image:
By Mike Moyers, used with permission
https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/cdri/jpeg/Lenten_Labyrinth_HR.jpg
Luke 13:31-35 Common English Bible
Sorrow for Jerusalem
31 At that time, some Pharisees approached Jesus and said, “Go! Get away from here, because Herod wants to kill you.”
32 Jesus said to them, “Go, tell that fox, ‘Look, I’m throwing out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will complete my work. 33 However, it’s necessary for me to travel today, tomorrow, and the next day because it’s impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’
34 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who were sent to you! How often I have wanted to gather your people just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you didn’t want that. 35 Look, your house is abandoned. I tell you, you won’t see me until the time comes when you say, Blessings on the one who comes in the Lord’s name.”
Reflection: “Don’t Look Back”
I have just started an online course called ”Landscape and In-Scape: the journey of Lent through poetry” led by Wendy MacLean, a United Church minister, spiritual director and poet. I love this concept of inner and outer landscapes, of journeying inward and journeying outward, especially during the season of Lent.
Lent is a time of travelling through the wilderness, of being without permanent shelter and uncertain of the destination. It recalls the people of Israel wandering in the desert for 40 years, and the 40 days that Jesus spent in the wilderness before beginning his ministry. It’s easy to imagine them sharing the same thoughts as they struggled with the elements, and with their knowledge of the many storms threatening their lives whether internal or external.
This season of wandering and wilderness resonates so strongly with the season our world has been thrown into recently. The shelter of familiar political and economic structures is crumbling, we are unsheltered and uncertain. A number of people have described this as “the Lentiest Lent ever.”
But, to be fair, long before the church created the season of Lent, Jesus was probably experiencing the Lentiest Lent ever! In our reading from Luke this morning, he is on his way to Jerusalem, knowing that his ministry and his life will probably end there, but still determined to follow the path that God has set him on. The powerful Pharisees and Herod, the ruler, know that he will be an even greater threat to their established order if he enters Jerusalem. When the Pharisees warn Jesus not to go to Jerusalem because Herod will kill him, they are probably not doing this because they have suddenly become his friends. It’s more likely that this is a political ploy, trying to trick Jesus into not entering Jerusalem in the hopes that he will become Pilate’s problem, not Herod’s, and whatever happens will be the fault of the Romans instead of the Jewish leadership.
Jesus sternly rejects this attempt at manipulation with a message to Herod that it is necessary for him to continue to Jerusalem as the prophets before him also did. And then, still on the outskirts of Jerusalem, he mourns over the city in what I feel is one of the most poignant passages in the New Testament.
The landscape of this passage is an in-between place. Jesus is between his wandering rural ministry and his destiny in Jerusalem, between wilderness and city. A few verses before, we are told that “Jesus went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem.”
What is his inner landscape? He must be frightened, knowing the enormity of the work ahead of him, but he is also resolute. He feels a tender love for the people, but he mourns the way that they reject all the truth-tellers who come to them. His heart is breaking, as so many parents’ hearts break, because his children refuse his shelter and he knows what will happen to them if they continue to ignore his warnings and the protection he offers.
Which brings us to today’s landscape and in-scape, and their connection to this reading. In today’s wilderness, we have political manipulation and deception to the point that it’s almost impossible to understand true motives. We live next door to a fox, who is destroying every nest in sight to get at the weak and defenseless, strengthening himself at their expense. We see rapidly-shifting relationships between empires, and less and less concern for weaker countries caught in the crossfire. We puzzle over a holy land that continues to kill its prophets and to ignore its own history of persecution as it seeks to destroy its neighbours. We see houses abandoned and cities destroyed in wars that never seem to end.
What is our in-scape in this frightening world? What are your over-arching emotions? Fear, anger? Do we, like Jesus, lament? Do we give ourselves time and space to mourn the loss of what has been and the loss of a vision that seems like it will never come true? There is healing in lament, in naming and expressing our sorrows, including our regrets for what we have not been able to accomplish.
Jesus does not allow the scorn and opposition of the political and religious leaders to turn his sadness into destructive rage. He doesn’t rally his supporters with a call for revenge, for retribution for prophet’s lives lost. He doesn’t call for rebellion in a desperate attempt to save his own life and take power.
He simply mourns the lost opportunities, the many times when the people of Jerusalem were offered the chance to see themselves clearly and to turn back to God. “How often have I wanted to gather your people just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you didn’t want that.”
There is symbolic significance in Jesus’ choice of a hen gathering her chicks. It echoes other passages in the Bible of sheltering wings, uplifting wings, but in the Old Testament these wings usually belong to the powerful, majestic eagle. In Jesus’ world, the eagle is the symbol of the Roman Empire and that is not the kind of kingdom that Jesus is trying to build. He is building the kindom, a world where a mothering God nurtures and protects the smallest and weakest.
Jesus also rejects the paths of cautious retreat or violent revolution with a simple firmness of purpose. “I will complete my work…it’s necessary for me to travel today, tomorrow and the next day”. The road is there for him to follow, and he will follow it to its end. His landscape and his in-scape merge, the road to Jerusalem is the path of his sacrificial love for his God and his people and there is no turning back.
The labyrinth is a beautiful symbol for the inward and outward journey, the merging of the body and soul on one path. As we journey from the outer edge to the center, we let go of our burdens and distractions as we walk. We feel our feet on the path, we take one step after another, we turn and twist and lose sight of the center but we keep walking. Maybe for a time we walk behind or beside someone else, or pass them as they move in another direction, but the path is always before us and in time we reach the center. In the center, we still our bodies and our minds to receive whatever gift is there for us, and then we walk out again, bringing that gift with us, back into the world. The world we re-enter is ever so slightly changed by our journey, for with each step we are building the kindom.
I hope today that you make room for lament. I hope that the Holy One will gift you with the resolve to keep going, and that the gift you are given is the transformation of sorrow and anger into the courageous, determined, active love that Jesus has always had for his people.
I’d like to close with a short poem I wrote during the first day of the poetry workshop.
Water Wilderness
The path is water
Moon shining on waves
A fleeting thought: step onto that shining causeway
Don’t look back
Foot forward into uncertainty
Don’t look down where waves churn doubts
Traveller, the path is more solid than it feels
The wilderness is past
Don’t look back
For Reflection: What do you need on your inward journey to build resilience for living in today’s wilderness landscape?
