Unexpected Grace: Love Through the Tears
Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
February 28, 2010
Luke 13:31-35
At a preaching conference I attended a year ago last spring, one of the speakers told us that in his sermons he always tries to share one new idea or fact using the sermon as a teaching moment. He wants to tell people something that he suspects, most, if not all of them, have not heard before. So here’s today’s teaching moment: I recently read that the center of the Milky Way may smell like rum and taste a bit like raspberries. Now, how’s that for a great piece of information! Okay? Ethyl formate, one of the molecules that gives raspberries its flavor and rum its smell, has been found in space. It’s almost enough to make you want to be an astronaut! But, says Kae Evensen, a Lutheran pastor and professor, “There’s also a certain poignancy to this new piece of knowledge, poignancy in knowing that the beauty of the galaxies is as intimate, near and sublime as eating raspberries on a clear summer night.”
Now, I share this with you, first because I thought it was rather interesting, but also because what Pastor Evensen says about the intimate beauty of the galaxies can also be said of God. Not that God tastes like raspberries and that there is the smell of rum on the divine breath. I don’t think we’re going to go there. But I share it because in the words of Evensen, “Having decided to whisper all things into being, to create raspberries and stars, to shape time and hope, God has also chosen to take on our lives with all their quirks, sins and finalities. God’s habit is to draw near. There seems to be no good reason for God to draw near except God’s sheer love for creation.” I believe this love is at the heart of our text for today – Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem. In his sorrow and regret, we hear an echo of God’s sheer, almost unimaginable love for creation and for each of us. And we also hear an echo of a promise, a promise made to a people - us - who have never quite trusted that promise.
Now, today’s text is a two-parter. Back in Luke 9, we read “Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Clearly Jerusalem is to be the place for the final confrontation between Jesus and the powers of the age. Jerusalem, the place of beginnings and endings, of promise and betrayal, where God’s glory is revealed and where God’s prophets are often reviled. Jesus knows this is where the final chapter of the drama will be written.
But things aren’t looking too good when some Pharisees meet him on the road to Jerusalem with a warning: “Get away from here, Herod wants to kill you.” Now this is Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great. It is Antipas who ordered the execution of John the Baptist, and Jesus knows this very well. But look who warns him…his old enemies the Pharisees. We don’t know their motives, but as one scholar says, “One is in big trouble when even your enemies are concerned for your safety!”
But this isn’t going to become the great battle between Jesus and the evil King. “You can go and tell that fox for me…” Herod may be sly, cunning, unprincipled and murderous, but he’s no threat to Jesus and the work he must complete. His journey to Jerusalem, what he does there and what awaits him there, will be controlled by his faithfulness to God, not by Herod. He will not allow Herod to have any power over him. Well, I don’t know about you, but I sure wish I had that sense of vision, of clarity, of focus in my life. “Lord, I want to be like Jesus, in my heart…” Herod represents the antithesis of the kingdom Jesus proclaims and clearly Jesus doesn’t have time for him. He’s not concerned about him. You get the sense that as Jesus gets to Jerusalem he has much bigger fish to fry.
But clearly the warning of the Pharisees gets Jesus to thinking about Jerusalem, and this is the second part of this text for we see a rather sudden change of tone from anger, even belligerence, to lament and regret. Herod – insignificant. But Jerusalem? “Ah Jerusalem, Jerusalem, How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing.” Jesus has only contempt for Herod. But when he speaks of Jerusalem, there is only sorrow. And how do we deal with the sorrow? I mean, if only he would have kept up his harsh criticism of Herod, the government, the injustice of the economic system. I love that stuff! “Go get ‘em. Jesus. Don’t let them push you around.” But clearly there are other things on his mind. We are on his mind. Says United Methodist minister, William Willimon, “Jesus’ great lament, toward the end of his earthly ministry as he faces the cross, is for God’s people, the faithful who are unfaithful, Israel, the church, us. We are the ones called to be light in a dark world. We are the ones called to be salt. Jesus has said that the world ought to be able to look at us, who claim to be his followers, and see him. As we ponder the state of our fidelity, our discipleship, it’s not hard to understand why Jesus weeps.” What we see in Jesus is more anguish than anger, anguish over the unfaithfulness, lack of trust, of a people he loves so very much.
Warning, warning – here comes an old joke: A man fell over a cliff. He was saved from certain death by grabbing on to a small branch that was growing out of the side of the cliff. He was down too low to crawl back up to safety but was up too high to let go. And so he softly called, “Anybody up there?” A voice came back, “I am.” With great relief, the man asked, “Can you help me?” The response came back, “Certainly, I am the Lord. Do you trust me?” The reply flew back, “Oh yes, I trust you.” “Good, then let go and I will save you.” After a long silence, the man looked up and asked, “Anyone else up there?” I warned you! “Is anyone else up there?” How often do we ask that? I think, woven throughout the biblical narrative, and certainly deep in our text today, is this tension: tension between God’s faithfulness and our doubt; between God’s great love and our inability to let go and live in that love; between God’s promise and our inability to trust that promise.
It is so hard to trust. Says Barbara Brown Taylor, “We are always fooling around in our spiritual basements, cooking up alternative gods that promise to be more responsive to our needs. If you think you do not have any I can suggest several golden calf detectors. Your checkbook, for instance. What is it that you invest in most heavily? What do your check stubs teach you about what you truly worship? Or your calendar. What gets the lion’s share of your time – which, after all, is really more precious than your money! When it comes time to rest, or pray, or wait on the Lord, what gets in the way? A job that promises security. A house that promises comfort. A portfolio that promises protection. A relationship that promises safety. None of them bad things, by the way.”
She concludes, “The raw material of a golden calf, a false god, is almost never a bad thing. It is usually a good thing made into an ultimate thing. That is where the trouble begins, because things are not God. Oh, they may produce results for a while; they may even produce results for a long while. But talk to someone whose job has just evaporated, or whose marriage has just ended, or whose health has just failed, and let that person tell you what a golden calf is worth. God, on the other hand – the one, true and living God – seems more interested in producing life than results, abundant life, extravagant life, my-cup-runneth-over life, which has very little to do with comfort, security, power or prestige. We can bow down to those other gods, we can serve them. Or we can stand up, brush the gold dust off our hands and seek the living God. The choice is ours.”
Here are two stories about two Christian women, one white, one black, who made the choice. The white woman was a member of a church in what was then the rigidly segregated town of Southside, Virginia. Her teenage son was killed by a car full of intoxicated, joyriding black youth. Says Fleming Rutledge, a pastor and writer, “I will never forget the day that woman sat in our living room – decades before the civil rights movement really took hold – she sat there and said, ‘I don’t understand why I don’t hate these people.’ She paused for a moment, then said, ‘I guess God has given me a forgiving heart.’” She made a choice.
You may have heard about the second woman, Jean Griffith Sandiford. About fifteen years go now, her son, Michael, was attacked and killed by a band of white teenagers in Howard Beach, Brooklyn. They attacked him and beat him simply because he was black. Years later, when asked about that horrible crime, Jean, who was frequently seen reading her small Bible during the trial, said that the pain of her son’s death had not diminished. “Sometimes I just sit here and cry,” she said. But speaking of the three men involved in the attack, she added, “Every night I pray for them. I ask God to forgive them. When I talk to people about that, they say, ‘you’re crazy. How can you feel that way about someone who killed your son?’”
Completely crazy; you’re right. About as crazy, I suppose, as that Jew from Nazareth, who went up to Jerusalem to risk everything for people whom he loved, even as he lamented their unfaithfulness. But that’s it, you see. That’s it. That craziness, that crazy love, is what allows us to trust, what assures us we don’t need anyone else up there. Even as he laments, he loves; even as he laments he cares; even as he laments he forgives – love through the tears. And as those two crazy, forgiving women discovered, such a wild and magnificent love does not let us go. It has a way of getting into our hearts, of bending our wills to its will. Do we dare to choose such a love?
Rum and raspberries, redemption and resurrection have been let loose into time and space. God chooses to bring love and life, even in the face of our stubborn doubt and resistance. We see Jesus’ tears, we hear his lament, and still he moves on, he moves in, he moves near. And what that tells me is that we can trust the promise, we can choose his life, his crazy, irrational, life-giving life. In the words of the old spiritual, “There’s plenty good room, plenty good room, plenty good room in my Father’s kingdom.” And in the heart of Christ.