A MESSAGE FOR THE SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT

(a link to a worship service including this message on the YouTube channel is found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GxKyRzDFVc)

Prayer of the Day:

God of the covenant, in the mystery of the cross you promise everlasting life to the world.  Gather all peoples into your arms, and shelter us with your mercy, that we may rejoice in the life we share in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

Luke 13:31-35

³¹At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” ³²He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. ³³Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ ³⁴Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! ³⁵See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Our passage today begins in a confusing manner.  The picture we get is of the Pharisees warning Jesus to be careful, that Herod wanted him dead.  The Pharisees warned him?  Throughout all four gospels, Jesus and the Pharisees were constantly at odds and in increasing and increasing levels until the end when the Pharisees

participated in Jesus’ arrest. 

Now it is easy to cast the Pharisees as simply the bad guys.  It is not that easy however and I do not want us to just dismiss them too quickly.  The Pharisees started out nobly.  When the Greeks had possession of the Holy Land, they had a particular perspective on empire building.  The Greeks decided that anybody in the Greek Empire should be Greek: they should speak Greek; they should worship the limited number of Greek gods; they should be trained in Greek culture; and all the ways of life of a Greek. 

The Pharisees had their roots as those who would oppose this and who would seek to protect the people of God and the faith of the people of God against this incursion of heretical culture.  The Greeks ended up in some ways collapsing under the weight of this kind of empire building.  If you are going to demand that everybody be a certain way then you need, as the saying goes, boots on soil to make that happen.  You need to police that.  You need an army to make sure that people comply.  And the Pharisees had their roots as those who would oppose that and opposed it successfully.

Well then, we have the next empire, the Romans.  The Romans, as I have said in the past, learned from the Greeks.  The Greek method of empire building was labour intensive, personnel intensive.  The Romans took a simpler route.  The Romans essentially had two rules: pay your taxes and don't kill anybody. 

The first one was easy, pay your taxes.  We have before Jesus’ birth the census being taken.  A census was taken to know to charge taxes, to whom to charge the taxes.  As long as you were part of the Roman Empire, supporting the bank account of the Roman Empire, well, you were halfway there.

The other rule, of course, was don't kill anybody.  Capital punishment was under the sole authority of the Roman Empire and their representatives.  And whatever part of the kingdom you were in, even though according to your laws somebody had to die, it still had to be the Romans who signed off on this and actually did the killing.

This approach required far fewer boots on soil.  If you paid your taxes and did not kill anybody, you were okay with the Romans.  In fact, in terms of gods the Romans, the list was rather elastic.  If they took over a place, they would simply adopt your gods and they would become Roman gods and so when you worshipped your gods, you were worshiping Roman gods.  Problem solved.

Judea was a unique case.  This was not an acceptable alternative.  But they paid their taxes, and they did not kill anybody.  Uneasy peace.  The Pharisees had gone from the protectors of the faith in a very restrictive culture to now, in this Roman culture, they became part of the problem.  They had had begun protecting the faith from the people.  There were these 613 laws that needed to be obeyed and if you did not obey all of them you were deficient, you were unworthy.  Certainly not how they started out but here they were.  They also put a lot of effort into keeping the peace.  Pay taxes.  Do not kill anybody.  And the Romans basically left them alone.

Well, in the middle of all that appeared Jesus and Jesus would not cater to any of this.  Jesus was a problem from the get-go, first through the religious authorities and eventually to the Roman Empire itself.  So, for the Pharisees to come to Jesus, with whom they had these fights, to say that Herod wanted to kill him.  It is hard to know how to take that.

Herod was one of the three kings that were serving over the Jews on Roman authority and so it was the Romans, in a way, wanted Jesus dead.  And that would come true of course later.  And the Pharisees did not necessarily have any love for Herod.  So initially this does come off as sincere.  “Be careful!  Herod wants to kill you.”  It was probably accurate.  However, there was another factor to this of course and it appears in this phrase: Get away from here.”

Jesus, in chapter 9, we are told, set his face to Jerusalem and from that point on, Jesus’ face was set to Jerusalem.  He was going to Jerusalem, and nothing was going to stop him, nothing was going to delay him.  And that was a problem.  In Jerusalem we have Roman Empire and the religious empire.  And Jesus was going to walk right into the middle of both and disrupt both of them.  The Pharisees did not want that.  Herod did not want that.  The Romans did not want that.  “Get away from here” was very sincere.  “Herod wants to kill you” was a convenient reason.  But they really wanted Jesus to stay away from Jerusalem.

Well, Jesus essentially said “No”.  “Go and tell that fox for me, Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow and on the third day I finish my work.”  “Go and tell that fox.”  See what was hidden in there.  Jesus affirmed that the Pharisees had access to Herod and the Herod would have received them.  So, Pharisee sincerity “0”, Jesus “1”. 

There was also, though, “performing cures today and tomorrow and on the third day I finish my work”.  As Christians it is hard not to see a reference to the resurrection when, on the third day, Jesus rose from the dead and finished his work.  Yet Jesus said “today tomorrow and the next day I must be on my way” -- His face was set to Jerusalem – “because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem”. 

Now, historically, this was not accurate.  There were prophets killed all over the Northern and Southern Kingdoms.  Jerusalem had no monopoly on the death of prophets.  But it was a reference to Jesus.  It was not impossible before a prophet, as he stood before them as a prophet, to be killed outside of Jerusalem.  His face was set to Jerusalem, and he knew why he was going there, and he would not be stopped.

Then Jesus turned away from the Pharisees and turned his attention to Jerusalem, the Holy City, the City of God, the City of David.  “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it, how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings and you were not willing.  See your house is left to you and I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Well, this was the acclamation of Palm Sunday when Jesus entered to “Hosanna, hosanna.  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”, when Jesus, having set his face on Jerusalem, arrived in Jerusalem.  Jerusalem was set up as a kind of symbol, a symbol for the history of the people of God throughout Hebrew scriptures, this constant cycle of faithfulness, complacency, rebellion, judgment, repentance, restoration, faith and, eventually, complacency.  It went on and on.  Jerusalem was held up as a symbol of that cycle.  The Holy City, the City of David itself had this kind of ebb and flow in its faithfulness and commitment to God.

But even this Jerusalem, this Jerusalem that had resisted Jesus’ care.  “You will not see me until the time comes when you say, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”.  They did do that, and they did see him.  It would be in Jerusalem that he was arrested and betrayed and tried and tortured and led to his death and burial and resurrection.

In this Lenten season, the question is: How is my life of discipleship?  What kind of shape is it in?  And how may I improve as a disciple of Jesus?  We could do little better than to include in our daily prayers in Lent, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”, because our own lives ebb and flow in faithfulness and complacency and rebellion and we go through that whole same cycle sometimes all in single day.  And as the promise came to Jerusalem, so the promise comes to us: as we lift up our voices “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”, he does come

And so, because of what Jesus has done, forgiveness is ours, mercy is ours, compassion is ours.  Because indeed, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Be safe.  Be well.  God bless you all.

Pastor Greg