A Sermon from Falmouth Congregational Church…

A Sermon offered by the Rev. Ian F. “Jack” Steeves in the public worship service of the Falmouth Congregational Church United Church of Christ in Falmouth, Maine on the Second Sunday in Lent, February 28, 2010. The scripture reading was Luke 13:31-35.

“’Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way (italics added), because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem’” (13:33).

“Strong, Yet Tender”

Do you do most of your thinking with words or with pictures? We all use both words and pictures; but some of us are more inclined to one rather than the other. Words themselves can form pictures, and I find that some of the most powerful influences in my life as a believer come from various word-pictures.  The Bible is very much more like an art gallery than a book library. It is full of word-pictures. We have in our heads a number of the familiar sayings of Jesus, but my guess is that we are more influenced by various pictures that come to mind from the Gospel stories.

One such picture has to do with Jesus’ last journey from the Galilee to Jerusalem to face his enemies and risk the cross. In today’s gospel reading Jesus and the Disciples are part way into that final journey. They are at an unnamed town or village stop. Earlier in Luke’s gospel, it is noted that Jesus “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (9:51). Whoever later told Luke about this decisive movement must have caught that look in Jesus’ face. “He set his face” is our translation of a Semitic expression implying utter determination. His mind was made up. He took to the road

The Jesus who outdistances his more hesitant disciples on the road to Jerusalem is not the “Soft and tenderly Jesus is calling” character about whom we sing in one of our older hymns. I sometimes wonder why hymn-writers are obsessed with the words “soft” or even “sweet” when referring to Jesus when “strong, yet tender” would often be more appropriate.

He has come from God to lead us to God. He has immense compassion for our human frailties. But here he goes head-on toward the enemy, knowing well the powers of evil that surround us all, and demonstrating that the path to victory goes over rough terrain and through the thorns of suffering. It is this Jesus, who can brace us for our own encounters on life’s road. This is the kind of Savior he is, who has been there, who knows, and who can bring us through, too.

There enters the gospel story a sharpened foreboding, a heightened, fearful expectancy – at least for those who know “the rest of the story.” Jesus’ manner grows more somber, his words more grave, his spirit heavy, as the journey proceeds. Luke presents a constant sense of purposeful movement, and almost haste.

Some Pharisees come to him and warn him to leave the Galilee because “Herod (Antipas) wants to kill you” (13:31). Jesus is not hurried by the warning or the threat. His response is direct and clear: “Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day (then) I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.”

“That fox” Herod will not determine when he goes up to Jerusalem. Jesus is aware of the imminent danger, so aware that he does not fear Herod. It is not in Herod’s domain in the Galilee but in Jerusalem, in Judea, that he expects to meet his death. He has already made the hard choice. He is on the road. His choice is rooted in what God has called him to do.

Facing the inevitable cost, Jesus’ first concern is not for himself but for the city and people of Jerusalem. In the manner of the earlier Psalmists: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he laments, “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it” (13:34)! He uses the beautiful image of the mother-hen who would gather her chicks to herself, to love them, to nurture them and to protect them. What a beautiful way to describe with passion, both accountability and mercy.

These surprising words of Jesus help us to see even those who threaten him in a new light. Herod, the Pharisees, the Romans and their collaborators, Jesus sees them as barnyard chicks lost, too afraid or too stubborn to seek shelter under the shadow of the mother hen’s wings.

His words are not surprising just because they present an unfamiliar, feminine image for him but because of the timelessness of his maternal tenderness that enables even us to see that God loves us all, and grieves those who turn away.

But…is this the Jesus we want on the road with us? At times we seem to want a Jesus we can fully understand, one about whom there is no ultimate mystery, a “regular guy.” But he is an “irregular guy;” totally one of us, yet uniquely one with the “immortal, invisible God only wise.”  The Jesus we find in the gospels is intensely human, but there is something about him that evokes our interest, our wonder, our awe, and even at times our fear.

This picture of a determined, strong yet tender Christ on the march is unfamiliar to us. It seems to defy modern taste. We prefer more blurred lines of character, wider tolerance; we hedge our opinions, insure our promises, analyze away as mere opinions or momentary trends the great convictions that have driven Christians to noble lives and deeds. We see all sides of every question except the answer. We cultivate a judgment in utter suspense, until the difference between right and wrong, truth and falsehood disappears in a veritable fog of facts and figures about how many people any longer think such and such way.

In such a world of twilight and mist, where all roads are assumed to lead safely home – including the well paved road to Hell – Christ stands an uncompromising signpost, pointing in a direction, and demanding a decision. He shatters our hesitations and disrupts our complacency with a sharp insistence on a Yes or a No, for God or against God, for truth or error, for right or wrong, for Himself or Herod.

“Blessed is the one who comes in the Name of the Lord” (13:35c).