Lent 2: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem

In this morning’s Gospel lesson Jesus is recounting Israel’s own history of rejecting and even killing the prophets that God sent to them: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” One mistake in interpreting this passage would be for Christians to presume that God is only casting judgment on Jews who reject God’s prophets, foreshadowing their rejection and participation in Jesus’s own execution; and that they need not worry because this passage isn’t directed to them. 

But when Paul in Romans says that the Church who is only grafted into the people of God by their faith and they should be careful that they do not fall just as Israel did, it suggests that Jerusalem is in fact a metaphor for all of those, including those in the Church, who - like his Jewish brothers and sisters are deaf and blind to him - reject God’s prophetic message that is fulfilled in Jesus. In other words, reading this passage in the context of other parts of Scripture press us to move beyond the literal - a passage about Israel - to a passage about us and our ultimate place and purpose before God. When we look at these passages from Romans and our Gospel this morning that have to do with Israel’s place before God and our own, it becomes clear that this passage is a warning to us the Church - you and me - about being inattentive to, or willingly ignoring Jesus’s call to us, about rejecting him and so with the Jews, participating in the sin of rejection that led to his execution. 

And what is that sin? Ultimately, it is a lack of recognizing Jesus as God’s own self revelation. It is, as we saw throughout the OT scriptures, summarized in Jesus’s words here: closing ourselves off to the ways in which he is gathering us, and those around us to him. So when Jesus says, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!,” he is in fact challenging our hardness of heart; our stopped ears and the scales we have over our eyes. 

It is of course Lent - a time when we are to examine what it is that prevents us from opening our lives up to God to experience his simultaneous judgement of our sin and his mercy in coming for us with the power to change us so that we don’t wipe ourselves off the map of existence. What is it, we’re asked to contemplate that prevents us from being attentive to God? Is it pride? Arrogance? Contempt? The belief we’re already saved and so it’s now our job to judge others who don’t believe as we do? Is it shame? Fear? Doubt? Laziness? A sense of, I’ll do it tomorrow, I have more important things to worry about today? Is it clinging to our past fears, hurts, anger, bitterness, guilt and loss, allowing these things to define who we are today eliminating our capacity to step into the mission God has given to us for the future? Is it holding to grudges and resentment, withhold forgiveness or refuse to accept it from another? Is it being overwhelmed by fear so that power, security and control become our primary values so that the ends we’re trying to reach justify whatever means we think we need to take to get there.

So that we’re released from what holds us back from speaking and acting according to the reality that this is God’s world, governed by and ordered ultimately to him? Is it when we cave to cynicism and despair and think the little bit we can do in this world is meaningless? When is it that you and I have been unwilling to be gathered to Jesus; cutting ourselves off with a sense of self righteousness like Adam and Eve?

The passage does not end on a note of condemnation, however. Instead it presents a stark challenge: 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.'" I will let you reap what you sow until you open yourselves to me so that I can gather you again. AMEN