Lent 2 Year C

Lent 2. Year C.
Luke 13:31-35

The gospel passage we have just heard could be described as “small but mighty”. It’s rammed to the rafters with emotion and big stuff. Here’s Jesus publicly criticising a world leader with, well it depends how you read the power of the words – anger? Courage? Frustration? - and then He turns to a haunting lament full of longing and sorrow. Big stuff which ends with, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful images for God that humanity has managed to come up with.

Our small but mighty passage comes about a quarter of the way into a story of Jesus on an epic journey to Jerusalem. Luke is a master storyteller; he’s all about the tale, the chronicle, the putting together of events so that they create a story with a sense of purpose. And like other stories that have a hero make a journey; the Hobbit, Beowulf, Thelma and Louise; take your pick of an example, understanding what is happening internally for the hero is as important a part of the story as describing the physical journey the hero is on. For Luke, it’s important that we recognise Jesus’ commitment to and His perseverance in fulfilling God’s mission. This passage is one of those points in the story of the journey where this is made clear and obvious. If there were a soundtrack, the music would get really quiet and serious so we could listen to these vital feelings and emotions.

There are things that only Jesus could do. It’s important to remember that and to recognise what those things are. Only Jesus could be born into the world as the embodiment of the promise of God to be with people. Only Jesus could show us what God is like through a life of perfect service. Only Jesus could take the brokenness of the world through death and hell and somehow from that deep struggle emerge with a song of hope and opportunity and love. Only Jesus could do the journey He is on in our gospel reading. It’s important to remember that particularly in Lent I think where requests, demands sometimes, for us to imitate Jesus in His obedience and suffering come at us thick and fast from the traditions of the church. Our task is to pay deep attention, to acutely listen for what is the work that only Jesus can do and what is the work God has called us to. And once we have managed to unpick and unjumble a bit of that to be full of thanks for the work of God and full of resolve to get on with the work we are called to.

I think it was with that in mind that, as I sat with this passage this week, my attention was drawn to the other people in this passage, the group of Pharisees who appear right at the very beginning. They arrive “at that very hour” or to put it another way right in the middle of something that, unless you have a photographic memory of the gospel of Luke, or a Bible at hand is not immediately apparent. With the story in front of you though it’s obvious that they arrive just after Jesus has given a little speech answering someone asking how restricted and exclusive the group of people are who get to live close to God. He finishes with a summing up “indeed some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” Enter stage left people who are immediately identifiable as a religious group who at some level consider themselves to be part of the elite, the first if you like. And the soundtrack momentarily stops as we wait to see what happens next.

What they do next is unexpected. Not, I think, just because they are Pharisees who, if you take a conventional view don’t think very highly of Jesus. A more nuanced view recognises that there were Pharisees who understood Him and aligned themselves with Him. Jesus certainly spent social time with some of them. It’s unexpected because it’s rare for people to come to Jesus with a statement or an announcement, and moreover, a statement which is more about Him than about their needs and desires. Mostly, in the stories of Jesus, people come to Him with questions or demands and with need or confusion or rage on their faces. And often, in the presence of Jesus people aren’t active at all, they are receiving, sitting down, listening, being stunned or amazed at what He has done. This group of some Pharisees come to Jesus with an announcement, with information that will allow Him to escape death. And importantly, we are told nothing about their motives. We can’t see the looks on their faces or hear the tone in their voices.

There is, I would suggest, a universal human calling to approach the divine. This is work we are called to do. More than that though. We are called to approach the divine, God, recognising glory – the radiance of an unceasing, selfless love, to quote Rowan Williams. And in so doing we are somehow enabled to face our own deceits and resistance to what is good and whole and those of others. The Pharisees, this example of humanity in front of us, approached Jesus somehow recognising that glory and in so doing were able to also see that those with power would stop at nothing to resist the completeness of divine love breaking into the world through Him. Moreover, importantly I think, they are shown to do that work in a space and time when their sense of identity, how they fitted in, was unknown and undetermined. Their internal motives and reasons and feelings, their external standing as first or last didn’t matter. What mattered was that they got on with the work of approaching the divine. Sometimes, most of the time perhaps, we humans just can’t pinpoint why we approach God; is it something from deep within ourselves, is it something we do out of habit or because it is expected of us? Take confidence from this tiny interaction between the Pharisees and Jesus that it doesn’t actually matter. What matters is that you turn up.

Take confidence too that what happens next is an absolute outpouring of wisdom, energy and compassion. Jesus responds to these Pharisees with astuteness, a wisdom that knows and identifies the deep purposes of God. It’s not for Herod to kill me, He says, for my purpose lies in going to Jerusalem, the heart of political and religious power, so that what must happen will happen. And see too, that sense of energy in the description of the work of God; listen, Jesus says, I am healing and reconciling and bringing salvation to people on a daily basis. Never doubt that the energy, the breath of God to work has been let loose in the universe. And then finally, there is that outpouring of compassion, of care and concern. That longing for people to be gathered in a place of warmth and togetherness and safety as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. Take confidence, particularly at the moment I would like to suggest at a point in human history when the elite, the first, frankly seem to have got it mostly all their own way and the last are being pushed further and further down, take confidence that this response of the divine, of God, is consistent, unstoppable, unceasingly creative and all-encompassing.

I want to finish with offering you a prayer that’s become traditional in Lent. It sums up some of what I’ve been trying to say. It’s by Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk who died in 1968 at the age of 53.

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore, I will trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.