He Began to Weep

 

Wednesday, February 2, 2022

But as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep.  “How I wish today that you of all people would understand the way to peace.  But now it is too late, and peace is hidden from your eyes.  Before long your enemies will build ramparts against your walls and encircle you and close in on you from every side.  They will crush you into the ground, and your children with you.  Your enemies will not leave a single stone in place, because you did not recognize it when God visited you.”  Luke 19:41-44

Jesus was close to finishing his journey to the cross.  As he approached Jerusalem, he wept for the sheep he would have shepherded…if they’d only been willing.  From the depths of his sorrow tears flowed, and the Lord of Glory poured out the pain of the coming recompense his family would suffer.  Jerusalem, the shining City of David, would be crushed, its walls and temple razed to ground-zero.  Men and women, along with their children would enter a trial that would leave them devastated and broken.  God had visited them from a manger in Bethlehem…and they put up a shield to ward Him off.  Instead, it would become a prison wall to an eternal sentence of death.  Peace rejected, destruction ensured, the tears flowed like a river from the Christ who would be Savior over the lambs who were blindly bleating their own destructive brand of independence…we don’t need YOU, God!

Frankly, it’s difficult to read those words of prophecy…senseless destruction of men, women, and children, broken, bloodied, crushed into the ground.  That is the awful truth about rebellion towards our Creator.  When we decide to go our own way, rejecting God’s loving hand, we do to ourselves the worst kind of judgment – an unnecessary suffering contrary to what God had planned for us. 

Rather than pain, anguish, and eternal death, the LORD holds for us eternal LIFE and joy.  In human understanding, we hardly begin to comprehend that loss.  It is like a little boy playing on the railroad tracks.  He enjoys hopping from one rail to the rocks and skipping-up to the other rail.  His dad calls, but the child is having too good a time, so he ignores the voice.  What a tragedy is coming; but the child cannot see the danger, so His father and mother weep for him.  He’s making the worst possible choice, and refuses to take his eyes off his game for a moment.

Jerusalem, God’s Holy City, is not the focus of this Scripture.  Jerusalem is a metaphor for everything God created.  All the earth, it’s people, animals, cities, rural areas, mountains, wilderness, and dry places, were created for God’s glory.  And all was placed in humankind’s care.  Some of us choose to play on the tracks, ignoring the train’s approaching destruction.  Some turn to the voice of God’s warning to come close for protection.  And, as the story of the Great Shepherd who left the 99 safe sheep[1], to look for the 1 lost sheep still playing on the tracks, the heart of the Father grieves just as Jesus’ weeping displays…because they would not.

For You Today

For some, the idea of getting right with God is not something by which they’re upset, or angered; they’re just buried in the distraction of living daily life.  They just don’t think about it.  Sadly, this was the case in Jerusalem; the king of glory visited, and they were too busy playing on the tracks.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title and Other Images:  Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©   

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[1] See Luke 15:1-7

Lost, Searching, & Found

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Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them!  So Jesus told them this story:  “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do?  Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it?  And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders.  When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’  In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!  Luke 15:1-7

Paul Leeland, resident Bishop of the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church[1] told the story of his seminary days in Baltimore to a gathering of preachers.  When he arrived at the seminary there were no TV’s in the dorm rooms, and no coffee machines.  He quickly secured a coffee pot and a small portable TV for his room so he could drink coffee each morning as he listened to the news and got ready for classes.  He said it didn’t take long for four floors of seminary students to find out there was coffee and TV on the third floor, so his room was seldom private.

One day he heard the local news anchor lament that in a certain neighborhood, notorious for racial tension and violence, first responders, police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel were slower responding to calls than in other more secure parts of the city.  Later that day Leeland and a buddy went to check out the area.  They lingered a little too long and these two young, white men, after sundown were lost in a seedy section of town.  Now the eventual bishop was bright enough to recall that even in Baltimore the sun sets in the West (which was the direction of his dorm room), and so he figured if he just kept the car moving in that general direction he’d be safe, and find home.  About the time he figured that out, the light at the next corner turned red.  His car stopped right in front of a group of young men who were having a good time teasing each other.  But when they saw the out-of-place white seminary students, they encircled the car with menacing looks and a frightening presence.  With the obvious interpersonal skill and quick-thinking of  a Methodist Bishop, Paul Leeland turned to his buddy and said, hey, jump out and ask our new best friends how we can get out of the city. His buddy said, (well, never mind what he said…they may have performed an illegal launch through a red light, but they lived to tell the story).

Reflecting on the story Bishop Leeland said that, like the lost sheep in Jesus’ story Paul Leeland was also lost in Baltimore.  The Bible word for lost really means out of place.  Even out of place people have value.  He was still a husband, father, and pastor at a little Methodist church.  But none of that mattered when confronted with a mob surrounding your vehicle.  A sheep that’s lost provides no wool for its master.  The lost coin in next story that Jesus told could purchase no food or olive oil to feed the household.  Lost is out of place until it is found!

And that is the whole point of the missional mindset of a church.  People who are lost, out of place, cannot function as they were created…as a sheep providing wool, a vine providing fruit, a human engaging in relationship with Creator God.  Out of place must be found.

Our baptism is a mark of the redeemed, the lost and out of place being found and restored to the place of God’s embrace and love. 

We must never lose sight or hope of being the locators and lovers of the lost.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…Amen!

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[1] Bishop Leeland at Macedonia United Methodist Church, Take Thou Authority event, September 19, 2019

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[i] Title Images:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com.    All Scripture quoted is from The New Living Translation (unless otherwise stated) 

Balancing Act

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Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach.  This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them!  So Jesus told them this story:  “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do?  Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it?  And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders.  When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’  In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!  Luke 15:1-7^(NLT)

This parable of Jesus’ sets up the classic balancing act between actions and attitudes.  Both are important, and both usually criticized in a tug of war between the good children and the bad ones.  And, depending on which side of that line you stand, both are dangerous.

The “Good” Ones

The Pharisees, keepers of all things religious, are the obedience-driven “good children”.  In Jesus’ other parable about this conflict, the Pharisees, religious leaders and teachers of God’s Law, they would be the stay-at-home elder brother (as opposed to the bad son who wasted his father’s estate in the far country).  The religious, obeying, do-gooders were performance-driven conformers; they dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s.  Their resume’s were inscrutable; their attitudes were horrible, condemning everything that walked…except themselves!

The “Wild-child” Ones

The wild children of the world have a problem with authority figures, something you see in abundance with the Pharisees.  When Pharisees exercise control, the predictable reaction is rebellion.  Wild children can detect a Pharisaical fussbudget’s horrible attitude in a heartbeat…and they want none of it!

The irony of these two types of people represented in Luke’s Gospel account is that neither is all right, and, obviously, neither is all wrong.  The Pharisees –a title almost always spoken with a slight bit of spit-out-of-the-mouth disgust – are seen as wanting to ruin the party, sucking the fun out of life, while the wild, rebellious ones are duly chastised for their lack of obedience, but silently admired for their I-gotta-be-me rebellious ways. 

Putting aside which side you and I may occupy, let’s ask the question this morning: 

If neither the Pharisee, nor the Wild-child is all right or all wrong…

what do we make of what God expects here?

Well, take your preferences and prejudices out of the equation and consider; is obedience to God wrong?  Ask again, is a positive attitude of life is good, and meant to be enjoyed wrong?  The answer is always “yes” AND “no”. 

When your obedience is like a Pharisee, obeying every commandment and, at the same time, despising the fact that you must obey, because you know all those people who aren’t obeying are out there having a good time, and it tweaks you so much to be the good child, that you must condemn everything the wild children are doing…you need an attitude adjustment.

On the other hand, when being a wild-child, disobeying just because you despise the good children who do obey, and then you see how empty the life can be apart from a relationship with God, and it drives you to step up your game with more and bigger disobedience, just because you’re gonna show them you were right to reject them…well, you need a performance review!

And so, the balancing act becomes surrendering your inner Pharisee AND your outer wild-child ways to God’s Spirit, so that the growing humility (Christlikeness) God wants to grow in you destroys your criticizing and allows you to really start living.

The problem with a Pharisee or a wild-child is the balancing act between obeying and not obeying is too difficult to be handled by amateurs; sin is just too strong without the cleansing of blood…and we are unable to be cleansed when we stand on ONLY our own two feet.  This is what Paul meant when he said it was only when he was weak that he was actually strong[2].

For You Today

There is nothing wrong with obedience, and there is nothing good about disobedience.  Those are merely indicators of where you stand on the scale of whether a heart has been surrendered to the love of Christ, or a heart trying to navigate life all on your own. 

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day. 

Go to VIDEO

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] 2 Corinthians 12:10