This sermon was preached on Sunday 16th March 2025.
Bible Reading: Luke 13:31-35
Wow! What a gospel reading. If any of you are left wondering, ‘Jesus, what on earth is going on here?’ You are not alone.
We are on the Second Sunday of Lent. Lent is the period of 40 days where we build up to Easter. We mark it as a time of abstinence and reflection. It’s a time when we subdue celebrations to practice quiet and simplicity as we move towards the sorrowful time of Good Friday when Jesus died on the cross. Although, I want to add my gratefulness to a relaxation to this abstinence as we celebrated my licensing last Wednesday evening.
Across this sombre period of Lent, our Sunday bible readings match this same tone. Lent gives us the difficult and heavy passages to ponder, passages that also point to Jesus’ death and to the power of sin that Jesus died to defeat. Today’s passage is no different.
Jesus has been teaching the crowds with some challenging messages. In the preceding verses, Jesus teaches the crowd about following the narrow door to God. If you read further back in Luke 13, you see that Jesus is constantly saying and doing things that upset the Pharisees and the religious rulers. In our passage today, in Luke 13:31-35, the Pharisees finally have enough of Jesus and tell him to go away, and they try to scare him off by telling him that King Herod wants to kill him (doesn’t that sound like a record on repeat).
However, Jesus is not scared by the threats from Herod. In fact, Jesus throws these threats right back. He says to the Pharisees, ‘You go tell that fox, Herod, I am not going anywhere. I am going to carry on doing my work, driving out demons, healing the sick, and teaching the people.’ What a slap in the face from Jesus to Herod and the Pharisees.
Jesus called him a fox, and which of us are scared of a fox? Though we recognise they have sharp teeth, none of us are scared if we see a fox wandering down the street. It’s not the same as seeing a lion walking down the street. There is a reason why the lion is the king of the jungle and not the fox. Foxes are sly creatures that only come out in the dark and the shadows, when no one is around. It scavenges for food from the scraps rather than choosing what it will eat. So, for Jesus to call Herod, the man who wants to kill him, a fox, he is showing an incredible amount of disrespect for Herod.
If Herod and the Pharisees were mad at Jesus before, then they would be livid now. But why does Jesus say these things that will rile them up? Doesn’t he care about the risk? Well, Jesus says he isn’t worried because he is not in Jerusalem. He notes that Jerusalem is the place where God’s prophets and messengers are sent to die, and since Jesus is not in Jerusalem, he has nothing to fear at this point. But contained within his statement, is a sense of awareness that he will eventually have to go to Jerusalem to be crucified. That will not happen for another ten chapters in Luke, but it is coming. Today is the Second Sunday of Lent, and Good Friday can feel like a long time away. But like Jesus, we have an awareness that it will come eventually.
So it’s easy enough to see what Jesus is going on about here as his dissing Herod and the Pharisees. But the rest of what he says in this passage is very confusing. Jesus says:
‘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! 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.’[1]
What is Jesus on about here? Look, he is talking to Jerusalem, and it is clear that he does not like what happens in Jerusalem, partially due to the fate that awaits him in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is the city that kills and stones the prophets. The prophets are the people who come to speak on behalf of God to the people. A prophet refers to the full-time role in the Bible of being a mouth-piece for the voice of God, but it also refers to the act of prophesying, that is to speak something of God’s voice to people. The fact that Jerusalem is the prophet killer, suggests that Jerusalem is a place that is against God speaking into their lives. And this is an outrageous statement. Jerusalem is the Holy City, it is the place where God’s Spirit dwells in the Temple, in the Holy of Holies. Yet, Jesus says the opposite about it, calling it a city that is opposed to the living and speaking voice of God in their lives.
I find this challenging. How many of us are at church, in the holy place, where we pray, worship, and then go and live in all the ways that Christians are called to live, yet remain closed off to God’s voice? Do you ever feel like that? The Bible talks about our bodies being temples for God’s Holy Spirit inside us, but how many of us shut out the voice of God when he comes to us? How many of us remain closed to the change and transformation he longs to bring. None of us are perfect, and there is more of Jesus’ healing, saving and transforming work that he wants to do in our lives.
This is the hope Jesus has for us. He says to Jerusalem, the city against the voice of God, ‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’ Jesus wants to gather us as his children, to bring us into his presence, where we are cared for, nurtured and fed as Christian disciples. Yet again and again, we push God away and say we are not willing, we are not interested in coming to you or growing in our faith. We do not want to change or be transformed by your Spirit at work in us.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to be like Jerusalem. I don’t want to be closed off from the work of God’s Spirit, when I am meant to be the temple where God’s Spirit is alive and at work. What do you want to do? Lent is a great time to reflect and ask these questions. As we change our daily practice through our Lenten disciplines of what we might take up or give up, use this time as an opportunity to see how we are in need of God daily working in our lives. As with everything from God, he does not force us to grow in our faith, but he invites us to discover more of him, and to share in the greater delight of love and life with God.
Jesus hopes for our change this Lent. How are you going to respond?
Amen.
[1] Luke 13:34-35 [NRSV].
Shakeel Nurmahi 