Lent 2, 02/28/2010

Sermon on Luke 13:31-35, by Andrew D. Smith

³¹ At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." ³² And he said to them, "Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. ³³ Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.' ³⁴ 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! ³⁵ Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!' "

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Believe it or not, there is disagreement today across groups of Christians about the meaning of Jesus' crucifixion. When I grew up, we learned very early in Sunday School that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and the sins of all people. Today, that's isn't always the case in the broader Christian community and even among ourselves, I would guess that we fail to see the importance of the cross of our Lord as the center and very source of our ongoing life with God. Lutherans seem to get accused of being great Good Friday Christians, but poor Easter Christians and even worse Pentecost Christians. I think what our critics would have us believe is that the Christian faith is more than just Jesus' death on the cross; it's about new life in God and a spirit-filled life with God. I am the first person to say that yes, this gem of the Gospel has more than one facet, but first and always the faith of orthodox Christians is centered firmly on the cross, that is the suffering and death of Jesus Christ for sin. The cross of Jesus is the center and source of our faith.

In the Gospel reading today, these are Jesus' own words. Jesus himself says his suffering and death in Jerusalem is the purpose and reason he is sent into this world. Now some would dispute this claim. They look to modern scholars and say that all this talk of the importance of Jesus' cross came from Paul and the later Christian community who put these words in Jesus mouth well after he was gone. After all, it's from Paul that we get, "we preach Christ crucified!" They want to create a division between Jesus and Paul where none exists. Our reading this morning is not just helpful but essential then in this debate. We have here the Words of our Lord speaking clearly and prophetically about his mission and purpose in this world. "Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. ³³ Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem." These are Jesus' words.

These words foretelling his death stand at the center of the narrative surrounding his travel to Jerusalem. Scholars who do these kinds of things note that this passage occurs right in the middle of the so-called "Travel Narrative" of Luke's Gospel. All that means is that in what Luke records as the stories surrounding Jesus' travel out of Galilee, into Judea and then up to Jerusalem, our passage today stands quite squarely in the middle of that section. This should not surprise us as we know that Luke has set down an "orderly account" of the life and ministry of Jesus. But it makes Luke out to be a tremendous theologian by putting this section at the very center and Jesus' lament over Jerusalem at the center of this passage, the center of the center, as it were. With reference to the third day and noting that as a prophet, he must go to Jerusalem to die, as appointed, there is not doubt what future event Jesus is foretelling. These words foretelling his death stand at the center of the narrative surrounding his travel to Jerusalem where he will die on the cross.

In the first half of what Jesus says here, he sounds like a prophet describing the ministry of the long promised Messiah. Casting out demons and healing the sick have been the draw for tremendous crowds to see Jesus. Jesus seems to be saying that these miracles in themselves testify to the mercy of God being poured out on the people. But there is a shift in his tone. "On the third day, I am brought to my goal," he says. Just as Jesus has been releasing people from the bondage to sickness and demonic forces he will be brought to the goal when the final release for all people is won, on the third day, his day of resurrection. The goal is what Jesus was sent by the Father to accomplish in this world. In the previous chapter he has already spoken of his bloody baptism on the cross as accomplishment. It could only be clearer if Luke had recorded Jesus' words at the cross as "It is accomplished." He didn't; John did. But nevertheless, Jesus' cross the center and purpose of everything he came into this world to accomplish.

And so for us then here is a lesson. The center of faith is not carrying out the Great Commission, or feeding the poor, or even treating one another as you yourself would like to be treated. As important as those things are, the center of faith must be the cross of Jesus our Savior because it is the source of our faith. It was on the cross that he stretched out his arms and gathered us to himself to protect us, to rescue us, to save us from sin and death and the devil. It is under the outstretched arms of Jesus our Lord that he pours onto us the water from his side, washing away our sins in his death. There in his own death we have life. The wages of our sin have been paid in his bloody body hanging as cursed for sins and transgressions under the Law. There his blood is poured out for us as a blood covering, a propitiation for sin. The cross is not just the center of our faith, but the source of our faith.

Too often we stray from this center. Many of us stray from the shelter of the cross, certainly because there is so much work to do in God's kingdom. For those of us who stray off in this direction it is as if the cross shows us the need for sacrifice for others or how hard following Jesus and continuing the work of the kingdom might be. And the tricky thing is, it is! But we focus here, the true center and source of faith and love begins to fade softly into the background. Faith then really slowly stops being about what Jesus has done for us and becomes more about us and what we think should happen in his name, he must decrease so that we might increase, to turn the phrase on its head. There are other directions too. There are some who simply and flatly reject that Jesus accomplished anything on the cross. The Pharisees of Jesus' day would certainly fall into that camp. Modern day Jews, and Muslims, Unitarians and many people who bear the name Christian reject any sense of Jesus being punished for the sin of the world and make faith out to be something we do, we believe, we drum up as if God is lucky to have us believing in him and so anyone who does this act of believing no matter what the center is, it is God pleasing. This is clearly not the case. In Jesus own words, he has longed to gather his people under his wings. No, the center of our faith is the cross of Jesus. It is the focus and object of our faith and Jesus intends it to be.

Does that mean that all we are to do is stand huddled under the dripping blood of our Savior? Well, yes and no. No, in the sense that there are hungry people to feed and naked people to clothe and sick people to heal and homeless people to shelter. But we don't do those things from any sense of altruism or philanthropy, that is, not out of the bigness of our hearts, but precisely because we know how corrupt our hearts really are. We do it because we ourselves have been fed and clothed and healed and even sheltered at the foot of the cross of our Lord. And so in this sense, yes, we stand here pulling others in out of the scorching heat, out of the hunger and out of the nakedness of the world and into the Church were we have found our shelter and protection-under the wings of Jesus. In this way the cross is the center and source of our faith in God and love toward others.

The cross of Jesus is the center and source of our faith. Jesus stretched out his arms and died gathering us to himself. He longed to do so. He gathered us. In the shelter of his cross, the holy Church, we reach out to others so that they might be washed and fed and clothed with Christ. Amen.

The peace of God which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus. Amen.

The Rev. Andrew D. Smith
Augustana Evangelical Lutheran Church
Hickory, North Carolina USA
E-Mail: smithad19+prediger@gmail.com

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