Luke 13:31-35
Previously…on the mountain of Transfiguration and then out in the wilderness of temptation…there was an abstract sense to things…not quite connected to our experience.
- But today the wilderness is very real and familiar.
- Jesus is in Jerusalem…the holy city…
- But not in the royal courtyards or temple.
- He is in…among the crowds…on the streets…in the core of human activity.
- He is where the people are…he is where we are.
- He is…indeed…in the middle of humankind’s messiness and chaotic existence…where true wilderness is found.
The Lord be with you.
Today…Jesus has moved from mountain to desert to city street.
- He has come to Jerusalem…the holy city of Israel.
- Jesus makes his way down a crowded street…bustling with marketplace activity.
- People jostling and bumping him.
- There are beggars on one side.
- Vendors and hawkers on the other.
- People are bartering and milling about.
- Some clump together on street corners to listen to religious zealots.
- While other groups stand together talking and gossiping.
- As Jesus ambles invisible…a group of Pharisees notice and call out to him.
- Go away or you’ll be killed…they warn.
- Jesus responds back telling the Pharisees to run back to Herod…the Fox…and tell him that he is not afraid.
In the middle of this bustling and oblivious crowd…
- It can be hard to believe that all of this began as a promise made between God and Abraham.
- As Abraham complained to God that he had no heirs…no offspring…
- God made a promise: That Abraham’s descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.
- A promise made out in the same desert that Jesus has just wandered.
- And now these promised descendants have now become this very chaotic nation gathered in Jerusalem.
- And this chaotic group…in the core of human activity…human chaos and messiness…
- Does not even notice that Jesus is the same God who made that covenant with Abraham and Sarah.
- The God…who walked with their ancestors in the desert…
- Is now standing among them…
- Word made flesh…Messiah come to save.
And so…Jesus laments… Jesus laments for God’s people.
- Just as God looked up into the starry night sky with Abraham and imagined descendants for Abraham…
- Jesus looks around Jerusalem with the same tender compassion and care.
- Jesus wants to gather these lost and desperate masses together…
- Just like a mother hen gathering her chicks.
- And yet…God’s people are unwilling.
- Unwilling to be gathered…unwilling even to see.
- To see the Word made flesh walking among them.
Unwillingness is central to the human condition.
- It is central to how we are in the world.
- Unwillingness to be moved…unwillingness to obey…unwillingness to be distracted.
- And with all creation…humanity is the best at choosing ourselves first.
- The unwillingness of creation towards God is powerful.
- We are unwilling to have a God other than ourselves…
- And therefore…unwilling to be loved by the creator of the universe.
- As God moves to love us…to be close to us…we push back…
- We say no…we want to be our own God…we want to be in control.
Today…the people of Jerusalem are unwilling.
- They are unwilling to see God present before them.
- Unwilling to see God casting out demons and performing cures among them.
- And their unwillingness will eventually lead them to nail Jesus to the cross.
For us…unwillingness my come upon us in different ways.
- Our unwillingness to care just a little more for those around us.
- Our unwillingness to be comforted or consoled.
- Our unwillingness to be vulnerable to a community.
- Our unwillingness to see possibilities and hope for the future.
- Our unwillingness leads us always to the wilderness.
- Our unwillingness leads to death.
It is for this unwillingness that Jesus laments.
- Jesus laments over Jerusalem and he sees where their unwillingness will lead them.
- It will not be long until the people of the holy city are getting ready to lay down their coats and palm branches on the road.
- They will shout: Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.
- The blessing shouted for David and Solomon and for every king of Israel.
- As Jesus rides in on a donkey…the people want a King…the people want a conqueror.
- They want the Romans ousted and they want to be powerful as they once were.
- But the shouts of…Blessed is He…will turn to shouts of…crucify him.
Jesus knows how the unwillingness of humanity will respond to God.
- Jesus knows that it will be until the third day that people might begin to see.
- And even then…it will not come easily.
- Our unwillingness will torture and execute God like a criminal…
- Even so…Jesus longs to gather us in…
- To gather all people in as mother hen gathers in her chicks.
- Even as a mother hen protects her children in the face of the fox.
Jesus laments over Jerusalem…longing to protect her from harm…to protect us from ourselves.
- Jesus laments in Somalia and Mali and Haiti and Lebanon and South Sudan and Syria and Myanmar and Gaza…and everywhere else.
- And even there…even amid the harshest examples of human unwillingness.
- God is gathering us up.
- Gathering us beneath his wings to protect us with tender care…
- To love us away from sin and death.
And even as our unwillingness will lead Jesus to the cross…nailing his hands and feet.
- With the final blows of our rejection of God.
- It will be beneath these outstretched arms…
- Beneath these wings of Christ that we are gathered.
- Gathered as one creation…gathered as God’s unwilling children.
And beneath this cross…God begins the work of three days.
- The work that is completed…that is revealed to the world on that easter morning.
- Yes…today Jesus laments our unwillingness…
- But today God also gathers and protects us.