Luke 13: 31.35
Offered to the Congregation of the Highlands Presbyterian Church, Long Valley, NJ during the Lenten Season
Mel Prestamo, Ruling Elder, PCUSA
There is a lot going on in this very short passage from Luke. It is only 6 verses long, but it is packed. In it we have some sympathetic Pharisees coming to Jesus to warn him about Herod’s plot to kill him. We hear Jesus answer them. When he does, he hurls some pretty harsh insults at Herod. And at its close, Jesus laments about how Jerusalem is receiving him, or not receiving him.
But if we are to understand this passage, we have to get at something which for the most part, I think, is glossed over. We have to feel Jesus’ emotions in this exchange. You know we have heard these passages so many times in our lives that perhaps we don’t actual feel the depth of the anguish and pain in the words Jesus is speaking.
I am going take a risk and share with you a personal story and recount to you an episode in my younger life. Now I know that every one of you have gone through it, too. But I am going to share this because I want you to recall something from your own lives that will perhaps be painful for you.
In my college days, I had met a young woman who I had fallen head over heels in love with. Right from the start, I thought she was the one. Although I will forever thank God that it was not the case as the woman that God had guided me to was my real forever love. Thanks be to God. But I didn’t know that at the time. She and I spent our entire freshman year at college together. In fact, we were together more than apart even though she boarded at college and I lived at home. I would like you to understand how much in love I was. And at the same time, think about a similar episode in your own lives. Now perhaps you can also feel how devasted I was when she told me it was over and that she simply didn’t want to continue our relationship. It came out of the blue as a complete shock. There were no indications that I saw that anything was amiss or that something ominous was about to happen. In fact, she dropped that bomb at a family gathering that I was invited to. I was there to meet mom and dad, brothers’ families and their wives and children and then after it all when I was getting into my car to leave for home, she told me, “Oh by the way, It’s over.”
When she told me, it was like I was cut off from reality and set off spinning out of control. I was lost. I was experiencing pain I had never imagined before. It was if she had ripped my heart out of my chest, spat on it and stomped it into the dust of the ground. I cried for days.
That was my experience. And, I know that every one of you has had this experience in your lives or something like it. It is not like it was unique to my youth. It is something as human beings we have all experienced. We have all been there. And as unpalatable as it may seem for a Sunday worship message, I ask you to recall those memories, now. I ask you to recall that painful moment so that you can have a sense for what is happening to and inside Jesus’ heart in this passage. I don’t want you to understand it. I want you to feel it.
The scene today is that Jesus is curing people and casting out demons. And while he is in the midst of this ministry, certain sympathetic Pharisees come to him to warn him that Herod is plotting to kill him. Now it probably comes as a surprise to you that there were any Pharisees at that time that were sympathetic to Jesus. But remember that Nicodemus was a Pharisee and there were probably a couple other likeminded men. They came to Jesus to warn him that he needs to get out of town, now.
What was Jesus’ response? Well, the first words out his mouth are, “You go tell that fox…” Right here, as the first words exit out of Jesus’ mouth, we need to sit up and take notice. These words should be something that should get our attention because these words are no compliment. In our political rhetoric today, it might something akin to saying, “Go Brandon”. That is something like what Jesus is doing in his characterization of Herod as a fox. For Jews, the fox was the slyest of animals, but not in a good or positive sense. It was thought of as cunning in an evil way. It was thought of as the most destructive of animals attacking domesticated livestock, a killer, a destroyer. That is how Jesus is characterizing the Jewish King. When used to refer to a man, it was symbolically representing that man as worthless and insignificant. Wrap all these together and you can get a sense that Jesus was hurling some really harsh insults at Herod Antipas, the king of Galilee. And for obvious reasons, these sympathetic Pharisees would never be able to repeat it to Herod.
Wow! Is this our loving Son of God Most High? Is this the teacher who in chapter 5 of Luke spoke the words, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” “Love your neighbor as yourselves.” “Turn the other cheek.”
Well, yes, it is. It is the same Jesus. But it was a Jesus under stress. Perhaps now, you can begin to sense in him a heightened degree of frustration and that perhaps the weight of what was before him, the Jews rejection of his message, and what would ultimately come to pass on the Cross is also beginning to weigh on him.
So, Jesus answers the Pharisees, “You go tell that fox. I am here [right here] casting out demons and curing the people.” This is as if to say, I will not be hard to find. This is a challenge. I will be here today, tomorrow and on the third day when I will finish my work. Jesus is speaking in terms of his life and ministry. I am doing God’s work today. I will be here tomorrow doing God’s work, and my ministry will go on until I am finished on the third day. I think this is a foretelling by Jesus of his resurrection. But his tone, I think, is strained. Because immediately following, he begins to lament about how Jerusalem treats its prophets. The city kills and stones them. Here you have to begin to hear with your heart and not simply listen with your ears.
Now, you have to begin to imagine the tears welling up in Jesus’ eyes. Now, you have to begin to hear his voice breaking up as he utters his next words.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills its prophets … How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you are not willing.”
Oh, my gosh! Do these six verses begin to feel like something more; that on a grand scale begins to open Jesus’ heart so that we can begin to feel his anguish and pain?
This moment is the reason I asked you earlier to recall your most painful memories of a love that was refused, of a lover that spurned you and tossed off your affections as meaningless nothings whispered by a dreamy-eyed, star-crossed lover. For that is what the leaders of God’s chosen people were doing. They were rejecting Jesus as God’s Messiah. They were refusing to return the love that God was extending to them. And Jesus is experiencing that pain of rejection. He was not above it. He was not immune to it. If you can recall that hurt, that pain of when it happened to you all those many years ago, then you can begin, but only begin, to feel the depth of pain that Jesus is feeling here.
This passage is describing what Jesus is feeling on a human level. He came as God’s Son to save the world, not to judge it. But here God’s chosen children are judging him and refusing him as God’s messenger. Here he is beginning to sense that ultimately, they will reject everything about him, they will reject God’s love, they will reject God’s mercy, they will reject God’s redemptive desire for reconciliation with creation, and he is being crushed by that pain. For what was coming was God’s demand for the atonement that needed to be made for our breaking of the covenant God made with Abram. What was coming for Jesus was his submission to God’s pledge to uphold humanity’s half of the covenant. Which we failed at, and which now must be atoned for.
That is what God / Jesus was feeling in this passage. But now, I want you to imagine that God feels this same pain on every time we turn away, every time we choose some willful act of self-entitlement, or of self-love, and every time we rely on our own wiles and cunning like that fox Jesus refers to instead of trusting on the loving mercy and grace of the Father.
This season of Lent in our church calendar ultimately leads us to Holy Week where we will see the atonement for our failings, our sins played out and paid up. The Crucifixion on Holy Thursday is the atonement for our sins promised on our behalf for our failure to uphold the Covenant that God made with Abram. Jesus went to the Cross weeping and with a broken heart that the people whom he desired to hold with arms rejected him for they were not willing.
Highlands Church, Jesus longs to gather you together in his arms like a loving mother does her brood, as a loving brother does his siblings, as a loving Father does his children. Pray that you will be willing.
