First Church in Cambridge, Congregational UCC
7 March 2004
A Project Bigger Than My Life
Nothing that is that worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope.
Nothing that is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith.
Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love.
——Reinhold Niebuhr
Our story opens with Jesus in Galilee on his way to Jerusalem. Some friendly Pharisees intercept him on the road and warn him to leave the region. "Go away," they beg him, "Herod is trying to kill you." They aren't talking about the Herod the Great who was king when Jesus was born, but Herod Antipas, one of his three sons who is now the ruler of one third of his father's not-very-vast-to-begin-with-territories, and a vassal in thrall to the Romans. As kings of the earth go, Antipas is a bush league potentate. All the same, a threat from any Herodian is a serious thing—the father slaughtered the innocents of Bethlehem; the son beheaded John the Baptist. All the same, Jesus dismisses the threat, calling Herod a "fox".
Now, a bit later in the passage, we also heard Jesus liken himself to a mother hen who gathers and protects her chicks, so when he calls Herod a fox, we might imagine a wily animal slinking through a hole in the fence, licking its chops at the thought of the defenseless brood scattered around the barnyard. But "fox" had another common meaning in Jesus' day that fits Jesus' purpose too. It meant puny, gutless, trivial. With this epithet, Jesus drives it home to his listeners that Herod is small potatoes.
When Jesus says, "Tell that fox that I am going to keep healing today and tomorrow, until the third day," he is saying that Herod will not and cannot decide the course of events. God is in charge, Jesus is on God's schedule, and God is determined to usher in a new age of justice by means of Jesus' liberating ministry. To think that Herod might obstruct God's intentions is laughable. He is an inconsequential speck in the universe, whereas the mission Jesus is carrying out for God is of infinite reach and consequence.
Jesus understands himself to be the agent of something large and long, wide and deep, indestructible and lasting, something completely unlike a puppet ruler's tiny jurisdiction in time and space. Jesus is the agent of God's kingdom of mercy—a kingdom that is summed up in him, yet not confined to him; a realm that can't be corrupted, overthrown or occupied; a regime that has no imperial designs, no lust to subjugate, and yet encompasses everyone and for all time. Herod's sovereignty is a meaningless sway over nothing, but the sovereignty of God will never die even if Jesus does.
As for that death, Luke has Jesus remind his listeners that it won't happen in Galillee, not in Herod's territory. It will be in Jerusalem. According to Luke, Jesus has not been in the holy city since he was twelve. The journey he's on now is his first in a long time (and it will be his last); but it seems that Jerusalem has never been far from his mind. Jerusalem is mentioned almost twice as many times in this gospel as in the other three combined.
Jerusalem sits at the heart of Luke's story of Jesus like a magnet. It is a desired and dreaded destination, the site of fulfillment and the scene of failure—a haunting paradox of a place where the most intense spiritual emotions are concentrated and the most ferocious violence is unleashed; a stubborn paradox of a place, where God dwells gloriously in the Temple and God's prophets meet the stiffest resistance and the ugliest end. Today Jerusalem still stands for all our stubborn human paradoxes. Jerusalem makes us weep. It made Jesus weep too.
"But I have wanted to gather you," he cries, embodying the desire of all the prophets for the peace of God's chosen people. "I would have, but you would not," he laments, summing up the longing of God for the whole human race. The prospect of Jerusalem wrenches out of Jesus the question of the ages—How long, O Lord? When will you act? Will things ever change? It is a question of bewilderment, of unrequited and squandered love, of futility. And it is a form of that other appalling question that Jesus will speak to the empty heavens outside Jerusalem, hanging from his Roman cross, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"
If you have ever engaged the world seriously, then you have also wondered whether anything you do makes any difference. UCC Minister and President John Thomas writes that futility is the question hanging over every thoughtful, honest [person], especially people of faith. In the months leading to last year's invasion of Iraq, he asks, didn't we pray for peace? Didn't we write to the President? Didn't some of us participate in acts of resistance? And didn't the tanks roll anyway, the planes fly, the bombs fall, and all those people die? And haven't we been here before, and don't you think that we will be here again, no matter how much we pray, no matter how many die?
Week after week in church, pastors like me talk confidently about God's promises, about ministry as transformation, about creating communities of radical hospitality and bold global mission, but most of the time the best any of us can actually do is to help a few wounded souls—and our own—limp from one day to the next, coping as best we can.
Down in the Shelter, despite the selfless efforts of Jim Stewart and the staff, no one is actually solving the problem of homelessness. Neither are the politicians, who could.
We have the poor with us always, abandoned to the whims of the pious powerful for whom justice is a question of personal choice and political expediency. Social workers drown in case loads. Parents can't protect their children from the nightmares our culture invites then to dream.
And you and I? Well, I can't speak for you, but I know that I will carry to my grave sins I do not want to commit, but do; unhealed hurts I want to forgive but can't; gifts and energy I meant to use for the things of God, but never did.
A sense of defeat haunts all our hopes. A victory in one part of the world, or in one part of our lives, seems sooner or later always to be overshadowed by some greater tragedy, some more horrific evil. Our noble personal intentions are thwarted by our tax dollars at work. It is no wonder that in the face of this intractable complexity many good people lose heart and decide, like Candide, to tend their own private gardens and let the world go to hell if it wants to.
Jesus knew that temptation. But, as he told the friendly Pharisees in his wry and cryptic way, even in view of Jerusalem he believes in God and God's future. He believes that he is engaged in a project bigger and more coherent than the nonsensical and agonizing frustrations of his small slice of history. He is about a project bigger than his life.
This is a project that requires a truly disciplined faith, one that struggles daily in the dark without the solace of outcomes. It is not an upbeat spirit, not a happy-slappy optimism that rises above suffering, but a face set like flint towards Jerusalem and all its painful paradoxes; a steadfastness born of grief and lament; a trudging sort of hope that in practice is often nothing more than putting one aching foot in front of the other.
What makes this seemingly foolish and futile trudge down the road to Jerusalem redemptive is that, as a young Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, the foolishness of it is revealed as wisdom in the end, and its futility becomes the occasion for new striving. Perhaps (John Thomas recollects) this is why a Mennonite pastor deeply committed to peacemaking and justice in Colombia, where violence is so encompassing that hope is absurd, could greet him, newly arrived in that crucified country, with the apostle Paul's words of defiance: "Therefore, since it is by God's mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart."
This is the quality of faith and hope we are invited to learn from Jesus on our Lenten journey. The sort of faith and hope that Frances Moore Lappe, a long-time crusader against world hunger, was talking about when she wrote, "If you are working on a question that can be solved in your lifetime, you may be wasting your life."
I'm not sure I would go that far, but because I am something of a straggler on this trudge to the holy city, I am not the best judge. I will defer to those who are way out in front, who walk more stubbornly than I do, folks like Frances Moore Lappe, and Jim Stewart and, of course, our brother Jesus, who did not waste his life—and to all of you who give me such a good example. To you, sisters and brothers, over whom some challenging Jerusalem is always looming and who keep on walking towards it nonetheless, your faces set like flint, lending faithful hearts and bodies to the project bigger than your lives.
© 2004, Mary Luti