Waiting to Inhale: 2. Today, Tomorrow, the Next Day. A sermon preached by James F. McIntire. Text: Luke 13: February 24, 2013 Lent 2

Transcription

1 Waiting to Inhale: 2. Today, Tomorrow, the Next Day A sermon preached by James F. McIntire Copyright 2013 James F. McIntire All rights reserved. Text: Luke 13:31-35 February 24, 2013 Lent 2 Hope United Methodist Church Eagle & Steel Roads, Havertown, PA Phone: Web: Office: HopeUMCHavertown@verizon.net Pastor: HopeUMCPastor@verizon.net 2

2 Luke 13:31-35 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you. 32 He said to them, Go and tell that fox for me, Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. 33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem. 34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Again. Take a deep breath. Exhale as fully as you can. So here we are on the second Sunday of Lent, waiting to experience again the great inhale of Jesus on the cross a complete inhale of the world s brokenness our brokenness and then as he is removed from that cross and resurrection begins, a tremendous exhale of forgiveness is ours to receive. The brokenness that we feel in the terracotta potsherd which we received last Sunday and will carry with us through the season sharp and jagged, yet smooth and cold, tiny in my pocket yet large in mind our brokenness which sometimes just has to remain broken. Take a deep breath. Now exhale as fully as you can. It s how we started last week, right? Theologian Jürgen Moltmann s concept that prior to creation of the world, God had to inhale to make room for the nothingness into which God then exhales and creation comes into being out of the chaos. 3 The brokenness visible in the large broken pot on the altar being repaired in our sight as the days pull us through Lent today, tomorrow the next day. 4

3 Jesus knew that Jerusalem and all that it stood for was broken and he knew that something had to happen to bring healing into that broken world. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! To challenge the existing powers religious, political, economic, social Jesus knows that he must be in the center of it all. In Jerusalem. All power for Judaism and its interrelationships with its oppressor of the moment, Rome, is centered there. Jerusalem, Jerusalem. In February last year I stayed for several days at the Mt. Zion Hotel on the Mount of Olives across the Kidron Valley from the magnificent walls of Jerusalem. Every morning the walls of Jerusalem were in my vision as I started a new and always overwhelming day of walking its streets and gazing into its past and present and inhaling the breath of God who breathes life into us all. I could imagine Jesus and his loyal students gathered on the side of a hill across the Kidron Valley from the Great City maybe sitting where I sat in front of my hotel waiting for our bus to pick us up. I can almost hear Jesus sighing those words as he laments the need to turn in that direction. Would that they would listen to me. I have tried to embrace them like Mother God embraces us all, a hen and her brood under wing. But, no. They will not receive God s messenger. So I must go into the snake pit of turmoil that is our world s center. Exhale a sigh of resignation so deep that it can be heard two millennia later. 5 I could see the worn paths used by pilgrims and merchants and animals and families, paths that wind up and down and around hills and into valleys that lead to gates into the holiest of places in Judaism. I could see them and walk them these places where Jesus walked and paused and prayed and lamented. I have always felt the presence of God in places of historic significance at Gettysburg, where death reminds one of freedom coming through despite conflict; in Birmingham, AL at the site of the church bombing that took 4 little girls in 1967; at Independence Hall here in Philadelphia; in Port au Prince, Haiti, where the first 6

4 successful slave revolt led to a new nation; in Mandela s cell on Robbin Island off the coast of South Africa; at Dr. King s grave in Atlanta, GA. And it is in this Jerusalem that Jesus needs to wrestle with both goals. Jerusalem is a site of great evil, but it is also a place great things. Jerusalem is where human sinfulness and divine intervention meet, says one preacher (Alyce McKenzie). Here is where prophets die, here is where our brokenness will meet a crucified prophet, here is where Jesus will inhale our brokenness and exhale our forgiveness. Jerusalem might be the end but it is also the beginning of something else the community of believers that we will soon know as the Church, a community unperfect and broken yet not beyond repair. And even if there are pieces that can t be fixed, the community of Jesus followers can still be protected and loved. And now in the footprints of Jesus in Jerusalem and Galilee and Capernaum. Remove the shoes from your feet, God told Moses, because you are standing on holy ground. So it is wherever we stand holy ground sacred space on God s exhaled creation. Now for me Jerusalem is one of those places where my feet have touched the sacred feet of those who have gone before us. Jerusalem. A beautiful place a tragic place a living place a holy place, as is every place in our lives, for that matter. But there in Jerusalem one has a sense of what Jesus faced. And what Jesus needed. A need to confront. Yet also a need to protect. 7 Jesus pushes forward believing that, in this clash of wills, God's will prevails, believing that in the city of potential death, life awaits, that in the midst of possible pain, there is glory. In Matthew s retelling of the story, this lament happens just before Jesus enters Jerusalem for the last time at the beginning of what we know as Passion Week. But in Luke, it's early in the Jesus story and there is still plenty of time to back out. Instead, Jesus says, "I must be on my way." "If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, writes renowned preacher Barbara Brown Taylor, then you understand the depth of Jesus lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world wings spread, breast exposed but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand." 8

5 Jesus could take no better posture, could do no more, could say nothing more symbolic yet so realistic at the same time. Sighing into the world this lament. Jerusalem, Jerusalem. To us even today My children, my children, to you I open my arms and welcome you to my breast. He meant what he said, he stood with his arms wide open. again. You don t need to be whole like you might have once been, says Jesus, you need only be forgiven and receive God s great exhale into your life. Inhale Exhale. Jesus must now exhale this sigh so that we can all be ready for that ultimate inhale of brokenness that he will take once in the city that will reject him and from which we will drag him to the cross. Today, tomorrow, and the next day. Jesus says it twice in this very brief moment. Go and tell that fox [Herod] for me, Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Three days. In biblical terms the point being made is that it is a very short period of time after 3 days Abraham discovered the place where he was to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and on that third day he found the ram in the thicket and Isaac lives; after 3 days in the belly of the big fish Jonah was spit out and continues his reluctant journey to Ninevah. And so also it is 3 days after Jesus great inhale of our brokenness on the cross until the fullness of his exhaled forgiveness is completed in the resurrection. Knowing that those 3 days at the conclusion of this season is what gets us through allowing us to accept the brokenness and the fear that I might never be whole 9 Do you have that piece of pottery with you this morning? (If not, there are some there in the pews take one if you d like.) Has it been with you through the week that has passed? A few people have told me that they carried it in their pocket or bag or car some have left it visible at home as a reminder. Some left their broken piece in the pew last week which is maybe the right thing to do lay your burden down, don t take it with you. However it has happened for you with that piece of pottery this week, it has happened today, tomorrow, and the next day. I came to realize about midweek as I was studying today s Gospel lesson that that sequence that Jesus uses twice does a few things. Today, tomorrow, the next day gets you half way through the week, doesn t it? Sunday, Monday, Tuesday I rise Wednesday 10

6 morning and can begin again on into the rest of the week what we used to call hump day, when you get over the hump after climbing the beginning of the week and coast down the other side until the weekend. Take a breath inhale let it out exhale and then it begins again. Today, tomorrow, the next day Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. The other thing that sequence does is remind us quite simply that one day follows the next. "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today's trouble is enough for today. (Matthew 6:34) Today, tomorrow, the next day gets you, first, to tomorrow and once you are at tomorrow, that is suddenly today again. This not an end game, then. It is just the beginning over and over and over again. What is it that Jesus says? Just a few chapters later in Luke s Gospel, If the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, I repent,' you must forgive." (Luke 17:4) Matthew has Jesus saying that you must forgive not seven times, but seventy-seven times. A bazillion gazillion times in English; a mogollón in Spanish. On my way, says Jesus. Last week I also quoted Jürgen Moltmann who wrote, God weeps with us so that we may one day laugh with God. It is along the way through Lent that not only does Jesus move us today, tomorrow and the next day, but it also true that along the way through these days God does indeed weep with us. Yet at the end of it all God laughs with us as well because we know and by faith we live out what Paul reminds us Paul who writes that he is convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing can separate us from God. That is the promise. Inhale with God, exhale with God. God inhales and makes room for us; God exhales and breathes life into us. Jesus inhales all of the world s brokenness on the cross; Jesus exhales forgiveness as he comes down from there and is alive again. Today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way

7 Today, tomorrow, the next day one day after another Frederick Buechner, theologian, storyteller, writer tells it in one of my favorite statements by him. Buechner is also a great proponent of 12 step programs so he knows the fact of one day following the next and our determined journey to get through. If God speaks anywhere, it is into our personal lives that God speaks. Someone we love dies, say. Some unforeseen act of kindness or cruelty touches the heart or makes the blood run cold. We fail a friend, or a friend fails us, and we are appalled at the capacity we all of us have for estranging the very people in our lives we need the most. Or maybe nothing extraordinary happens at all just one day following another, helter-skelter, in the manner of days. We sleep and dream. We wake. We work. We remember and forget. We have fun and are depressed. And into the thick of it, or out of the thick of it, at moments of even the most humdrum of our days, God speaks. Inhale exhale waiting for the fullness of God s time, God waits to inhale once again Amen. 13