Lent C2 – Luke 13:31-35

This reading is kind of a weird reading, and it took me quite a while to work out what to say about it. It’s probably helpful for us to look at the context of where this reading fits in Luke’s gospel. Just before this, Jesus had been preaching in synagogues and towns about the Kingdom of God. In particular, the story before this reading is in answer to the question “will only a few be saved” in which Jesus answers by saying “Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able” and “some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last”.

Pretty soon after he preached this – indeed that very hour – the Pharisees warn him that Herod wants to kill him and that he should flee. He responds as he’s quite aware of the fact – it’s not news at all. Jesus knows that once he goes to Jerusalem he will meet his death. In Luke 9:51 he “set his face to go to Jerusalem” and shortly after commissioned the seventy to go before him to the towns he planned to go. He senses that his time has come and he knows that his message won’t be tolerated for long in Jerusalem – while he was out in the country he could get away with calling out the dominant secular and religious systems and their leaders. Once he was close to them, he was in danger.

Jesus laments for Jerusalem – laments for Jerusalem knowing that the city will be his death. He desires to care for Jerusalem – as a mother hen would for her chicks – desires to protect them. To not only protect them violence by putting his body between it and them, but also to show abundant life and joy that comes from the Kingdom of God.

Jerusalem is a people who Jesus wants to save as well as a symbol of political and religious power. Jerusalem is where sacrifices were offered in the temple and where worshipers felt beholden to give more than they could afford. Judaism started out as a religion which questioned the sacrificial system of the ancient world – firstly by moving from human to animal sacrifices – but it had yet to dismantle the sacrificial system entirely, even though the prophets had declared this. Interestingly, this is a point on which the Pharisees and Jesus agreed – there is so much debate in the gospels between the Pharisees and Jesus because they are close together in their understandings, not the opposing forces that they’re sometimes made out to be. The Pharisees questioned the need for the temple and the sacrificial system, arguing instead that local synagogues which taught the law was all that was needed. They were concerned with keeping Jewish law – chiefly what was clean or unclean. Jesus also wanted to overthrow the sacrificial system – but he wanted to fulfill the law by proclaiming the good news of God’s love and grace which extends to everyone, regardless of their affiliations.

Jesus’ critique of Jerusalem is a critique of this system – Jesus message is a prophetic message to the Jewish people to continue their path of overthrowing ancient sacrificial understandings of the world just as it is a repudiation of the Roman system – an abusive system of violence and oppression and rule by fear. It is this fear – a collective spirit of distrust and violence that spreads through all the people and is bigger than any one person even when we see it embodied in just one person, or just a few people. Because the rulers and leaders who enforce these abusive systems are also victims along with the people who are swept up in them. Jesus spoke truth to these powers because it was the only way he could possibly reach the people enslaved to them – victims and perpetrators alike. He knew it would kill him, he knew that continuing to love in the face of violence would condemn him.

Yet time and time again we see Jesus’ message of love, grace, sanctuary and safety intolerable to accept in the world. Whether proclaimed by Jesus, Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero or the Old Testament prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the message that has called out and rebuked the system of fear has been too hard a pill to swallow. We can’t quite get our head around the fact that God doesn’t require sacrifice, but desires mercy. Not violence, put peace. Not oppression, but liberation. This is now the work of the Church – as Christ’s body. Though I think sometimes we are too afraid of dying – of being a dying church – could this be preventing us from speaking God’s truth? This was the error of the Pharisees. They wanted Jesus to slow down a bit, not make too many waves because they could see that he would be killed for it. Jesus knew he would be killed also – and that didn’t stop him. His task was to preach the love of God and the Good News of his grace to all – he desired so much to show us a new way of life that he was willing to put his body on the line, to die that we might live.