Monday, February 29, 2016

Only God Should - Lent 2, 2016


So let’s put this story about Jesus into a broader context. Here we have Jesus, coming towards the end of his ministry, teaching in “that very hour” in the synagogue and healing and doing all of those life-giving things that he’s been doing, all in the name of God. And some Pharisees, who have so far not been particularly friendly to him, come and tell him that Herod wants to kill him. And Jesus says, basically, “Herod can do what he want, but I’m not done doing what I’m here to do. I’m not done healing people and forgiving them and showing them that God is here to bring them life. I’m not done yet because I haven’t walked into the heart of the enemy and healed them.” Or, as the Gospel says in a bit more poetic language, “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.”

What’s going on here is that Jesus is telling his disciples and the listeners in the synagogue and the Pharisees and Herod, and us, that Jesus is so committed to his mission to tell people that God loves them and gives them new life no matter what, that he is going to go to the very epicenter of hatred towards him so that he can gather the haters in and protect them. This would be like Martin Luther King Jr walking into the heart of a Ku Klux Klan meeting to tell them they’re brothers. This would be like my German grandparents walking into the heart of the Cossack army that ravaged their home to bring them food and warm clothes. This would be like a Syrian child walking into an ISIS camp to bring medical supplies to the people who had killed her parents. Think of someone who hates you––maybe someone from your past who bullied you, or downright abused you––think of someone who has done you a great injustice and now imagine walking up to them and saying, “How I wish I could gather you under my wings and protect you like a mother hen protects her chicks.” Imagine feeling that attitude of nurturing and mothering towards someone who can’t stand you––who really, really, really despises you. Imagine mothering the fox who wants you dead.

It’s not easy, is it? It’s hard to imagine ourselves doing this, and even harder to actually do it, particularly when we’re talking about loving and mothering and offering healing to and even dying for those people who have done some serious harm to us. Who’ve abused us, who’ve tried to kill us. We are called to follow Jesus, but there is a line. There is a line that we cannot cross when it comes to loving and forgiving and dying for those who’ve abused us, because to cross that line would mean telling ourselves and telling others that it’s okay to treat people as less than children of God. 

I admit that I find this knot particularly hard to unravel. If you have ever been abused, I will not tell you that you should forgive and mother your abuser. And yet we are called to follow Jesus. And the whole story that we’re in right now in Lent, the whole story of Jesus deliberately going to the city that wants to kill him, and dying voluntarily for the good of others, suffering abuse and torture so that his abusers might know God loves them, this whole story leaves us struggling with some extraordinarily difficult questions. How far should we follow Jesus? Should we follow him to Jerusalem? Should we follow him into the court of the high priest? Should we follow him to the place of being whipped and given a crown of thorns? Should we follow him to the cross? To crucifixion for the world? To actual physical death? What does it mean, actually, that we should follow Christ? That we are to follow is not up for debate - Jesus says, “Follow me.” But does follow mean follow and watch? Or does it mean follow and do what he does? Does following Christ in this period of Lent mean we should be watching Christ die for us and for those who want to kill him? Or does it mean we should be doing what Christ did and dying for those who can’t wait for us to get on with it?

I wish I could tell you what the answer is, but I don’t know. I suspect that it’s the latter, that we should be doing what Christ did and we should die for those who want us dead. On the other hand, a dear seminary professor once told me, “Only Jesus Christ was called to die for the world. You are not.” So what should Christians do?

Well, whenever we hear the word should, we need to pause and really consider what we’re hearing. Luther was very wary of shoulds. Because should is a word of imprisonment. A word of judgment, a word of law. You should share with your little brother. You should eat more vegetables. You should be nice to those who are mean to you. Should is a word that makes us cringe, that makes us feel ashamed, that makes us feel less than children of God, because we only use should when we’re not actually doing the thing we should be doing. Should is a word of threat, a word that causes us to think only about ourselves and our failures and to forget what God has done for us. Any time we hear should in the context of following Christ, “You should follow Christ, you should die for others,” alarm bells ought to start ringing.

Jesus, you see, did not operate under shoulds. He did not go to Jerusalem because he should. He didn’t say, “I should gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood.” He didn’t say, “I should cast out demons and perform cures, and I should go to Jerusalem, the city that hates me.” Jesus said, I want to.  “I desire to/ I want to gather your children.” Want is not a should word. It is the very opposite.  I share with my little brother because I want to. I eat more vegetables because I want to. I am nice to those who are mean to me because I want to. I follow Jesus because I want to. I die for others because I want to. I love those who hate me because I want to. We are far more successful with things we want to do than things we should do.

But how do we get out from under those shoulds and into the land of want? How do we turn from we should follow Christ during this time of Lent to wanting to follow Christ? Well it will do no good for me to tell you that you should want to. Starting with should never works. Instead, I will start where Jesus started, and that is by telling you not what you should do for others, but what has already been done for you. This is the secret, you see. This is how Jesus was able to do all that he did, and why he told others to follow him. Jesus started with what had been done for him, what had been done for the people of Israel, with what we Lutherans like to call grace.

And the grace is this: A long, long time ago, our God did what no other god of that time had done before or has done since. Our God made a promise to a human. Gods don’t make promises to humans, you see. Humans make promises to gods. I promise to be good, so please make my crops grow. I promise to give you my first-born, so please protect my family from disease and starvation. I promise to pray every day, so please keep the wild animals from eating my flocks. I promise to be faithful to you, and do what you say, and follow all the shoulds you want, so please watch over me and don’t let anything bad happen to me. Humans would do all the things they thought they should so that the gods would look favourably on them. But not this time. This time, the god–-the God whom we now call the God of Abraham and Jacob and Israel, the God of Jesus and the first disciples––this time our God made a promise with humans first. God promised to Abraham that God would make Abraham’s descendants more numerous than the stars. And then, while Abraham was sleeping, so basically while Abraham was completely powerless, God established that promise as a covenant. And here’s the thing about covenants. If someone establishes a covenant, and then breaks that covenant, that person is destroyed in the same way the covenant was. God actually established a one-sided covenant with Abraham––that if God broke the covenant with Abraham, God would be as destroyed as that covenant. God did this! God became a God of the covenant––a God who was bound to humankind––not vice versa–– and who made one-sided promises to humankind of life and love. God took all of the shoulds away from us and put them on God’s self. God should be loyal to us. God should take care of us. God should be our God. God, in becoming the God of covenant, in becoming the God of one-sided promises to us, gathered up all of the shoulds and went poof - do them, don’t do them, it makes no difference to God’s covenant with you.

Jesus, a child of Abraham and Jacob and Israel, a child of Torah, a child of the covenanted God, Jesus started with this. Jesus started with grace. Jesus grew up hearing this story of Abraham and hearing that God’s covenant was with Israel, and that God took on all the shoulds of that covenant while Abraham did nothing, and that is the Good News Jesus went out to share. To proclaim, through healing and forgiveness, that God’s covenant removed the shoulds from the hurt and broken and suffering. To proclaim, by dying on the cross, that all shoulds were rounded up and nailed to the cross with him, burnt in the fire of the covenant God had established with Abraham, taken away from humans entirely. Jesus did all of this, not because he should, but because he knew all that God had done for him, and because he wanted the rest of the world to know that God had done it for them, too.



So, to go back to this question of how should we follow Jesus? Should we die on the cross? Should we forgive our abusers? Should we gather in like a mother hen all those chicks and foxes who hurt us? It seems to me that the answer is this: if the question is should we, the answer is no. We should not die on the cross. We should not forgive our abusers. We should not mother those who hurt us. If the question is should, then that means we need to hear the story of grace again. We need to hear it over and over and over again, we need to hear––as many times as possible––that God took all those shoulds upon God’s self, until the question, Should I? doesn’t exist anymore. Only when the question becomes the statement, “I want to...” do we move forward to do as Jesus did - to die, to forgive, to walk the entire road with Jesus to Jerusalem. But that might not happen for a long time. And when it does, it might not last. Some of us need to hear the story of grace more frequently and for longer than others, because some of us have been living under shoulds for longer than others, or because the shoulds shouted at us have been louder than all the other words we hear. So, whether you have done in life what you should or not, whether you have forgiven those you should or not (and that might include yourself), start with this: God is doing what God should so that you are forgiven and healed. To follow Christ during this season of Lent, start with what Jesus started with: God loves you. God is committed to you. God holds a covenant with you and gathers you under God’s wings because God is the one who should. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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