Lent 2 [Luke 13:31-35]

This sermon was preached at Trinity Lutheran Church, Tailem Bend (9 am).  The preaching outline turned out a bit different than the manuscript.  Oh well.  

For someone who's not funny, I like to think I know a lot about comedy. And one of the basic rules for being a comedian is being able to lie to yourself. Because for the first year you do comedy, you will bomb every night. So the trick is to be able to say, “it's really going very well” when a whole room of people doesn't like you. It's part of the job. So when we're hearing Jesus speak the words of today's Gospel, if we just say, “well that's depressing”, then we're really missing something about his job.

It's not an easy job for Jesus. His face is set on Jerusalem, where he knows he's going to die. But that doesn't mean he's looking for any excuse to get out of it. And he has the opportunity here. The Pharisees say, “You should go from here, because King Herod wants to kill you.” - probably meaning “Yes, go really far from here, because we're warning you as a favor to you.” What we do know is that when Herod has Jesus in front of him thanks to Pontius Pilate, he doesn't say, “There you are. I've been meaning to kill you.” He just mocks and ridicules Jesus and leaves it at that. And we do know that the Pharisees were among his adversaries, and if you just turn back to Luke 13 he calls the people who were against him hypocrites.

Not that Herod's mocking is a good thing, but the scheming of the Pharisees is what Jesus is really addressing when he talks about the way Jerusalem puts the prophets and those sent to them by God to death. That's a big hint: what's worse – a crafty nuisance of a fox, or a prophet killer? And it's not so much that they scheme, but that they scheme in complete rejection of Jesus, who is the very source of the forgiveness of sins. They have their own evil devices for sure, but when it comes to any excuse to get around this whole forgiveness thing, we have a set of evil devices all our own. Luther often referred to the devil as a 'master of a thousand arts' who is constantly and in many subtle ways working against the main thing of the Christian faith – forgiveness! It's like when we were teenagers – teenagers' one skill is sneakiness, so they spend much more time thinking of ways than to be sneaky than in actually listening to parents and authorities. That's what we do so we can squirm out of simply seeing our hearts in the clear light of God's Word. And the devil doesn't work his arts just to get us to pull pranks, but always goes after our trust in the Lord to save! To convince us that Jesus isn't able to forgive someone as bad as me, or that there is simply nothing I need to repent of at all. And the Bible, where we hear how bad our sin is, well, that's just so boring, or it's so important it's best not to listen to it. A thousand arts!

But Jesus is a lot different. You don't see many schemes in what he does. He has no devices. You see that in his reply to the Pharisees. Real simple: the Pharisees tell him “go” and he replies “you go . . . and tell that fox . . .” - he answers in the way they spoke to him. But his answer is also pretty simple: he's going to Jerusalem, and it's part of his work. “I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course [or I am brought to an end].” His death is bringing to fulfillment his work, and his work is suffering, being rejected, and put to death so that he may gather sinners into his kingdom by the forgiveness of sins which happens there at the cross.

It's pretty straightforward. It's pretty straightforward when he brings an end to your sin and your death by his death and his carrying your sin at the cross. It's pretty simple when he goes around proclaiming repentance of sin and release from sin, death, and the devil. What does he do that doesn't fit into those two things: parables, teaching, prophecy, healing, speaking condemnation to the proud and delivering comfort to the low – it's all exposing sin and bringing forgiveness. It's all threats and promises. It's all Law and Gospel! It's all straightforward, and it's all for our good, because the Law is the servant of the Gospel. It's not like watching the evening news, where too much bad news is bad for you. The Law is bad news for your sinful nature, but that's for the sake of the Gospel, the goal is to be comforted by the Gospel. The Gospel is good news of free forgiveness. The sacraments are free forgiveness. The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting are free forgiveness.

But still, when it comes to speaking of the people's sin and rejection, Jesus does it in the form of a lament.

He laments over Jerusalem. He doesn't say that the inhabitants of Jerusalem have killed the prophets, he puts it in the present – they do kill and stone the prophets and those sent/apostled to them. This includes many Old Testament time prophets, Jesus' own coming crucifixion, and the stoning of Stephen in Acts 7. The sad thing is that it's in Jerusalem where all this happens. Jerusalem was the very place where the temple had been established, and it was established by the same God who sent those prophets that were rejected by the people and suffered. But when we're talking about anger against something from God – we have it inbuilt, because we have the same sinful nature as the inhabitants of Jerusalem. God sends pastors, fellow Christians, family members and loved ones – and when they speak the truth of God's Word, when they speak Law and Gospel to us, when they speak – we have every excuse. God's Word exposes a bad conscience, in order to create a terrified conscience, in order to bring rest to that conscience from the only place it can come from: Jesus' blood and righteousness. But the first two steps lead to the third, but they're not fun.

Jesus didn't find it fun to describe the rejection he received. But we often miss just that fact, that he is mourning over the unbelief of the people, and not rejoicing over it. He laments because he always wishes to reach out like a hen pulling in her brood.

But, he keeps sending preachers anyway. (part of the job for Jesus and for Christians, is being rejected. It's what we call, not the fun part.)

And yet, nothing prevents him from his one work: forgiveness. Forgiveness happens at Jerusalem: the place of atonement by the cross. Forgiveness happens in his kingdom where he smashes heaven and you together in baptism, absolution, and the Lord's Supper. Forgiveness happens in fulfilment in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

Jesus laments over sin because he died to forgive you.

Conclusion: For Jesus, rejection is part of the job That job is forgiveness. It happens by the Word of Law and Gospel. The Law serves the Gospel. Jesus is such a loving Savior that he reaches out with his Word to draw in wayward sinners who need his forgiveness (which includes us!). All this is because there was no place he could die but Jerusalem – the place of sacrifice: his life to destroy your death. Amen.