Text: Luke 13:31-35 (Revised Standard Version)
The Lament over Jerusalem
31 At that very hour some Pharisees came, and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” 32 And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. 33 Nevertheless I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’ 34 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! 35 Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’”
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
If there is one thing that we can say about Jesus, it is that he was courageous. He did not shy away from going toe to toe with the authorities – not the Temple leaders, not the Sanhedrin (the Jewish council), not the Pharisees, not even the Romans.
We see that very clearly today – even when he is warned by “some Pharisees” (more on that in a moment) to “get out of Dodge” because Herod was out to kill him, Jesus says, “No – I’ve got work yet to do.” He stands his ground.
Well, we might say that it is easy for him to do this, because he is God, after all. But there’s more to it than that. It’s a matter of what we call “the courage of conviction.” This wasn’t a role as in some play, where he would enter stage left, hit his mark, deliver his lines, and head back to his dressing room. His entire earthly being was committed to his mission – and he was determined to complete that mission, no matter what the danger it presented to his human self. To use a modern phrase, Jesus had “skin in the game.” He knew what the end of his earthly ministry was going to be – a gruesome, painful death on the cross; and not even the fact that he was the Chosen One of God would make that death any less painful.
And that’s the kind of courage we honor and revere, and which we are called on to emulate, in our own lives and in our own ways.
When we think about courage, we almost always think about heroic, self-sacrificial acts. We think of people like Susan Dibene, who died freeing her baby’s stroller from a light-rail track – she managed to save her baby, but didn’t have enough time to get away herself and was hit by the train.[1]
We applaud the courage of men like Yasuteru Yamada, a retired engineer who, after the nuclear plant disaster a few years ago in Japan, felt terrible that younger men were being sent into the ruins of the plant to perform the cleanup. So he gathered a group of 400 other retired professional men to do that cleanup instead. When asked why, he said “I am 72 and on average I probably have 13 to 15 years left to live. Even if I were exposed to radiation, cancer could take 20 or 30 years or longer to develop. Therefore us older ones have less chance of getting cancer.”[2]
Then there’s courage against the elements. “On Christmas Eve of 1971, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke boarded a plane with her mother in Peru with the intent of flying to meet her father at his research station in the Amazon rainforest. Lightning struck the plane and tore off a wing, causing the plane to crash. All 92 of her fellow passengers died, but Juliane stayed strapped to a row of seats, falling until she plummeted through the jungle canopy. Somehow, she survived.
After failing to find her mother and other survivors, Juliane relied on what she’d been taught by her parents (both famous zoologists). She grabbed a bag of candy she’d found and started walking down a stream. Her father once told her that walking downstream will eventually lead to civilization, and for 10 days Juliane walked or floated through the water. Her wounds became infected and she was besieged by maggots, while having to dodge crocodiles, piranhas, and merciless insects. She found the corpses of other victims as she went, making sure each wasn’t her mother before continuing on. Eventually she came to a shack and a boat. Not wanting to steal the boat, she holed up in the shack and was found by Peruvian lumberjacks. She was eventually reunited with her father.”[3]
These are just three examples of real-life courage.
Our lesson for this morning gives us yet another – quite unexpected – example of courage. “At that very hour some Pharisees came, and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’”
Pharisees?!?
Incredible, but true. Some scholars will tell you that it is, not just possible, but quite likely that Jesus was himself a Pharisee. This would explain, among other things, why he was so sharp with them, and why what he said rankled them so much – he knew what buttons to press.
So, it may be that we have an account here of some Pharisees who were not “bad guys,” but a minority of Pharisees who were actually on Jesus side. Remember that Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night, was a Pharisees. Maybe, then, it’s possible that some of the Pharisees who came to Jesus that day agreed with him, or at least with some of what Jesus said. Maybe they didn’t agree with him at all, but he was “one of them,” so they felt obligated to give him a warning.
Other writers say, no, nothing of the sort. They tell us that this was just as self-serving an act as any of the others that we read about in the Gospel record. They tell us that these Pharisees, like all the others, just wanted Jesus gone – but they didn’t want his “removal” to be blamed on one who was their leader. As much as they hated Herod, they figured that anything he did to Jesus would reflect back on them and that had to be avoided at all costs. So they do the only logical thing – they warn Jesus to get out of town. Maybe they figured that Jesus would flee their jurisdiction and walk right into the hands of the Romans. Then he would be Pilate’s problem, and they could blame him.
I’m not so sure. I’m willing to believe that there were some faithful, well-meaning, and courageous people among the Pharisees who did not want anything unpleasant to happen to Jesus – it didn’t matter that their beliefs were worlds apart from his, they still believed, as decent people do today, too, that differences of opinion didn’t automatically make enemies of others.
And by sticking their necks out, as Jesus also was doing by not heading for the hills, gives us an example of yet another kind of courage – the courage of vulnerability. And that is really the heart of today’s story.
As David Lose puts it, “[The Pharisees] tell Jesus to run and save his life…and that Jesus refuses. Instead, he will keep to the road appointed, traveling the arduous path to Jerusalem to meet his death there like so many earlier prophets of God. This commitment to embrace his dark and difficult destiny for the sake of humanity is the very embodiment of this second kind of courage.
“To be honest, I’ve noticed this before,” Lose writes, “admiring the steadfast courage that Jesus displays in moving forward to Jerusalem and the cross on behalf of the world God loves so much. What struck me this time around, however, is the absolutely critical role that vulnerability plays in this kind of courage. To anticipate challenge and suffering and not look away is, by definition, to make oneself vulnerable for the sake of others.” Or, as the Apostle Paul puts it, “My strength is made perfect in weakness” (II Corinthians 12:9).
Courage is being vulnerable for the sake of others. Not at all the usual definition of courage, is it? When we think of vulnerability, we think of weakness – like Kryptonite to Superman – something that is the polar opposite of courage. Really courageous people – the John Waynes of the world – never show vulnerability.
And yet, being vulnerable is at the very core of the Christian life. You don’t get very far in connecting with another person by giving off the impression that you have it all together. They aren’t likely to share their fears and their needs if you don’t do the same. Saying to another, “I love you; tell me what’s going on, so I can help,” while you keep your cards close to your chest, simply doesn’t produce the desired result. Good things only happen when you open up yourself, and share your trials, too. You can only help heal others’ hurts when you risk being hurt yourself.
This characteristic that Jesus embodies is that God becomes vulnerable to all the ups and downs of human life by becoming one of and one with His children through the incarnation. He sets aside all His awesome power, becomes one with us, becomes vulnerable, in order to die on the cross and reconcile us to Himself.
This is the takeaway for all of Lent – this is the time of the year when we reflect on what it means to us that Jesus became vulnerable so that we might live.
Let us be thankful and respond!
[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2047059/Southern-California-mother-killed-train-stroller-got-caught-Metrolink-tracks.html
[2] http://mentalfloss.com/article/56157/11-incredible-acts-courage
[3] Ibid.