A Crushing Truth - A Reflection on Luke 13:31-35

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ 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, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’ ”

I have always loved movies, especially Westerns, where the hero would go from town to town in his quest for someone or something. He would make waves at each place that he stopped, so the people in the next town would have heard about him before he got there. And when he reached that place, he would invariably be “advised”, usually by the sheriff, to move on to the next town. But you always knew the warning was more for the sake of the sheriff, who was either the bad guy, or defending the bad guy, than for the sake of the hero.

 

I was reminded of this while reading today’s passage where the Pharisees are telling Jesus to move out of town because Herod wants to kill him! We, of course, know that they were the ones who wanted Jesus dead, but they didn’t want to get their own hands dirty. Better to make it seem like somebody else was out to get him; this way not only would somebody else become the “bad guy”; they would become the “good guys”. Isn’t that funny? Well, it would be if the end game wasn’t murder.

 

Anyway, Jesus is not daunted. He knew he had come to die, but they weren’t going to determine the time or the place; he was. And until that time came nobody could kill him, no matter how much they might want to. So he replied, “Go and tell that fox for me,” and one can almost hear the laughter in his voice. “Tell him that I am healing the sick and casting out demons and doing other cool things. I will continue this until my time comes.” There is nobody — and I want us to understand this — there is nobody who can stop the things of God until God himself decides to stop them!

 

And then one senses sadness sweep over him, not at the thought of dying — as I just said, he had come to die — but by the fact their hearts were so hard. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he said, “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How many times I have loved to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you simply won’t change.” If Jesus were here today, would he say these words about the cities we live in? And what would he say about us? Would he lament the hardness of our hearts as we try to destroy those that God sends to us with his message of love and salvation?

 

Jesus then continues. “See,” he says, “your house is left to you.” I couldn’t make sense of this so I looked up the literal translation. It reads: “See, it has let itself fall on you, this house of yours.” It suggests a house falling upon the person who built it. How terrible to be crushed by things of our own making. And this is what we will bring upon ourselves if we live as the Pharisees lived, doing the things that they did. They sought to destroy rather than build, and they destroyed themselves in the process. The same will happen to us. Wouldn’t it be better to allow ourselves to be gathered together by Jesus and be safe under his wings instead? Yes?

 

Oh, and although he might have died, unlike the hero in those Westerns, Jesus came back to life beating death itself. We will too.

 

Watch a video of this reflection by Aneel Aranha here: https://youtu.be/Y9zSiwHN05g