Gospel of Luke

Lamenting the Lack of a God-Consumed Heart

photo credit: Annie Spratt (https://unsplash.com/@anniespratt)

Luke 13:31-35 (NRSV)

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you."

He said to them, "Go and tell that fox for me, "Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.'

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 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.' "


Friday morning we all awoke to the news that 49 people were killed and 20 seriously injured in mass shootings at two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch. As of this morning the death toll has risen to 50. “The attack was unleashed at lunchtime local time Friday, when mosques were full of worshippers. Footage of the massacre was streamed live online, and a rambling manifesto laced with white supremacist references was published just before the shootings unfolded.”*

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in a press conference, “This is and will be one of New Zealand’s darkest days.” I would add, it is one of the darkest days for all the nations of the earth.

Five months ago I preached on the Sunday following the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pennsylvania in which 11 worshippers lost their lives. In that message I condemned the violence as well as the sinful motivations of the man who was charged with these hate crimes. You may also recall that I invited you to sign you name to letters that would be mailed to Hebrew synagogues throughout the Indianapolis area. These letters amounted to a confession of the Lutheran Church’s history intwined with anti-Semitism and a pledge to stand up against the forces of anti-Semitism as we encounter them in the world.

What I haven’t yet told you is that we received letters in return. I would like to read you the responses from the rabbis who received our letters….

Additionally, I was honored to receive a phone call and have a wonderful conversation with another rabbi who wanted to tell me how much he and his congregation appreciated our gesture.

This morning, unfortunately, it’s time to do it all over again. Once again, God beckons us to condemn the acts violence and intentional taking of life, this time as it occurred in New Zealand. I once again condemn the sinful motivations of the man who has been charged with these acts of terrorism. And I ask you to sign your name to letters that will be mailed to various mosques and Muslim centers in Indianapolis indicating our pledge to stand up against the anti-Muslim forces of hate as we encounter them in the world.

We cannot imagine what it must be like to be a Muslim today. We cannot imagine how much heartache would go into a Muslim man or woman’s decision whether or not to not go to prayers because they feared that they could be targeted next.

It is hard to know how to respond. By signing your name to these letters you are expressing solidarity with people who feel vulnerable, targeted, and vilified. Let the responses of the Hebrew congregations remind you that this is a very meaningful gesture.

It is also important to lament. I’m sure I could have easily found a more eloquent definition of lament, but I think it’s suffice to define lament as “telling God about all the crap that’s going on and insisting it shouldn’t be this way.” Over one-third of all the psalms in the Hebrew scripture are laments. Even Jesus was prone to lament, as we see in the conclusion of today’s gospel selection.

Jesus’ lament is wrapped up in beautiful feminine imagery, identifying his motherly, nurturing and protective inclination towards the people who inhabit the holy city of Jerusalem – the same people who will reject him and have a hand in his death.

Notice, however, that Jesus’ lament is not about his own destiny. He is not lamenting the fact that his life is going to end in Jerusalem. Rather, his lament is for the people who cannot hear the good news and will not accept the love and grace of God. And his lament is not bound by our ideas of time and space. In the same way that Jesus’ laments the hardened hearts of the people in his own time; he also laments the hardened hearts that continue to reject God’s love and grace today.

We walk a well-worn path when we lament how many people, Christians included, effortlessly replace the truths of God’s love and the oneness of creation with the low hanging fruit of hatred, jealousy, fear of, and violence toward people who do not look like us, pray like us, talk like us. Jesus demonstrates what it means to have a heart that is consumed with God’s love. No other ideology, -ism, or affiliation should ever take priority over the truth that all people are beloved image-bearers of the divine. Nothing else is good news.

This morning take the time in prayer to examine how much of your heart is consumed with God. What else is occupying your heart space? What do you believe that incompatible with the good news of God’s love for you and for all people? My list is long, I assure you; and I ask for your prayers in that regard.

One of the most effective things we can do to reduce the amount of violence in our world is to dwell in our belovedness. I can say with absolute certainty that the New Zealand shooter had no idea what it meant that God had claimed his life, loved him wholly and completely, and invited him to share that good news with the world. May our faith guide us to realizations that honor the truth of our belovedness and that will shape the world into a place that honors the good God of all creation. Amen.

Amen.



* https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/14/asia/christchurch-mosque-shooting-intl/index.html

Beloved in the Wilderness

Luke 4:1-13

Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.” Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” Jesus answered him, “It is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.


The wilderness seems kind of close these days if you ask me.

Maybe it’s the news again – our politics, that tornado that ripped through Alabama last week, everything going on in places like Venezuela and Haiti and Great Britain, Alex Trebek has pancreatic cancer…

Maybe it’s that the Methodist Church went the other direction – the wrong direction, in my opinion – when it comes to loving gay and lesbian and transgender people… (I’m not judging the Methodists, mind you, so much as I am lamenting with them and with all those who are scandalized by that decision.)

Maybe it’s the sadness of yesterday’s funeral for Joe Richards and all that led up to it…

Maybe it’s the threshold of Lent we crossed over on Ash Wednesday… or that I’m getting ready to head to the actual desert, out in of Phoenix, later this week… or it could just be one less hour of sleep thanks to Daylight Savings Time.

Whatever it is, the wilderness doesn’t seem so hard to find… or very far away… or easier to get into than out of these days. 

And I’m always fascinated with Jesus and his time out there in the wilderness. This Gospel story is one of those oldies and goodies most of us have heard before where the Devil and Jesus seem to be playing this well-choreographed, back-and-forth kind of dance and dialogue:

First, Jesus is hungry. Starving, even, after 40 days of fasting. And the devil says:  "If you are the Son of God, you could turn these stones into bread." Jesus insists that man doesn't live by bread alone. So the devil hurls him around the universe, shows him all the kingdoms of the world, and tempts him with a promise: "All this will be yours if you’d just worship me." And Jesus, faithfully, says, “No, worship the Lord your God," and that's that. So the devil takes him high atop the pinnacle of the temple and says, "So prove to me that you're really God's son and take a dive … you won't get hurt if what God says about you is true." And Jesus refuses, reminding himself and Satan that our God isn't one we ought to test.

The point of Lent – and the point of this Gospel story this time around, for me, anyway – is to wonder what it means to be called into the wilderness. I think we’re called to seek out and to put a finger on the evil and darkness and temptation in our own lives. We’re called to name it, to stop denying it, and to confront it in ways we neglect too much of the time.

But that's hard to do, this wilderness wandering – whether it’s the First Sunday of Lent or any other day of the year – or we would do it more often, more faithfully, with more resolve and courage and success, I believe. We don’t head out into the wilderness enough of the time, following the Spirit’s lead. We’re more likely to find ourselves pushed there, dragged there, kicking and screaming. Or we end up there, in the wilderness – much to our surprise – before we know what’s coming. And then the temptation of it all is to let it overwhelm us – the grief of it; the fear of it; the unknown and uncertainty of it all, whatever the case may be, in the wilderness.

And so we fail the tests too often, don’t we? We fill ourselves with all the wrong things too much of the time. Where Jesus refused to turn stones into bread – we grab the potato chips or the ice cream; the booze or the weed or the cigarettes or the pills.

Where Jesus turned down the offer for more power and glory, we go after as much as we can grab and look for it in all the wrong places – work, money, things and stuff, just for starters.

And where Jesus refused to put God to the test, we do… every time we throw up our hands and wonder why God won’t – why God hasn’t – just fixed everything that’s wrong with us, with the world, and with this wilderness.

And I think the reason we fail the tests too much of the time is because we forget something Jesus knew and held onto, from the start. Remember, Jesus entered into the wilderness “full of the Spirit” and “led by the Spirit,” on the heals of his baptism. I like to imagine that his hair was still wet when he met up with the devil in the dessert. He was fresh from the Jordan where the heavens had opened, a dove had appeared out of nowhere, for crying out loud, and God had declared him beloved, “the Son, the Chosen” with whom the Creator of the Universe was well pleased.

And it’s with all of that in his back pocket, that Jesus made his way into the wilderness to duke it out with the devil. So it’s easier for me to imagine that he might have resisted all of that temptation and passed all of those tests with flying colors, don’t you think?

And that’s our call and invitation, too. To remember, however and whenever we find ourselves in the wilderness, that – just like Jesus – we can enter it all on the heals of and filled with the promises of our baptism. And when we live like that, our chances of resisting the temptations… of passing the tests… of making it out alive are infinitely more likely, it seems to me.

I came across a poem by Jan Richardson, an artist and author and United Methodist pastor, who says this better than I could. It’s called, “Beloved Is Where We Begin.” It goes like this:

If you would enter into the wilderness,
do not begin without a blessing.

Do not leave without hearing who you are:

Beloved,
named by the One who has traveled this path before you.

Do not go without letting it echo in your ears,
and if you find it is hard to let it into your heart,
do not despair.

That is what this journey is for.

I cannot promise this blessing will free you
from danger,
from fear,
from hunger or thirst,
from the scorching of sun or the fall of the night.

But I can tell you that on this path
there will be help.

I can tell you that on this way
there will be rest. 

I can tell you that you will know
the strange graces
that come to our aid
only on a road
such as this,
that fly to meet us
bearing comfort
and strength,
that come alongside us
for no other cause
than to lean themselves
toward our ear
and with their
curious insistence
whisper our name:

Beloved.
Beloved.
Beloved.

The wilderness seems too close… too easy to find… too hard to navigate… too difficult to escape too much of the time.

The temptation to quit… to choose the selfish, prideful, destructive way… to take the devil’s hand and follow his lead… the temptation to despair can seem like a watering hole in the parched places of our lives.

But if we enter into those desert places… If we engage the temptations of this life, filled first with and led by the Spirit of our creator… If we enter into the wilderness with the waters of baptism still dripping from our foreheads and the promises of God ringing in our ears.

We don’t have to fear any of it, knowing that we and those we love will come out of it alive – in one way or the other – on this side of God’s heaven or the next – always beloved, in the end.

Amen