Second Sunday in Lent

February 27-28, 2010

“Blessed Is He”

Luke 13:31-35

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God our heavenly Father, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

As we get closer and closer to Easter, the great celebration of the resurrection of Christ, I keep waiting for the “next big breakthrough” to be announced that supposedly disproves Christianity. This seems to be the time of year when everyone who is opposed to the message of the Gospel comes out of the woodwork with the newest, biggest theory on how Jesus wasn’t really who He claimed to be. Most recently we’ve had articles and programs about the Gospel of Judas, and a documentary about the supposed family tomb of Jesus, offered as “proof” that the resurrection never happened. And there is nothing new under the sun. For years, people have claimed that Jesus didn’t really say the things He said, and didn’t really do the things He did.

After his account of the resurrection, St. Matthew reports to us the lie spread by the chief priests in Jerusalem that Jesus did not rise from the dead, but that His disciples had stolen the body while the guards were sleeping. So if people were spreading lies about Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead as soon as it happened, why should we be surprised that it still happens today? The makers of that documentary about the alleged family tomb of Jesus even claimed that they weren’t contradicting Christianity, because we could still believe that He spiritually rose from the dead, as if that makes a difference. All that shows us is how little they know the Scriptures, which emphasize the physical resurrection of Christ. Of course, they already knew that, which is why they disregarded all the qualified archaeologists and historians who said that their claim regarding the tomb was completely impossible. The producers of the documentary even admitted that they ignored many of the facts, because those facts didn’t fit in with their agenda.

So conspiracy theories are nothing new. Jesus is confronted by one in our Gospel lesson today, and doesn’t seem to be bothered by it. King Herod, who has just gotten done putting John the Baptist to death, now has Jesus in his sights. The Pharisees try to use this information to get Jesus out of their way. But Jesus follows the will of His Father, and He will not change course to suit anyone else’s desires. Demons would be cast out and diseases would be cured. As much as the Herod and the Pharisees wanted Jesus dead, it would happen on God’s terms, not theirs. And God’s plan is for Jesus to end His journey in Jerusalem; the city of sin’s bloody sacrifices for the sin of the world. Jesus’ course is set, and He will go on His way to finish it. At just the right time, Christ dies for the powerless and the ungodly. He dies for us. Jesus knows that it’s coming. No one takes His life from Him; no one forces His hand. The will of God will be done, despite the best efforts of the chief priests and Pharisees, and King Herod, and despite the efforts of those still today seeking to discredit the good news of the Gospel.

So attacks against Christianity have come, and will continue to confront us. It didn’t bother Jesus Himself, and it shouldn’t bother us, either. Nothing can keep God from accomplishing His will. Perhaps the larger problem for us is not that these attacks come, but in our reaction to them. We have a tendency to view those who attack Christianity as our enemies; to get angry, and seek ways to struggle against them. But if we carefully consider our Gospel lesson today, we see how much Jesus cared for His enemies, and loved them. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” He laments over the holy city. The unbelief of God’s people breaks His heart. You can hear His anguish in that phrase, like a parent for a wayward child. Jesus looks toward the city where He will be cruelly and violently put to death, and He weeps over it. He is the One who will be mistreated, falsely condemned, and unjustly killed in that place, but He doesn’t mourn for Himself. He weeps for those who will do the mistreating, the condemning, the killing. Such compassion and love for those who despise Him is the way of God.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” It is a natural response for chicks to run to their mother for safety at the first sign of danger. Stories are told that after fires have consumed henhouses, farmers have found the charred, dead body of a mother hen, only to lift her lifeless wings and find little chicks alive and well. At the first sign of the fire, they ran to their mother to be covered by her wings; they survived because she sacrificed her life to save theirs.

And this is the way Jesus describes what He wanted to do for His holy city Jerusalem. He comes to His own people, preaching eternal security and salvation ultimately with His arms outstretched on the cross. There, Jesus will suffer the fires of divine judgment; there, every last sin against God and against humanity will be paid for in full, for all people, everywhere. Jesus Christ will sacrifice His life for the life of the world.

But Christ’s own people do not receive Him. Jesus wants to spare His people from destruction. He doesn’t want anyone to have to go it alone; He has come to be their Savior. But they want Jesus to leave them alone. And the tragic thing is, those who reject Christ will get their wish. They will face God’s judgment alone, without Jesus, without His grace and mercy to cover them. They will spend eternity with only their shame. “Behold,” Jesus says to them, “your house is forsaken.” You are without safety, if you will not be gathered to Christ. Contrary to the way we are conditioned to think in American culture, there are no lone rangers in the Kingdom of God. No self-made men and women, no rugged individualists. Just a brood of helpless hatchlings, hidden under our Savior’s protective wings. And in our text, we see this Savior Jesus weeping for those who refuse the safety and salvation He offers them.

St. Paul follows this example of Christ in our epistle lesson today. He tells us, even with tears, that some walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Those tears flow because “their end is their destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” And Paul calls for us, as Christians, to join him in imitating Christ. How well do we do that? I don’t know about you, but I have to admit, I can’t recall shedding any tears for the enemies of the cross in our day. How little we think and behave in the way of Jesus, or of Paul. And that is just one of the ways that we fail to follow the way of Christ in faith toward Him and in love toward our neighbor. Too often, we set our minds in earthly things; too often, and too easily, we fail to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and all our soul, and all our mind. Too often, we are drawn in by the way that leads to destruction.

This season of Lent is a time when we are called to repentance because we are not as much like Jesus as we should be. Lent is a time to see that our love, our compassion, our mercy toward others is not what it ought to be. We would remain shallow in these ways, except that as Christ deepens our faith, He also deepens our compassion for one another. He deepens are faith in the truth that all He did – His incarnation, life, suffering, death, resurrection and ascension – He did out of His great love and mercy for you.

“You will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’” They would see Him then, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, riding on to die for the sins of the world, and to rise again on the third day. “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” We sing that, too, in the liturgy of Holy Communion, where Christ does come to us in His body and blood. He comes to call us to Himself; to hide us in His wounds; to extend His death and His life over us; to gather us in. There, under His outstretched arms, you are safe; you are forgiven; you have life. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! Amen.