This is a sermon on Luke 13:31-35, preached on February 27-28, 2010.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Let us pray. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Comfort, oh comfort, your daughter Chile, your daughter Haiti, and all your children who suffer. We look to you, O God, for mercy. We look to you, O God, for redemption. We look to you, O God, for hope. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. Amen.
I woke up Saturday morning with a pretty good idea about what I was going to talk about up here. I’d been reading the gospel passage all week, studying some Biblical commentaries, and letting the Word roll around in my head until it formed itself into something resembling a sermon… all that was left was to actually do the writing.
So when I woke up, I did my normal weekend-morning routine… started the coffee, opened the blinds to let the sun pour in, and got onto my laptop to check my e-mail, Facebook and Twitter accounts… and I saw just these few words, posted by a pastor from Denver, “Chile: Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.” What happened, I wondered? I found out quickly enough. And the pretty-good sermon idea I’d woken up with suddenly seemed pointless and paper-thin.
A massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck Chile in the early-morning hours of Saturday. This is one of the most massive earthquakes ever recorded. A geophysicist told NBC News that this earthquake released 700 times more energy than the than the one that struck Haiti last month. As the day wore on, there were reports of toppled homes, collapsed bridges, trucks thrown off highways and plunged into the earth. Entire neighborhoods were decimated. Photos showed buildings torn in two, highways destroyed, people weeping. The death toll kept rising as the day wore on, into the hundreds.
In addition, an earthquake of this magnitude can trigger a tsunami threatening every nation around the Pacific Ocean, including the Hawaiian islands and the west coast of the United States. Even now, we wait to see how much destruction will be wrought. The President of Chile has declared a “state of catastrophe,” and one witness told television reporters, “"Never in my life have I experienced a quake like this, it’s like the end of the world.”
We turn to God for comfort in times like this. We turn to God for hope amidst the devastation. We turn to God for mercy, and maybe also to understand why things like this happen. The Gospel text from Luke this week finds Jesus on the journey to Jerusalem – some Pharisees come to him to warn him that Herod plans to kill him. Jesus’ response to them is twofold. First, he says, “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. Yet 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.”
The matter-of-fact way in which Jesus says this – “I don’t have time to worry about Herod right now, I’m all booked up for at least three days solid” – I can’t help but picture Jesus whipping out his planner at this point – cures, cures, casting out demons, cures, casting out demons – and then on to Jerusalem and the cross. It’s striking and a little unsettling, and it shows us how completely focused Jesus is on his mission.
The second half of Jesus’ response is even more unsettling, though. He laments, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
At first glance, we might think, “well, good thing we’re not in Jerusalem.” But Jerusalem in the book of Luke, is, well, more than Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the center of the whole messy, broken world, and when Jesus says “Jerusalem,” Jesus is speaking not about the people living in a specific place or time, but about the world that despises Him, the world that rejects Him, the world that Jesus knows will kill Him. Luke writes several times that Jesus “set his face toward Jerusalem” – we might say that for most of the book of Luke, Jesus has Jerusalem on the brain. And in the words that Jesus speaks about Jerusalem, we see the deep love… and the lament. Jesus compares himself to a mother bird, longing to gather Her children together safely under the shelter of Her wings… and then says, “But you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you.. desolate.”
And then a massive, 8.8 magnitude earthquake strikes, and we read this passage from Scripture, and we can’t help but wonder, God, will you now gather your children under your wings, give your children refuge and shelter, give your children mercy, or… is this chaotic and broken and shaken world nothing but the desolate house we’ve been left to live in?
***
Mother birds are curious creatures. At five years old, I was playing near the crabapple trees in our yard, and got a little too close to a robin’s nest. The mama robin chased me, terrified and screaming, all the way across the lawn.
Penguin mothers lay their eggs, leave them in the care of the father, and then waddle and slide up to 70 miles across the Antarctic ice to fill their bellies to near-bursting with fish from the ocean, and rush back just in time to regurgitate it to feed their newly-hatched young.
There are reports of mother eagles who have burned to death in forest fires because they would not leave their young unprotected in the nest.
***
The world is chaotic, and broken, and shaken – it is all of these things because it is a fallen and disordered world. But in the midst of the chaos, in the midst of the brokenness, Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem, and the cross. Like a mother bird, Jesus’ deep desire is to gather God’s children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. God’s desire is to be our refuge – the Psalms speak about this over and over – Psalm 46 says, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.”
God has not left our house to us desolate. When Jesus uttered his lament, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” Jesus was not abandoning Jerusalem – Jesus did not avoid Jerusalem where he knew that he would be crucified - he set his face toward Jerusalem, he was absolutely determined to go there, and to go to the cross.
Like a mother robin, Jesus has his sights set on the devil, and went to death on the cross to chase him screaming and terrified back to hell.
Like a mother penguin, Jesus is filled to near-bursting with grace and goodness, and set his face toward Jerusalem to empty himself on the cross for God’s children.
Like a mother eagle, He faces the fire and gives up his life on the cross that God’s children might live.
…And like a mother hen, Jesus desires to gather God’s children under his wings, and we find shelter and refuge and mercy at the foot of the cross.
God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble and in the desolation and chaos of the world. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging… God, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. God, have mercy.
Gather us, your children to your breast, and let us find refuge there.
Amen.
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