Luke 13:31-35 - Jesus' Determination to Save Confronts and Conquers Religion, Politics and Hearts - March 13, 2022

The Word of God before us this morning involves two of the most powerful, most volatile and most polarizing things in the world – two of the things that are forbidden to be discussed at many family gatherings: politics and religion. King Herod and the Pharisees. Both Bible and human history suggest that it’s wise to watch out whenever religion and politics get together. In the book of Revelation, it’s the recipe for worldwide trouble and persecution of the Church. Take one part religion and one part politics and hand them over to the devil to stew and you have the perfect recipe for the Antichrist – that is, someone or something which would replace Christ as Lord in people’s hearts and minds (Revelation 13). Whether it’s the emperor cult of 1st century Rome, the Islamic caliphate, the medieval papacy, Hitler’s Third Reich, or any other unholy alliance of religious and political authority, whenever the two get together there is sure to be trouble, persecution and bloodshed. Today, Jesus goes head-to-head with this two-headed monster.

The Pharisees came to Jesus, pretending to be concerned for his well-being. “Get away from here – Herod has put a bounty on your head. You don’t want to get yourself killed, do you? get out while you still can.” Of course, the great irony is that the Pharisees were scheming to do that very thing. They’d been planning Jesus’ death for over a year (Mark 3:6). They just couldn’t agree on when or how. And Jesus…well Jesus seems utterly unconcerned by the whole thing. Instead, he’s defiant: go tell that fox, ‘Look, I am going to drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal. Jesus doesn’t back down an inch. He knew exactly what was in store for him in Jerusalem. He’d already predicted it: that he would suffer, die, and rise again – on the third day (Luke 9:21-22). Death threats from puppet kings didn’t worry him.

Why not? Because he’s the Lord. He lays down his life on his own terms (John 10:18). He had proven this several other times when his life was threatened. When his hometown crowd wanted to throw him off a cliff in Nazareth, he walked away without a scratch (Luke 4:30). When he claimed that he was equal to Yahweh – the I am of the Old Testament – and the crowd prepared to stone him to death, he slipped away untouched (John 8:59). When it comes to life and death, Jesus runs the show. Threats from human kings mean nothing to the King of kings. No amount of political pressure would keep Jesus from accomplishing his mission of salvation.

Next he confronts the Pharisees. He knows what they’re really thinking; that they’re plotting his death too…that all this talk of concern for his safety and security is fake and insincere. Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the next day – and then the real zinger – because it cannot be that a prophet would be killed outside Jerusalem! Now there’s a shot: if a prophet sent from God is going to die, it has to be in Jerusalem; God’s city, the Pharisees’ hornets’ nest.

Now this prediction shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows their OT history. Jerusalem had earned quite the reputation when it came to the prophets God had sent. When Jeremiah declared that Jerusalem would become like Shiloh, desolate and deserted, the people called for his death, had him arrested and thrown into a cistern (Jeremiah 38). According to tradition, Isaiah was sawn in half and Zechariah was stoned to death in the courtyard of the temple in Jerusalem (2 Chronicles 24:21). New Testament prophets didn’t fare much better. Stephen was stoned to death in Jerusalem by no less than the members of the Sanhedrin themselves (Acts 7:54-60). James was beheaded in Jerusalem (Acts 12:2). Jerusalem had a reputation for taking God’s prophets, chewing them up and spitting them out…dead. Jerusalem was dripping with innocent blood. Jerusalem’s entire history was bloody: the blood of sacrifices and Passover lambs and prophets and martyrs. All of this foreshadowed what God had determined before the creation of the world: that the blood of Jesus, his Son, the Lamb of God (John 1:29) would be shed in Jerusalem to pay for the sins of the world.

You would think that Jesus would be angry, knowing what he did. I would be, if it were me. I get angry when people reject the invitation of the Gospel – the Word and Sacrament – in favor of something else. I get frustrated when people want entertainment over forgiveness, social activities over the active work of the Holy Spirit, a temporary solution for their day-to-day issues rather than an eternal solution for their sins. We all get angry at those who seek to harm us, who want to hurt us, who insult us for our faith in Christ. We all know what it’s like when our love is ignored, when we are snubbed or rejected. We know how impossible it seems when Jesus tells us to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us (Luke 6:27-36). It’s hard, impossible even, for us. Our sinful self-centeredness gets in the way.

But, thank God, Jesus is not like us. He loved his enemies. He loved the people in Jerusalem – people who rejected him; even the political and religious leaders; even Herod and the Pharisees – who wanted him dead. He weeps over them: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often have I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! People often wonder what is on God’s mind, what he wants, what his will, his plans are for us and for this world. This is it! God sent his one and only Son, Jesus, to earth to spread out his arms like a mother hen gathering up her wandering chicks. He wants them all – the religious and the unreligious, the political and the apolitical, the powerful and the powerless. He came to save them all; even those that don’t want it. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) and if the world doesn’t want its sin taken away, well, he does it anyway.

Now, we might be tempted sit here from a distance of 2000 years and think “How sick and disgusting of those people, those Pharisees and Herod, for rejecting Jesus, wanting him dead when all he wanted to do was save them!” But the season of Lent is about seeing ourselves honestly so that we can see our Savior clearly – and the truth is that there is a little Pharisee and a little Herod in each one of us. We are easily tempted to trust in the power of princes, of laws, of policies of government to provide for us and to protect us and feed us rather than in the powerful, unbreakable promises of God. We are constantly tempted to trust in our own works, our own obedience, our own good intentions to save us rather than the completed, perfect work of Christ. There’s a little Herod and a little Pharisee alive and well inside each of us, too. It’s called the “old Adam,” the sinful flesh.

Like Jerusalem, by nature we are not willing. Left to our own devices, wisdom and intentions we would not be willing to be saved – we would instead insist in saving ourselves. We would not be children of God gathered as chicks under his wing. But Christ has gathered us, against our wills, kicking and screaming at times. Lifted up on the cross he draws all people to himself (John 12:32-33), even those who want him dead and gone. And still today, just as he grieved over Jerusalem 2000 years ago, he grieves when people reject and deny him.

You could say that the history of Jerusalem is a microcosm of God’s dealing with humanity; you could even say it’s a microcosm of how he has dealt with us individually. It’s a history filled with sin, rebellion, stubbornness, idolatry, rejection of the Word and those who preach it. It’s also the history of God’s grace, his undeserved kindness toward sinful humanity, the Word made flesh who was rejected so that God would accept us, who died so that we would live, whose blood covers our sins and whose righteousness becomes ours by faith (Romans 4:5).

Jerusalem has a future, but, thank God, it’s not up to religious or political leaders to work it out. In fact, what utter failures they both are was revealed in 70 AD when the Romans razed Jerusalem to the ground. The next time the city appears in the Bible, it’s in the book of Revelation and it’s coming down from heaven as a bride dressed for her wedding day (Revelation 21). This is the city God has built – Jerusalem redeemed, restored, raised from the dead. Her murders have been atoned for by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. The blood shed in her streets has been washed away by Jesus’ blood (1 John 1:7). Her streets once littered with stones cast in hatred are now paved in pure gold (Revelation 21:21). The prophets and apostles who met their death inside her gates are now her firm foundation (Ephesians 2:20). And Christ the Lamb is her Light and Life (Revelation 21:23).

And that city, that free city, is where we hold our citizenship. Your Baptism is your proof of citizenship. Our citizenship is in heaven as Paul reminded the Philippians (Philippians 3:20) – those retired soldiers who were so proud of their free city. And the marvel of it all is that we get a foretaste of that whenever the Word is preached, the Absolution pronounced and the Sacraments administered. Through Word and Sacrament Jesus comes and gathers us under his wings, purifies us from our sins, assures us that we are his chosen people. Here in the presence of our Lord and our fellow forgiven believers we are freed from the divisiveness of politics and the tyranny of man-made religions that tells us our salvation is up to us. And it all points ahead to a day that will bring all religion and politics as we know it to an end. A day when Jesus will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body (Philippians 3:21), and the heavenly city will be the only city there is – free of works-based religion, free of the polarization of politics, filled only with the glory of the Lamb and the people he has gathered under his care for time and eternity. That day is coming.

But until then, don’t make the mistake of Herod and the Pharisees, and the people of Jerusalem – don’t reject him when he comes to you, don’t seek excuses to avoid being served by him, don’t miss a chance to lay your sins on him and be forgiven. Come here often to take shelter under his wings – because the day is coming when not just Jerusalem, but this entire world will be blasted by God’s judgment and left desolate, and only those who have accepted Jesus’ invitation and taken shelter in his forgiveness will be able to say: blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Amen.