesus was hours from the cross. Before cockcrow, Peter stood at a charcoal fire and said three times, I do not know Him. The rest had already scattered. Judas, who had carried the money bag, had already struck his deal — thirty pieces of silver — and led the soldiers to the garden with a kiss. Not one of them helped. Not one upheld.
Not among the rulers. Pilate knew Jesus was innocent. He said it plainly: "I find no guilt in this man." He said it three times, in fact, and it did not matter, because he handed Him over anyway. Herod wanted a sign, a trick, a performance — got silence instead, and sent Jesus back dressed in a splendid robe, a joke. Not one of them helped.
Not among the crowd. On Sunday, they shouted “Hosanna.” On Friday, they shouted Crucify. The thief on the left railed at Him even while dying alongside Him. The soldiers gambled for His clothes at the foot of the cross. The rulers sneered: "He saved others; let Him save Himself." Nobody helped. Nobody upheld.
This is the Law doing its appointed work. Look at them honestly, and you are looking at yourself. The disciples are not villains in a story — they are men exactly like you, men who loved Jesus, who had followed Him for three years, who had seen the lame walk and the dead raised, and who still fled when the cost came due. Peter did not lie about knowing Jesus because he was especially wicked. He lied because he was afraid, and afraid because he valued his own skin more, in that moment, than the truth. You know that calculation. You have made it.
The scribes and chief priests are not cartoons, either. They were protecting what they had built, what they believed in, what gave their lives meaning and order. When something threatens the structure you have made your life around, you eliminate the threat. You know that logic. You have followed it.
And Pilate — Pilate is perhaps the most harrowing of all, because he knew the right thing and did the wrong one. He was not confused. He was cowardly. He washed his hands, as if water could do what blood could not. The only difference between Pilate and most of us is that his capitulation is written down.
"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way." Every one. There is no division here between the ones who helped and the ones who didn't, between the disciples who stayed a little longer and the ones who ran sooner. The Law does not grade on a curve. Isaiah speaks of everyone, and he means it. The Passion of Luke does not show you wicked men doing what good men would not do. It shows you what all men do — what you do — when God comes among you and the cost of faithfulness is real.
This is why the cross cannot be softened into a moral lesson. The Passion is not showing you how to be braver than Peter, more principled than Pilate, more loyal than Judas. It shows you that you weren't there, and that if you had been, you wouldn’t have helped either. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" The Passion answers that question. You can understand it by watching what Jerusalem did with the Son of God when He arrived.
And so Isaiah's word cuts: there was no one to help. No one to uphold. But Isaiah does not stop there. He finishes the sentence. "Therefore My own arm brought salvation for Me; and My own fury, it sustained Me."
God did not wait for help that was never coming. He did not revise His plan because the instruments failed. He came dressed in the garments Isaiah saw — red-stained, as one who has trodden the winepress alone — and He finished what He came to do. "He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed."
Look at what that sentence does. Our transgressions. Our iniquities. Our peace. His wounds. His bruising. His stripes. The exchange is total, and it runs in one direction. You brought the debt; He paid it. You turned away; He was cut off in your place. You were numbered among those who scatter and deny and wash their hands; He was numbered among the transgressors, so that your number would be changed.
This is the word we prayed plainly: God willed His Son to hang on the beam of the cross. This was not a tragedy that spun out of control when Judas chose wrong, and Pilate chose wrong, and the crowd chose wrong. The day of vengeance was in His heart. The year of His redeemed had come. What looked like abandonment — "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" — was, in fact, the arm of God bearing down on sin with everything it deserved. The full weight of "every one to his own way" landed there, on Him, outside Jerusalem, between two criminals who also could not help.
The Psalmist gave us to pray it in the Tract this morning: "Hear my prayer, O LORD, and let my cry come unto Thee. Hide not Thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble." That prayer went to the cross before it came to you. Jesus prayed it in Gethsemane, sweating blood, asking if the cup could pass — and it did not pass, and the Father did not hide His face from us, but turned it toward us instead. The trouble He entered was ours. The cry He raised was ours. The dereliction He endured was the dereliction we had earned by every turning away, every calculation, every hand-washing.
Nowhere in Luke's account does Jesus protest His innocence to the crowds or argue for His own rescue. He heals the ear of the high priest's servant after Peter cuts it off. He tells the daughters of Jerusalem to weep not for Him but for themselves. He prays for those who are driving the nails: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." This is the Servant Isaiah described — "He opened not His mouth." Not because He had nothing to say. Because He was doing what was needed. He was bearing it. Bearing it for Judas, who kissed Him. Bearing it for Peter, who denied Him. Bearing it for Pilate, who washed his hands. Bearing it for the thief on the left, who mocked Him, and the thief on the right, who asked to be remembered — and was.
"At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow... for He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore, Jesus Christ is Lord." The Lord who comes from Edom with stained garments is the same Lord before whom every knee will bow. The one who trod the winepress alone is the one whose name is above every name. His obedience unto death is not His defeat. It is His victory — and yours.
There was no one to help. So He helped. "He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors" — which is to say, for all of us standing here with nothing in our hands, who fled and denied and handed over and washed our hands and turned, every one, to our own way.
He did not need your help. He needed your sin. He took it. This is He whom you kneel before. Your Helper.
This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.
Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin
