Luke 13.31-end
At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ He 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. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.” 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.”’
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I have spoken before about what it means to be a Christian. It’s a calling, a calling to by God not to be our own people and do our own thing, but to be his people, and do what he would have us do. We see this in the Old Testament with the call on the life of Abraham in Genesis chapter 13 where God says that he will bless in, and through him, the nations of the world will be blessed. We see this in the prophets, when God gives the gift of his Spirit and they speak into their situations. I have been reading Jeremiah recently, which speaks of the exile of the Jewish people by Babylon. The Prophet says again and again, be a just people, do things God’s way not your own way, beware that judgement is coming, because in your actions you do all kinds of evil and down trod your fellow human beings who are made in God’s image. Don’t be a hypocrite, giving the appearance of doing good, and yet spending our time doing the opposite. Be good people. Be the people that God called you to be.
The call is always, to be the people that God would have us be.
So many times, the call is ignored, and Jesus is speaking about that very thing in our passage today. ‘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!’
‘You were not willing!‘ Jesus said. You were not willing to turn from your own ways and your own priorities and turn towards God’s priorities. Sometimes when a preacher says the same thing over and over it can become tiresome, and I know I’ve been talking about a similar thing for months now, doing justice, loving mercy, walking humbly with God. But the preacher keeps saying it because it is that important! The calling is, in our own time and in our own place, to turn to God and his priorities, not to our own. And God’s priorities are that we serve his people, loving our neighbours as ourselves.
Sadly, social action of this kind has not always been a priority of our brothers and sisters, who at times have had a habit of looking at the events that are happening around us and seeing it as proof that God is judging the world. We hear stories of pastors and preachers who see today’s events and see it as a prophecy of the end times when Jesus will return at the end of all things. I believe that this is mistaken.
It is not for the Christian to spend an inordinate amount of time questioning the times that they live in and have an inordinate interest in prophesy, it is rather, the call to be the people of God, people of righteousness and kindness and justice and peace, no matter what is happening around us. Christians have to, ‘get on with the job’ (as politicians so love to say when they are in trouble!); they ‘get on with the job’ of being the people they are called to be.
We currently live in a world where we seem to be veering from one crisis to another. The Pandemic, which ravaged the world for a couple of years seems to have faded now that we live in the spectre of a New Cold War. No doubt there will be many doomsayers to come to say that we are entering the end times, but again this is to miss the point entirely!
But back to the pandemic for a moment. Remember that… Our focus seems to have shifted elsewhere very quickly, but there is an important lesson there. I remember when the pandemic first happened, some Christians focussed not on helping the situation and protecting others, but rather, they said that ‘this is God’s judgement on the world for it’s evil’ or words to that effect. One writer, a chap called Tom Wright (a world leading bible scholar) spoke against this line of thinking, giving the example of Martin Luther, the person who set off the Christian reformation over 500 years ago. Tom Wright says this about Luther, and I think it’s worth quoting pretty much verbatim:
‘Luther faced several plagues in Wittenberg and elsewhere in the 1520s and 1530s, and in his letters to church and civic leaders he insisted that preachers and pastors should remain at their posts: as good shepherds, they should be prepared to lay down their lives for their sheep. Likewise civic and family leaders should only flee from a plague if they had made proper provision for the safety of those left behind. He offers advice which sounds as relevant today as it was five hundred years ago. Plagues, he says, may perhaps be messengers from God; but the right approach should be practical as well as faithful. This, he says, is how one should think to oneself:
With God’s permission the enemy has sent poison and deadly dung among us, and so I will pray to God that he may be gracious and preserve us. Then I will fumigate to purify the air, give and take medicine, and avoid places and persons where I am not needed in order that I may not abuse myself and that through me others may not be infected and inflamed with the result that I become the cause of their death through my negligence. If God wishes to take me, he will be able to find me. At least I have done what he gave me to do and am responsible neither for my own death nor for the death of others. But if my neighbour needs me, I shall avoid neither person nor place but feel free to visit and help him.”
That is the call, that has always been the call. Self-sacrificial love for the other, not thinking for ourselves and what makes us comfortable. Luther says ‘At least I have done what he gave me to do.’ What has God given you to do?
‘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!’
Jesus was given the task of the previous prophets, to go to Jerusalem , to embrace it in his arms even though he knew they would reject him an send him to die on the cross, to save them from their sins. Self-sacrificial love for the other.
We must be willing, to listen, to listen to God’s call on our lives, to be his people. To be people after his own heart and to do the things that he gives us to do.
How do we do that?
We pray, - every day. Confession time, I used to think that prayer didn’t actually change anything. I used to think that prayer was a way in which we come to terms with the way that things are. We pray for people, not really thinking that their situations will change, but rather that meditating on them in prayer allows us to accept the situations they are in, rather than bottling it up and becoming frustrated. Prayer then for me was like, a psychological balm for the soil. I don’t think this anymore. Too many times to count I have had concrete answers to prayer, I have prayers to God for help and I have received it on innumerable occasions. I have prayed into situations and they have changed. I now believe that prayer changes things.
So, we should pray, what else should we do?
We need to be reading the Bible. Again, confession time, I never thought having a regular practice of reading the Bible would have such an impact on my life; but it really has. I find in the scriptures the whole gamut of humanity and our glories and our brokenness on display. I see characters that are very much like the people who walk around in thsi day and age. I see the same evils at work today, as was happening in biblical times, most of all, I see the promises of God, and how they fulfilled in Jesus, and his call to us to be people after his own heart. I see our Lord Jesus Christ who triumphs over the evil of the world and saves us from our sins. I see that since that time, the church being founded and those who believe giving everything, even their lives, to serve God. So, read your Bible.
What’s the last thing? It’s to serve others, listening to the voice of God and his call on our lives. God had put something on the heart of all of us through his Holy Spriot, something he would have us do. What is it for you? What is it that God is calling you to do? How would he have you serve?
I end on that famous prayer by St Ignatius Loyola.
Teach us, good Lord,
To serve thee as thou deservest;
To give and not to count the cost;
To fight and not to heed the wounds;
To toil and not for seek for rest;
To labour and not to ask for any reward
Save that of knowing that we do thy will.
Amen.