This sermon was preached at All Saints Lutheran Church, Edmonton, Alberta. The text was Luke 13:31-35.
In our Gospel reading today Jesus compares His love to that which I think most of us can relate to. That is the love of a mother. It is one of the most primal urges a woman has, to take care of her children no matter what the cost may be. In our Gospel reading today, Christ compares Himself to a mother hen, who will gather and protect her brood when she senses danger. We can see this kind of love all around us. In 1996, when a building in Brooklyn, New York caught fire, a mother cat named Scarlett felt the same urge to protect her young ones and worked to save her kittens, who were unable to save themselves. The act required several trips into the building as the blaze worsened, fire licked at her fur and singed her almost entire body. The fire and smoke would do considerable damage, practically blinding this mother feline. Yet despite the pain and suffering that she knew would be in the building each time she entered, Scarlett gathered her litter of kittens across the street where it was safer. In the reading, God in the flesh is travelling toward Jerusalem, aware of the pain and anguish that awaits Him in His endeavour to save His creatures. Yet this kind of sacrificial love that we see in Scarlett is amplified in our Lord, Christ Jesus, who laments over how often He would have loved to have gathered His people Israel in much the same way as Scarlett gathered her kittens. The people of Israel refused God's care and would rather be left alone, away from God and His promise of forgiveness and salvation, and would rather be left in their very own sins. Yet even so, God continues to love His children and comes to gather all people under His care.
In verse 31 of our reading today we see Jesus on the road toward Jerusalem, walking with His disciples and teaching them as they go.
They begin to get close to Jerusalem and as they are walking, some of the Pharisees, who are part of the priestly class in Judaism, walk up to Jesus and stop Him on the road. “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you,” they warn Jesus. No one is quite sure why they want to warn Jesus, if they want to save Him from a plot by Herod to kill Him or if they just don't want Jesus to be in their city at all. What we do know is that Jesus is not scared at all by the news that the Pharisees bring, “Go and tell that fox,” Jesus answers them, “'Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.'” Jesus stands undaunted by their warnings, even though He knows what will happen when He enters Jerusalem one final time, He is resolute. He is adamant that He will go where God has appointed Him to go.
If only we could be so courageous in our following where Christ leads us, to go on the course that God is sending us on. We are afraid of the possible suffering and pain that we might experience as God's messengers trying to gather all people under his care and sheltering wings. That fear strangles me to inaction and stops my proclamation that should be loud and exuberant. Instead I am stopped in my tracks by the voice of the devil calling down on me, telling me that it's going to hurt, it's going to be difficult and I'm not strong enough. At one time or another, we have all refused God's call to go where He leads us, I know I have. We refused to spread His message to the world because we are afraid of what might come after us and the suffering that we might encounter on the way there.
Jesus continues on the path that God appointed for Him, motivated by the strength given to Him by God and love for you. Jesus continued on the path into the Jerusalem despite the knowledge that doing so would mean that He would have to suffer and die, but did all that just so He could pull you out of the snares and traps of sin and death. As the author of Hebrews writes in chapter 2 of his epistle “For it was fitting that He, for Whom and by Whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.” It is in His suffering and death that Christ pulls you out of your sin and brings you into His holiness and righteousness. Christ faced the flames of this world so that you would not have to fear its power. Christ faced the flames of hell so that you would not feel its burn and fear its power. You no longer need to be afraid to go where God sends you, to proclaim His news of salvation because He goes with you. You no longer need to be afraid because the gift that Christ has given you that can never be taken away or undone.
The story continues in verse thirty-four with a lament over Jerusalem: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under wings and you would not!” Could you imagine the pain that Scarlett would have felt if her kittens had refused to be allowed to be picked up by the scruff of their neck and carried out of the fire? If Scarlett's kittens would rather have stayed in the fire to their death so much that they were willing to attack her? Yet her love for her kittens would compel her to continue trying to save them and bring them out to safety. This is the same pain that Jesus cries out with as His own chosen people have refused His call to grace. Israel has attacked and killed those prophets and messengers that God had sent to them to make them wise to the salvation that He offered to them.
In our sinful natures we too turn away and reject the message that God proclaims to us through His Word and through our friends and family. Even though God holds out life which we receive through faith in His Son, we still refuse Him and turn aside that gift. The writer of Proverbs puts it the best: “I have called and you refused to listen, have stretched out my hand and no one has heeded.” For the past two weeks we have heard the theme song for the Olympics proclaim: “I believe in the power of you and I!” We would rather put our faith in our own works, sleep an extra hour, stay at home and get ready for that gold medal game, go golfing, skating, skiing, anything but come to receive God's gifts. Where does the power of you and I get us? Luther answers quite bluntly in the Small Catechism where he says: “I believe that I can not by my own reason or strength believe in my Lord or come to Him.” These last two weeks have shown us that the power of you and I is anything but perfect, but instead leads us away from God and His life saving work.
But the power and love of God is greater than the power of you and I and draws us together into His Church, where the gifts won for us by Christ are given to us freely. Through the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart you are brought to faith in your Lord Jesus Christ and brought to this Church where you hear your sins are forgiven. The power of God rescues you from your sin and brings you into His Church where you are fed His Word and strengthened in His sacraments. By the power of you and I, none of this would be possible and we would be left in our sins, but with the power of God, all things are possible and we are called into the saving faith. By the power of God we gathered around the foot of the cross and receive mercy and forgiveness won for us by the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.
The care that God gives to us as He feeds through His Word and the message that we have been saved for the sake of Christ empowers us. The care that we receive in the sacraments given to us by Christ, empowers us. We are empowered to follow where God leads us to go, to confess without fear and to stand strong in the face scrutiny. Through God's work in us we become one of His messengers to gather the rest of those still trapped in sin to the grace and mercy of our Lord.
Just like Scarlett who braved the fire and smoke of the burning building to save her kittens, God has braved the whips, nails and spears of this world to save us from our sin and gather us under the cross. Even when we don't want to be gathered under His care, and fight violently to refuse Him, God still comes to us and brings us to receive the forgiveness won for us by Christ. Through our words and actions, God works through us to gather all the world to Him, to rescue them from death and bring us to life everlasting.
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