Jeff Tobin + March 16, 2025
SecondSunday of Lent
Lent, typically seen as a time of scarcity, is reimagined this Sunday as a time of fullness—full of God's embrace and protection. Jeff Tobin’s sermon highlights the powerful image of being gathered under God’s wings, as expressed in both the Gospel of Luke and Psalm 121. As we continue through the "Full to the Brim" series, Tobin invites us to reflect on how God’s protective love shapes our Lenten journey, urging us to let go of anxiety and lean into God’s abundance. This message calls us to trust in God's care, especially when facing personal and societal challenges, and find strength in the wings of grace.
Sermon Transcript
From YouTube's automatically generated captions, lightly edited by ChatGPT for punctuation and readability.
Good morning.
Friends, I've got my goggles just in case I can't read my own handwriting. Not being a French speaker, I wondered about the meaning of the term "Mardi Gras," which we tend to hear as Lent approaches. So, I went to that fountain of all knowledge, Google, and discovered that in French-speaking regions, what we observe as Shrove or Pancake Tuesday is called Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday. The term "Mardi Gras" relates, I found out, to an old French custom of using up all the fatty, rich foods in the house before the leanness of Ash Wednesday and Lent.
Well, if Lent is a time of leanness, then our Lenten devotional guide, Full to the Brim, sounds pretty "unlent-y." I just made up a word there: "unlent-y." According to the creators of our Lenten devotional materials, the origin of Lent was a call to leave their old life behind and fast as they prepared to be baptized into a new way of living. A new way of living for us, in the words of the creators of our "Full to the Brim" guide, involves "trying to unearth areas of unworthiness and scarcity in our lives so we can live fully and increase our capacity to receive and give grace." The leanness of Lent, then, is reimagined as fullness of lives lived in repentance and renewal.
So, this morning, I'd like to try to make some connections between "Full to the Brim" and our Psalm and our Gospel reading. Our Gospel lectionary text this morning, Luke 13, tells us of one episode in the journey of Jesus, introduced in chapter 9 with the ominous words, "Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem." His face has been set, meaning there shall be no turning back. As we read aloud together a moment ago, Jesus is going to keep on keeping on. Luke will periodically update us on Jesus' travels toward Jerusalem in subsequent chapters of the narrative. In verse 22 of chapter 13, we read, "Then Jesus went through the towns and villages as he made his way to Jerusalem." Chapter 17 tells us, "Now on the way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee." He's traveling south from Galilee, and he and his disciples are nearing their destination. For in chapter 19, Luke tells us, "Jesus entered Jericho." Now, Jericho is the city at the base of Mount Zion, and if you're climbing up to Jerusalem, for you hikers, it's a 3,400-foot elevation gain.
Earlier in Luke's gospel, chapter 2, we find the story of the infant Jesus being brought to the temple by Mary and Joseph for what the church calls the Holy Name, in accordance with Hebrew Scripture, the Eighth Day. The 8-day-old infant Jesus will be circumcised and receive his name, Jesus, or Joshua as it is in Hebrew, a name which means "God saves." There, in the temple, the Holy Family encounters the devout and righteous Simeon, who blesses them and prays, saying, "This child is destined to cause the rising and the falling of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many will be revealed." And when, as an adult, Jesus begins his public ministry in his hometown, Nazareth synagogue, he is indeed spoken against, and the thoughts of his fellow citizens are revealed when they run him out of town and try to kill him because of his prophetic teaching that God's love and blessing is for all people—Israelites and outsiders. His ministry begins with a death threat, and it will end in death on a cross in Jerusalem.
As Jesus himself says in Luke 13:33, "Surely no prophet can die outside of Jerusalem," he seems to be referencing Old Testament texts such as Nehemiah 9:26. When the exiles returned from Babylon in the 6th century before Christ, under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, the community gathered publicly to confess their sins. They declared, "When our ancestors were disobedient and rebelled against you, they put your law behind their backs. They killed your prophets." And in Jeremiah 2:30, God, speaking through Jeremiah, says, "Your sword, Israel, has devoured your prophets like a ravening lion." "No prophet is accepted in his hometown," said Jesus. "No prophet can die outside of Jerusalem."
There's a curious reference in this morning's Gospel reading about the Pharisees, Jesus' sometimes sparring partners, warning Jesus that Herod's out to get him. This is not the Herod who ordered the slaughter of the Holy Innocents recorded in Matthew chapter 2; this is one of his sons, Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee. Jesus, in essence, responds, "Go tell that little predator that I have an appointment with Jerusalem, and he has no power to stop me." Jesus has an end in mind, for he says in verse 32, "On the third day, I must finish my work." The word "end" can, of course, mean the completion of something, but especially here, it means purpose or goal. What Jesus is saying is that his arrival in Jerusalem will achieve the goal of the ancient gospel story—the story of grace, in which God is the primary actor. God's end or purpose is to set things to rights between himself and humanity, to bring the human will into harmony with his own divine will. And to that end, God calls Abraham, whose children are to be a blessing to the whole world. He leads those descendants of Abraham out of slavery in Egypt and, much later, leads those descendants exiled in Babylon back to Jerusalem. The final truth of the gospel of grace, the gospel story, is the Christ story—the ultimate chapter in the God story of bringing righteousness and salvation to this world.
As Jesus contemplates the end that lay ahead of him, we hear his brokenhearted lament, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who killed the prophets and stoned those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." A prophetic word of the mother-love of God for his people, but a word of grace rejected becomes a word of judgment. For we read in verse 35, "See, your house is left to you desolate." What might Jesus have meant by those words? When he actually arrived in Jerusalem, recorded in chapter 19, he renews and completes his lament from chapter 13, for Luke says, "As Jesus came near and saw the city, he wept over it. 'If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace! But now it's hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and your children within your walls. They will leave not one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.' Your house will be left to you desolate." These words, of course, were fulfilled in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and ended Israel's existence as a nation-state.
"I would have gathered you as a hen does her chickens, but you would not." We sometimes hear in the Jewish Scriptures, our Old Testament, that Israel is described in Jeremiah's words this way: "Day after day, again and again, I sent you prophets. I sent you my servants, but you did not listen to me or pay attention. You were a stiff-necked people." I'm so glad Jeremiah wasn't talking about me; my neck feels fine.
However, theologian James Sanders says, "Whenever your reading of a Biblical passage makes you feel self-righteous, you can be sure you have misread it." It turns out, then, that Jesus' laments in both Luke 13 and 19 weren't just about the Jerusalem and Israel of his day—they were also a lament for us, for the church that bears his name, and for our world. "I would have gathered you, but you would not." In a prayer earlier in today's liturgy, we said, "We go to sleep worrying about tomorrow; we're full to the brim with anxiety, and we know there has to be more than this." We want a new kind of "fill to the brim."
Winston Churchill famously said, "If you're going through hell, keep going." That's what it feels like sometimes these days for me, and maybe for some of you as well. In the face of what's happening in America, in the American church, and in our world at large, we feel there has to be more than this. "Keep going," said Churchill. "Put one foot in front of the other. Keep on keeping on," just as Jesus did. Keep the faith. I can identify with the psalmist who cried out in Psalm 121, "I lift my eyes to the hills. I scan the horizon. I'm searching, 'Where will my help come from?'" Let's see if we can find some help.
One place we can look is the ancient wisdom of our ancestors in the faith. In the words attributed to that 13th-century friar, St. Francis, we hear: "Lord, make me an instrument, a channel of your peace." The prayer goes on: "O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love." A new perspective directed to the needs of others: console, understand, love—even our perceived enemies, those who think differently than we do. Yes, says the one who set his face to Jerusalem and who would gather us under his wings.
Another source of help may be found, for example, in a simple meditative prayer such as this: "In silence we wait. In darkness, you come to us. Bring us your light." I find myself repeating these words frequently these days: "In silence we wait." The theme of waiting is also reflected in the psalm we read responsively this morning. The psalmist, David, says, "I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." He goes on to say twice, "Wait for the Lord."
One biblical meaning of "wait" is "hope." Hope in the Lord, says the psalmist. "Be strong. Take heart. Wait for the Lord." How can we do that? Because, as the psalmist says, it's the goodness of the Lord in which we trust. And we ask, as in Psalm 121, "Where does my help come from?" And we wait in hope because the answer is our help comes from the Lord, who made and sustains the heavens and the earth. We wait in hope these 40 days of Lent because the gospel story tells us the final truth: that God has acted in Jesus to set things right between himself and humanity. We hope for a new kind of Lent because of the fullness of the mother-love of God for us.
Amen.
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