A Time to Mourn

 

Luke 13:31-35 is the lectionary Gospel text for Lent II, on next Sunday.

 Jesus was a threat to Empire and all those who participated in Empire, including religious leaders who had sold their souls to hold onto some power over people, wealth and status.  People were struggling to survive, and that brings out the best in some and the worst in others.  Some of the Pharisees were clearly down with empire and its values, even twisting their teachings to encourage the greed, abuses of power and status above others to accommodate their way of life.  These Pharisees were evidently at least sympathetic to Jesus’ cause.  When particularly Christian believers start painting all Jews in this time and place through their bigoted stereotypes, it is important to remember that Jesus is a Jew and that His followers and others sympathetic to Jesus’ Way were Jewish as well. 

 These Pharisees warned Jesus to leave the place where He was because Herod, also threatened by Jesus’ message, wanted to do away with Jesus as he did with John.  Jesus sent word back to Herod to let him know what Jesus’ itinerary was.  He was going to Jerusalem.  He still had people’s lives to touch and restore for a couple days, and then He was on to Jerusalem to fulfill His mission.  Jesus was coming to Herod.  The showdown was going to happen.  Jesus offered Herod His intent – to die in Jerusalem as the prophet of God.

 Then Jesus lamented over Jerusalem, as a mother for an impossibly wayward child.  Taking on feminine imagery as God, Jesus calls out Jerusalem for her history of rejecting God’s messengers, and reiterates God’s whole desire to gather God’s children together with God in Jesus.  The people said, “No.”  So, now their house is left to them, empty of God.  Then Jesus predicted that Jerusalem, God’s holy city, would not see God again until she could say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”  That is born out in Luke’s later chapters.

 When the people say, “No,” there is nothing left to do.  You can offer what is wise, what is sane, what is sustainable, what is intelligent, what is reasoned, what is faithful, what is helpful and what is moral, but the people may say, “No.”  We are in such a time.  Empire, this iteration in our own nation coming to fruition since 1981, rises and twists ideologies, theologies and practices to suit its love for its gods, and thus creates a climate of abuse, exploitation and false superiority for the few and the victimization, oppression and demoralization, even destruction of the many.  Autocrats increasingly rule.  Economic systems still function to benefit the few at the expense of the many.  Position and prestige come for being the most ruthless and intolerant among us.  The Good News of Jesus came into such a time.  The Good News of Jesus is still with us in this time.

 But just as in that time, when the people say, “No,” there is little more to do than lament over their own destruction and that of everyone around them.  They had the Word given to them, even in the Word made Flesh who dwelt among them, and they still said, “No.”  Pointing out what faithfulness, wisdom and hopefulness are in this climate only brings cries to “kill the messenger.”  Jesus came to teach and show God’s children God’s way, and the way out of the despair that they had suffered for two generations under empire.  Many of the people followed Jesus and believed.  Many of them remained faithful to the Good News Way of Jesus until empire coopted their movement by joining it and changing its whole focus.  Others, who gave their loyalty to the gods of empire, rejected the Way of Jesus because it did not sound like the established norms of empire and therefore would not get them more wealth, power or status for themselves.  And they had to conspire to kill the messenger, because He threatened to expose the unsustainable insanity of their way, and thus rally enough people to say, “NO” to empire itself.

 It is time for lamenting, my sisters and brothers.  The Good News of Jesus has been coopted by the church of empire in this nation and across the world, so that the Kingdom values of Jesus have been dismissed as unrealistic, flawed and even communistic.  The people are saying “no” across the world to Democracy as well as the message of Jesus.  Empire is having its way in the world again, or still. 

 It is time for lamenting, my sisters and brothers.  This nation has fallen under empire’s horrible spell, including our political and economic and religious leaders.  The people have been led to believe in empire’s hateful, selfish gods, and that they will give them what they want.  It does not matter that most of them are truly victims of empire, because they have been duped into believing otherwise.  They have said, “No” to Jesus’ Way.

 It is time for lamenting, my sisters and brothers.  But what did Jesus do after this lament?  He still healed and restored lives.  He went to speak truth to power, even knowing it would mean the Cross.  He called them out, made fun of empire in His triumphal entry, overturned their money tables in the Temple of God, told them how little they truly knew about power, forgave them and willingly died for them.  Even after we see the writing on the wall, and after all the signs of the storm have been witnessed, even knowing what is inevitable, still those who would be faithful in following Jesus must heal and restore the lives of others to the last, proclaim the truth of the Kingdom to the last and go to the Cross.

 To quote my favorite Christian song writer and performer, Ken Medema, “Come down with me to the weapin’ tree and cry with me a while.”  It is time for lamenting, my sisters and brothers.  We may lament over what could have been all we want, but the work is not yet done. So, we lament AND go to Jerusalem, to the Cross.