“Choices 3: To Throw or Not to Throw”
Sermon, Year C, Lent 2, February 21, 2016
© Rev. David J. Huber
Focus Scripture:
Luke 13:31-35
Jesus, in this passage, is on his way to Jerusalem. He made that choice in Chapter 9 of Luke’s Gospel and he will arrive in Jerusalem at Chapter 19 on Palm Sunday entry into that city. He is on his way to Jerusalem to fulfill his destiny. He knows that he must be killed. That death is part of the plan. He is marching and on his way to Jerusalem.
We’re talking about choices on Sundays during lent. How do we make choices? How do we react to the choices of others? How do we consider what is the best choice, the better choice, or the most faithful choice? How do we recover from a bad choice? We’re looking at “choices” because our faith is lived out in how we make choices. The way that we make them shows, I think, the state of our faith in many ways. Our faith is lived out in how we make choices.
So in the prelude to today’s gospel passage, going back a few chapters, is the choice that Jesus. He knows that he will be killed in Jerusalem, but he chooses to go anyway. Or, as I thought about it as wrote that previous sentence, What if we said it as “Jesus knows that he’s going to be killed in Jerusalem, and he goes.” It’s a different feel.
He chooses to go, and he doesn’t even let threat of Herod deter his mission. Though maybe he already knows that Herod is going to be part of fulfilling Jesus’ mission. As an act of a hero, of a friend, this act of Jesus here is pretty remarkable, going forth knowing that it will end in death.
But let me also say that as I thought about this, I have thought that maybe this a bad example to start our first Sunday talking about choices. It sets an awfully high bar. “FOllow the guy who marched to martyrdom!” I’m not saying that! You don’t have to choose to die like Jesus did. I’m not saying that your faith choices have to lead martyrdom. In fact, I hope they don’t. I don’t want any of us to have to be martyred.
But we are talking that Jesus knew his mission and chose to be faithful to it. And we can choose to be faithful to our mission, whatever it might be. Jesus was faithful to his, even though it maybe scared the pants off of him. I wonder if he had moments of fear. Moments of wondering, “Can I do this? Do I have the strength to do this? Do I really want to do it?” And I wonder how scared was Jesus on this journey.
I don’t know that any of us are being asked to go forth on a journey that leads to death, other than that we are born and that means that we are all marching to an end. On Ash Wednesday we remember our mortality with the words, “From dust you are made, and to dust you shall return.” But we do make choices. We are on a journey of making choices, or failing to make choices… and though we aren’t faced with choices that might lead to death, we are faced with choices that often require sacrifice of one form or another, whether it leads to death or not. Think of the soldier that dives on a grenade to save his friends. Or the firefighter that runs into a burning building to save someone, or the policeman that risks her life, or the one who gives up the potential for a more lucrative career to instead become a public school teacher or professor. Or the parent who chooses to eat the less desirable parts of a meal so that the children can have the better or less weird parts.
I thought, for many many years, I thought that my mom really did love chicken necks. Because that’s what she’d always grab first, and she’d say, “Oh, I like this.” It wasn’t until I was much older and we were less poor and could afford to have bigger spreads on the table that I realized she didn’t love chicken necks, she loved my sister and me, and let us have the better choice of food. Choices that require sacrifice. Often the faith choice often requires a sacrifice, a self-emptying (in the Bible called “kenosis”, the great Greek word for self-emptying: getting our ego out of the way, getting our needs out of the way for the sake of others). Coming to worship instead of going out to play, or giving up a meal at a restaurant and giving that money instead to the hungry or to a food pantry, or to live more simply so that our carbon footprint is smaller,or to say “I’ll give up my fear of inviting others so that the church may grow.” Some level of sacrifice. Giving of money, giving of time, giving of ourselves. To choose to follow Jesus is, in a sense, to choose to follow him to Jerusalem. To choose a path of sacrificial love.
We have that represented symbolically in how we have arranged our worship space. Each Sunday through Lent we will have a different station on the path that starts with Ash Wednesday in the back and comes up to this table in front with the cross and the tomb. Today’s station is a table with a bowl of stones, the stones that we throw at each other as Jesus talked about. It is part of the marching up to the tomb, to Good Friday, and then to Easter when the tomb is empty.
One of our big choices in life is more of the topic of today, that Jesus mentioned, “Jerusalem, you who like to stone those who are sent to you.” They have that choice to throw the stones. To throw the stone at the prophets that God has sent among us, or to throw the stones at whoever it is that irritates us, or an idea that irritates us, or a reality that irritates. Who are those that you would like to throw a stone at? What are the ideas? What are the realities that you would like to throw a stone at?
We are left with the question, Do we throw the stone, or do we instead go to Jerusalem?
What idea, person, situation, event… would you like to see line up in your slingshot as you think about your life? The people who challenge our way of life, the ideas that challenge that our comfortable ideas, those who speak out for whatever their cause might be. Things like racial justice, economic justice, or anything. Things that irritate us, disrupt our lives, turn our assumptions upside down, that knock us out of our comfort zones, that show us how wrong we have been. That’s a difficult realization to come to: to understand that one has been wrong about something for a long time and that one needs to change one’s mind.
The people who try to make us more generous, or that blow out the sides of the boxes that we keep trying to put God in to make God smaller and more tameable and domesticated. But God doesn’t like to be domesticated. If you could deliver a well-aimed stone, where would you launch it?
Or do we choose not to launch it?
Remembering instead the path of sacrificial love. The path that leaves the stones on the ground and approached our adversary, whoever or whatever, with empty open and inviting hands.
Leave the stones on the ground.
Throwing stones at each other only results in a re-arrangement of the stones. It might feel good while we’re doing it, but ultimately all it does is move stones around. No minds are changed, no ideas are stopped, no productive movement forward. The only effect on the universe is wasted energy, suffering, and a bunch of re-arranged stones. Congratulations.
People can irritate us. Ideas can irritate us and challenge us. They can even be worse than people. Ideas about race and gender are being talked about a lot lately. Politics. Religion. Theology. How we interpret history. How we are going to move into the future. These social ideas that we argue about and discuss in the public arena, but also that we discuss in the church. Ideas about the church, new ideas, and the people that are speaking them. People trying to lead the church - let’s say The Church, the universal worldwide Church of Jesus, not the fractured denominational representations we have now - into new directions as the world changes around it. The Church is going through a lot of change. Not just Plymouth, but Christianity and The Church in general. We have seen a lot of change even within the Catholic Church the past couple years with Pope Francis leading some change. We are trying to bring the Church into the 21st century. Or sometimes as we like to joke, to bring it into the 20th century, and then bring it into this one. The Church is definitely changing, and it has always changed. Often it’s a slow change, but it has always changed. Because it is made of people, and we are made to change. We change as we grow in wisdom and experience and faith. But also changes because generations die and new generations are born. The Church is, though, going through a very big change right now, like it did in the Reformation 500 years ago. There is some big movement within the church and within the world, and w2e might want to throw stones at the reasons for it, but that doesn’t get us anywhere. That doesn’t help anything.
Even in Jesus’ time there was a lot of change. His movement was a revolution, or reformation of sorts. That became a new thing. It had its struggles and challenges and literal throwing of stones. Many of the early Christians being stoned. But also the metaphorical stoning of the arguments and division and the followers of Jesus eventually separation from the Jewish tradition and leaving the synagogues (and/or being pushed out of them).
Jesus offered a new thing, and there were those in Jerusalem that demanded his death because his new message was too uncomfortable, too different, too radical , too upsetting, too sacrificial.
Think of Jerusalem not just as a city in Jesus’ time, but as any institution with a long history and many layers of mythology and tradition laid over it. One does not turn such an institution on a dime, and those that want to turn it are often seen as a threat. A threat to the faith, as a threat to the status quo, as a threat to the power holders, as a threat to what we think ought to be the order of things. But God so often is disordering the order of things to make things new, and more in line with God’s vision. And so we have Jesus lamenting that Jesus kills its prophets and stones those whom God sends to it.
However, even as some in Jerusalem were arranging for Jesus’ execution, there were those who made a choice for Jesus. There were those who made the choice to follow his Way. To tell his story. To re-tell his story to their neighbors and their family, and then outside of the walls of Jerusalem and into the whole Mediterranean and eventually all over the world. Those who chose to follow in Jesus’ way. They chose to write hymns, and to write letters and later Gospels, to tell the world about Jesus and to invite others to join them and to choose sacrificial love over profit, preferring it over self-preservation or the cultural ideas of what is proper and not proper, preferring love over ideas that limit other people's’ ability to live, to choose reconciliation over stoning, love over apathy, hope over hate, life over violence. We have definitely not done this perfectly. God knows that the church has failed in awful and terrible ways over the centuries to live by the ideals of its own message. The Church does not turn on a dime, either, and we do have an awfully large arsenal of stones at our disposal.
But the Church has also always had within it those who choose the ways of Jesus and who have made the Church, and made those who are the recipients of this tradition, story, and vision, who challenge us to remember who we are supposed to be. To call us prophetically to our better selves, reforming and renewing to serve our neighbors. To choose to make a difference in the lives of those who are not here.
We are faced with the choice that has always faced those who call themselves followers of Jesus, which is to choose to preach and live the Gospel by inviting others to experience it, and by modelling it to other. By showing people what it looks like (or should look like) to choose the way of love over what is expedient, easy, or comfortable. To model it for others by how we choose to live. Where we choose to put our energy or spend our time. How and where we spend our money, and what we choose to spend it on. How we choose to respond to new ideas and the change in the world. How we choose to respond to the new life that God calls us into like a mother hen gathering her brood under her wings.
Our Gospel lesson ended with “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” We could also say, “Blessed is the one who chooses the Way of the Lord.” Not that any of us will ever do it perfectly. We can’t. But we can try to be as faithful as possible.
So I offer you a mission today. Let’s call it a mission, that sounds much more grandiose than assignment or homework. Your mission for this week, even for all of Lent as we are talking about choices: consider your choices/. Consider them as you are in your daily routines. Be aware of the choices that you are making. Why you are making them, how you are choosing to respond. To a co-worker, a friend, a stranger. How you choose to respond to a crying person, a person in need, or someone who is irritating you. How you choose where to spend your money and where to spend your time. What you are spending it on. CONsidering your choices and be mindful of them.
And if you are aware before you make a choice, if you are aware that you are in a position to make a choice, ask yourself, “How can I best choose the path of sacrificial love? What might be the most faithful/loving choice in this situation?” Or even better, make that decision before you set out so that you are prepared and prime for it when the situations arise that you will choose the more loving way instead of throwing stones.
I know what you could also do. We have a bowl of stones on today’s station in the middle of the sanctuary. On your way out, grab a stone and put it in your pocket to remind you this week not to throw it. Leave it in your pocket. Bring it back next Sunday if you haven’t thrown it and let’s see if the bowl has as many stones in it next Sunday as it has today. Take it with you. Carry it with you to remind you not to throw stones. Choose the more loving way and see if it does end up with a lot less stone throwing and more open-handed invitations to growing in faith.
Let us pray: Generous God, loving God, God who calls us to the good life in you, gather us as your people under your wings, and give us your spirit that we may be more faithful in our choices. Amen.
