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The Second Sunday of Lent
SERMON – 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 28th February 2010
Revd. Canon David Pickering
Luke 10 34
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 and you were not willing!
It was not easy to take a text from today's gospel reading because it is rather difficult passage to get hold of in a meaningful way.
Although not forgetting the cry of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, let us focus on the words in the second half of the verse, how often have I desired to gather your children together and you were not willing?
We, who are parents, know that one of the most painful experiences of family life is to watch our children make mistakes. As they move towards adulthood they start to exercise freedom and choice and have to make decisions for themselves.
From our own experiences we can see what is likely to happen, and despite all we may say, we know we cannot always put wise heads on young and adventuresome shoulders. Their rose-tinted view of themselves and the world around them can so easily be a distorted vision and a fantasy.
Your people cannot grow into independence without, on occasions, testing our love and asking a great deal of us.
Old Testament history reveals how God's love was put to the test by his chosen people. But he did not waver.
We see this reflected in this mornings' gospel reading; 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 and you were not willing!
For Jewish people, then as now, Jerusalem had a special value of its own.
A 1000 years before Jesus was born, King David had captured it and made it his capital. Its position, high in the Judean hills, gave it natural advantages as a military stronghold. Once he was in possession of the city David brought in the Ark of the Covenant – a wooden box overlaid with gold containing the two tablets of the Te Commandments, a golden pot of manna, and Aaron's rod that bloomed overnight. In the time of Jesus these were the most important objects in the religious history of the Jewish people.
Later, Solomon, David's son, built the temple, and it became the Holy City – the political and religious centre which was the hallmark and touchstone of Judaism.
And yet for all its religious privileges, it had often got things wrong. Time and again Jerusalem had rejected the message of the prophets who had called her to mend her ways and return to the way of the Lord.
And Jesus can see it happening again, as he, the latest of the prophets, is going to meet a prophet's doom.
His words are like those of a rueful parent grieving over an obdurate child. Jerusalem has chosen to say no to the best advice offered out of deep love.
But what does this lament over Jerusalem say to us?
It reminds us most forcefully that when we, God's children, go off the rails, we don't just break God's rules; we break his heart. Our sins, faults and failings are not just infringements of God's rules; they are arrows that pierce his loving heart.
The Christian faith and life is not just a rules game, a legalistic code, good marks, bad marks, Brownie points etc.
Rather it's a love-based relationship, an affair of the heart.
Remember who Peter, after he had denied Jesus, how when his mater turned and looked at him. The look of love said it all. Peter went out and wept bitterly.
Christianity is an affair of the heart in which love must answer love.
That love is summed up in a poem by George Herbert, which was used as part of the Retreat Day at Tao Fong Shan yesterday. And He was also celebrated by the Church yesterday.
LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.
'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.'
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'
'Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.
That Love invites us out of Love and for Love to share in and eat in this Eucharist, which is sometime called a Love Feast.
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