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Luke 13:31-35
Throughout Lent, we are focusing on the promises that God has made to us. If you were here on Ash Wednesday, you heard me talk about how we are all like an old mansion badly in need of renovation, that we all have rooms and places in our lives that are falling apart. Yet whenever we open up one of those broken places to God, God has a promise for us, something he wants to give us that will help make us what we are intended to be. Today’s Gospel lesson reveals in important promise for all of us, especially for those times in our lives when we feel lost or hopeless. The promise shown to us this morning is God’s persistence, God’s stubbornness if you will. We see this promise lived out in Jesus’ determination to go to Jerusalem, despite what waits for him there. We see this morning that Jesus will not let anything get in his way – not King Herod, not a worried Pharisee, not even his own fear. Jesus will not let anything get in his way of saving the world. Jesus does not give up on Jerusalem even though they stoned and killed the prophets. Jesus does not give up when the going gets tough. Jesus does not give up when the very people he came to save turn their backs on him. And because Jesus didn’t give up on them, we know that Jesus won’t give up on us either. The promise of God this morning is Jesus’ stubbornness. Has anyone seen the movie, Finding Nemo? I love this movie because it shows the determination that a father has for his son. If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to check it out, but here’s a quick summary of the plot. Nemo & his dad, Marlin, are clown fish. Marlin is a single parent and one of those dad’s who is very overprotective and is scared of just about everything. One day Nemo is captured by divers and then sold to a dentist for his fish aquarium. Marlin, who has never left his little home, decides to venture across the entire ocean to find and save his son. Eventually word spreads throughout the ocean world of Marlin’s courage & pursuit of his son. In the meantime, Nemo is stuck in the aquarium and begins to lose hope. He thinks there is no way his dad could ever save him and he realizes that there is no way that he could ever escape on his own. This clip picks up when some pelicans hear about Marlin’s story. [SHOW CLIP] I think that there are times in all of our lives where we don’t give God enough credit, where we don’t fully trust that God is going to do what he says he’s going to do. Nemo thought that there was no way that his dad could save him, that his situation was hopeless. Yet, through that Nigel the pelican, Nemo heard something different, something that he felt hard to believe, yet something that gave him hope. Nemo heard that his dad was pursuing him at that very moment and was determined to save him. For Nemo, this was extremely good news. You know, Jesus had one goal in mind when he came into our world. His singular obsession was to save this world and nothing was going to stop him. He was stubborn about this and dismissed anything that was going to get in his way. Our gospel story tells of a worried Pharisee – no sweat. King Herod’s coming for you, Jesus – piece of cake. A hostile city that stones & kills prophets – Jesus weeps for them because they have no idea what’s coming for ‘em. Nothing was going to get in his way of loving and saving the world. Jesus had the power, but more importantly, he had the determination to save this broken world from itself – no matter what it was going to cost him. In fact, he was going to be like a brooding hen gathering her chicks. Now, I’ve never lived on a farm, but Pastor John was telling me earlier this week that you don’t mess with brooding chickens – they will peck and poke and claw and do whatever they can to protect their chicks. He said they scared the daylights out of him when he was a boy and had to go gather eggs. This fierce stubbornness & protectiveness is how Jesus pursues and protects us. Rather than me give you an example about my own mother in this regard, we’re going to try something a little different today. Because this image of God as a mother gathering and protecting her children is such a powerful one, I’d like for all of you to talk about it for a few minutes. I like for you to get with at least one or two other people. If you are a family, this might be a good exercise for you to do together. But if you are a family, please look around and if you’re seated next to someone who didn’t come with their family, please invite them into your own for the next few minutes. You may have to get up and move or just turn around in your pew to talk to the people behind you. I’m going to wait until everyone is part of a group. Anybody not have a group? I’m going to put three questions up on the screen that I would like for you to discuss together and I’ll give you about 5 minutes to complete your discussion. Youth & children, please participate in this also. Here are your three questions for discussion: - Share some qualities that you admire about your mother - Share a time or a way that your mother sacrificed for you - Share how you think God is like a mother and has acted like a mother towards you Please keep an eye on the screen for time.
I hope you enjoyed this little exercise and realized that God’s determination for you is just like a mother’s determination for her children. God will never ever give up on you and will never stop loving you, no matter how many times that you turn your back on him. I’d like to close with a story that came out of the Yellowstone wildfires in 1988. The story goes that a forest ranger was sifting through the damage after the fires when he came across the carcass of a dead bird at the base of a tree. He kind of kicked at the charred bird and knocked it over. When he knocked it over, three little baby chicks came scurrying out. The mother bird had covered the babies with her own body and sacrificed her life for theirs. My friends, Jesus’ pursuit of you is relentless and it took him all the way to the cross. No matter where you are, no matter how far you’ve strayed, or how lost you feel, no matter how little hope you have, Jesus stubbornly wants to save you. He has determined to find you and in his persistence, he will save you. This is God’s promise for us today. Amen.
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