Luke 13:31-35 for March 17
Herod was corrupt and wanted Jesus dead.
All the power of the oppressive Roman empire was threatened by what Jesus represented.
The Temple Cult leaders were in collusion with Herod and Rome, and benefitted from their corrupt practices that went against the very faith they represented. Jesus was also a threat to them and they wanted Him gone.
What an environment in which to share the Good News!
Political corruption was rampant along with religious collusion for profit, and the people were victimized through abuses of power by their political leaders and abuses of false teaching by their religious leaders. Sound familiar yet?
And Jesus would not back down. Jesus stayed in their faces and kept putting His message of justice, love and shalom out in the world as an alternative - as Kingdom values in the face of empire values. God's children were being hurt by this system of oppression and Jesus' message was to be transformative in their lives.
It was despair or disgust that brought the harsh and pained words over Jerusalem by Jesus, according to the writer of Luke. It was despair that God's people in God's holy city would turn away from God's Will and reject Jesus' Good News as an expression of it, repeatedly. It was disgust that they would follow the corrupt practices and teach their children the same by their example, rather than turn to God and God's Kingdom values as shared by Jesus. It was a painful expression of futility with a recognition that they were left to their own devices, and that because of it the children of God would continue to be exploited, oppressed and occupied. It was the painful acknowledgement that they were stubbornly determined to go with the flow and get whatever little perks they could while minimizing their oppression as much as possible, rather than adopt Kingdom values, resist living those of empire and establish shalom (completeness, wholeness, well-being) for all people.
Jesus would not be back in Jerusalem until His triumphal entry, according to Luke. Jesus would go and reach out with God's Good News to others because the people of the established faith had rejected the Good News out of fear, confusion or their own corruption. They lived under empire and participated in empire values in how they lived, rather than resist and live the values of the Kingdom of God.
Just being a child of Abraham does not make one above the law of God, of Jesus.
The political leaders were brutal with the people in the land and God was not pleased.
The religious leaders were blind to their corruption and deaf to the cries of God's children.
What would bring a people to profess a faith in God and then with their words and actions go against the very teachings of that faith?
What would bring a people to claim God in name only but ignore the teachings of God?
What would bring a people to dramatically twist the Word so that it justifies the way they live values other than those of their God?
Love of wealth?
Lust for power?
Desire for status in society?
What does that do to their relationship with God?
To their individual and collective soul?
To their children as they witness their inconsistencies?
How sad is that, to walk away from God for a few perks?
To reject God for the following of corrupt, unjust, hateful and greedy values for oneself?
To participate in and promote the empire values that run contrary to God's values and that had destroyed the shalom of so many for so long?
It brings despair.
It brings disgust.
It brings about the death of the soul.
That would be very sad indeed, especially for those who profess to be people of God and followers of Jesus! Can you imagine?
Pastor Jamie
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