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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
When I was a boy, on my grandparents’ farm in northern Wisconsin, there were chickens in coops. I gathered eggs a few times, but I never got to see a hen gather her brood under her wings as Jesus describes in today’s Gospel Reading. Perhaps those of you who presently have chickens have seen such behavior, or perhaps Carl and Gayle have seen their emu gather their chicks under their wings. Regardless, we city folk probably can still understand what Jesus says. Gathering is a central thought in the second half of today’s Gospel Reading as Jesus laments over Jerusalem, and gathering might even be in view in the first half of the Gospel Reading as Jesus warns against Herod Antipas. This morning we reflect on today’s Gospel Reading under the theme “Gathered”.
From last week’s report of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-13), we have moved forward significantly in St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, to today’s Gospel Reading. In between the two, the days already had drawn near for Jesus to be taken up, and so He set His face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51; 13:22). As He went, the Pharisees were pressing Him hard and provoking Him to speak about many things, lying in wait for Him, to catch Him in something He might say (Luke 11:53). In one case, many thousands of people were gathered together and Jesus warned them against the Pharisees (Luke 12:1). And, just before today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus taught that, while not everyone would be saved, people would come from all over to recline at table in the Kingdom of God (Luke 13:23-30).
Then, in today’s Gospel Reading, St. Luke uniquely reports how Pharisees told Jesus to get away from that region because, Herod Antipas, who had beheaded John the Baptizer, supposedly wanted to kill Jesus. Of course, Herod had not really wanted to kill John the Baptizer (Matthew 14:9; Mark 6:26), and, as Herod heard reports that Jesus was John raised from the dead, Herod wanted to see Jesus (Luke 9:7, 9), hoping to see some sign done by Him (Luke 23:8). In today’s Gospel Reading, undeterred and perhaps trying to gather Herod by pointing to miracles, Jesus told the Pharisees to tell Herod that day by day Jesus would cast out demons and finish healings until He was finished in Jerusalem, outside of which city Jesus ironically said it was not fitting for a prophet to be destroyed. And then, as apparently He did again later (Matthew 23:37-39; Luke 19:41-44), Jesus lamented, or expressed His grief, over the people of Jerusalem’s unwillingness to be gathered, as He willed to gather them, as a mother bird, sensing danger from a storm or predator, gathers her brood of chicks into her nest, to protect them under her wings.
Are you and I willing so to be gathered? Do we seek the Lord’s protection and come under the shelter of His wings? Do we despise God’s Word and Sacraments, not holding them sacred and gladly receiving them regularly? Of course, by nature, we are wayward chicks, unwilling so to be gathered. We cannot by our own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ our Lord or come to Him (Small Catechism, II:6). On account of our original sin and countless actual sins, we deserve to die now and be forsaken in hell for eternity. Such is the kind of judgment Jesus pronounced on Jerusalem, whose time for repentance apparently had passed. If not Jesus Himself, certainly prophets such as Jeremiah in today’s Old Testament (Jeremiah 26:8-15) repeatedly had called the people of the city to repent before, threatening to forsake it and leave it desolate (confer 1 Kings 9:7-8; Jeremiah 12:7; 22:5). Of course, God would rather have had Jerusalem’s people repent, as He would rather have us and all people repent (1 Timothy 2:4). So He calls and enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep sinning. When we so repent, then He forgives our sinful natures and all our actual sins for Jesus’s sake.
Some of you may know that the Watts Family is trying to raise chickens but had its first attempt foiled by a fox that, as it were, got into their henhouse. Their experience came to my mind as I prepared to preach on today’s Gospel Reading, although nothing I read suggested any connection between Jesus’s calling Herod a fox and His then speaking about hens and their chicks, even though the Old Testament figuratively uses foxes to describe threats to God’s people (Lamentations 5:18; Song of Solomon 2:15). To be sure, in the Gospel Reading Jesus makes clear that, despite any threat from Herod Antipas, Jesus will die in the place and time of His own choosing. Jesus makes clear that He is a prophet and is prepared for the prophet’s doom. Jesus is God in human flesh with a body, soul, and will of His own, and yet Jesus’s will is perfectly aligned with His Father’s. Foxes like Herod had holes, and birds of the air like those that symbolized the Romans had nests, but Jesus had no place to lay His head (Luke 9:58, confer Bailey, Peasant Eyes, 24-25, who cites Manson). Generally speaking, Jesus was not acceptable in His hometown (Luke 4:24), and He would not be accepted in Jerusalem, either. The city whose name speaks of peace should have welcomed and protected the Lord’s prophets, but instead they stoned and otherwise killed them. After a short period, even though Herod and Pilate found Jesus innocent (Luke 23:13-15), people of Jerusalem would crucify Jesus. Yet, Jesus as the long‑promised Greatest Prophet (Deuteronomy 18:15-22), unlike any other prophet, on the third rose from the dead, victorious over sin, death, and the power of the devil. As we put our trust in Him, seeking the shelter of His wings, we share in His victory and receive the benefits of His death and resurrection (Psalm 36:7; confer Oswalt, TWOT I:447). As today’s Gradual put it, citing Hebrews (12:2), Jesus is the founder and perfecter, or author and finisher (KJV), of our faith; He endured the cross for us.
As Barbara and I prepared this morning’s bulletin on Friday, I expressed surprise at our purchased bulletin cover’s quotation from today’s Gospel Reading, how it took words from Jesus’s statement about His willing to gather Jerusalem’s children (and their not willing to be gathered) and turned them into a statement about actually gathering children. Upon further reflection, I thought maybe that change was not so bad. Jerusalem was not willing to be gathered, but, as God works resistibly through His means of grace, His Word and Sacraments, believers are gathered nevertheless, from every nation, all tribes and peoples and languages (Revelation 7:9). Holy Baptism gives us the Holy Spirit and in a sense finishes our healing. Individual Holy Absolution frees us from the sins we privately confess to our pastor. And, at the Sacrament of the Altar we recline at the table of the Kingdom of God (Luke 13:29; 14:1 ff.; confer Just, 557), singing “Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord”, eating bread that is Christ’s body given for us, and drinking wine that is Christ’s blood shed for us—given and shed for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. In all these ways, the Holy Spirit calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith, and in this Christian Church He daily and richly forgives all our sins and the sins of all believers (Small Catechism, II:6). In all these ways, believers know that they are among God’s elect, while those who despise these means of grace cannot be so comforted, for they resist the Holy Spirit and risk God’s hardening and rejecting them, as happened to Jerusalem (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration II:57-58; XI:39-41).
I learned this past week that apparently another family of five soon will be gathered into God’s flock of our Pilgrim congregation. We can and should thank God for that family’s so being gathered! So God works as we are faithful. He gets all the glory; yet, as a congregation and as individuals, we can and should do all that we can do, which we do not do! We are halfway through the first quarter of the new calendar year, and only one Board has had meetings of which I have been a part. Despite our failures, God blesses us, but that does not give us license to so fail! There is temptation there, to be sure, as we last week heard the devil tempt Jesus by using Psalm 91 and its promises, such as those about finding refuge under the Lord’s wings (Psalm 91:4; confer Deuteronomy 32:11; Isaiah 31:5; Just, 564). Let us resist such temptation to test God, turn away from our failures, receive His forgiveness, and, not only want to do, but actually do better! Failing to do so, the earthly Jerusalem was forsaken. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading, our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:17-4:1). The day is coming when we all irresistibly will be gathered from the four winds (Matthew 24:31; Mark 13:27), to form a multitude that no one can number (Revelation 7:9), in the new, heavenly Jerusalem (Revelation 21:9-27). In the place and time of His own choosing, Jesus died for us and, as we enabled by Him cooperate with His will, He gathers us as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. Under His wings, He protects us from every storm and predator.
As I prepared to preach about today’s Gospel Reading, stuck in my head has been the chorus of a hymn I sang in the children’s choir at the church where I was confirmed. Although not in our hymnals, William Cushing and Samuel Beck’s hymn is in more than 100 others. Speak the chorus with me if you know it:
Under His wings, under His wings, / Who from His love can sever?
Under His wings my soul shall abide, / Safely abide forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen. + + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +