Luke 13:31-35
March 11, 2001
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church of San Francisco.
Although I have not been to Italy, a place that sometime in the near future, I might have the chance to visit, stands or better stated leans, the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The work on the tower began on August 9, 1173, over 800 years ago. The builders, contractors, engineers and architects didn’t mean to make it lean. The tower was designed perpendicular and was straightforwardly expected to point plumb starward.
But tilting became a problem almost immediately.
So for centuries, the 177 foot-tall bell tower has looked like it is about to fall over. The combined weight of all 32 million pounds of marble stones built with pride is pressing downward into the soft sand underneath, squeezing out the underground water. It is now a shocking 15 feet out of plumb!
After computer models proved that the tower was going to fall—sooner, rather than later—a committee of engineers and scientists set about to right the tilting tourist trap. The solution is to correct the leaning inch by inch by removing bits of clay from beneath the tower through long, thin pipes, at about a shovel-ful or two a day. By removing these small amounts from the right places, the tower is tilting back toward stability.
Engineers believe that by this summer they will bring it back by 20 inches, which is enough to save the tower for several centuries. Of course, it will still lean a little—preserving the tourist trade of a tilting tower.
This is by design. The engineers do not ever intend to bring the tower into a perfectly upright position!
Lament over Jerusalem
And here lies a lesson for the church and Christians today. God does not expect that any of us will reach moral perfection. Jesus didn’t expect Jerusalem to fully reflect the laws of God. Like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, we find ourselves not in perfectly upright positions.
In Luke, we are not told why Herod wants to kill Jesus, but it’s not difficult to imagine good reasons. Jesus’ messianic purpose set him at odds with any and all political powers.
Jesus responds to the Pharisees’ warnings by calling Herod a fox, an ancient name for a crafty and dishonest person.
Jesus declares, “I am casting out demons…today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.” Jesus’ twisting response seems to dismiss Herod’s violence against him and speaks about how he will be the one to cause violence against the demons.
But then, when Jesus said, “on the third day…” we wonder whether he is echoing the crucifixion and on the third day, his resurrection. We can see that Jesus admits that violence will indeed come against him, that political enemies will kill him. But on the third day, violence against Jesus does not have a final say.
Jesus then moves to a saying about Jerusalem. There’s a Jewish lore that says that a prophet cannot be killed “outside of Jerusalem.” Jesus seems to be saying that he will go about his business of casting out demons and healing people today, tomorrow, and the next day because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.
But what happens inside is quite a different story!
Imagine Jesus sitting on a bluff high above Jerusalem and weeping, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you are the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.” Jerusalem has always and seems to always kill the ones sent to save her. She is a contradiction to her name, a holy place and at the same time, the very place of violence. She is the place against which the powers of the world focus their violence. And Jerusalem responds with whatever violence she can, thereby killing her own prophets, her own messiahs.
Jerusalem is not upright, perpendicular and gazing upward. Jerusalem is leaning and sinking in her own violence. Even Jesus didn’t expect the house in Jerusalem would be fully in compliant with the laws of God.
Antidote to Violence
Into this mix of leaning toward a public lynching, name calling, resistance, remembering the terror of past murdering and stoning, and weeping of “Jerusalem, Jerusalem” sinking in her sin of violence, Jesus introduces tenderness. “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”
Jesus has come into the world to Jerusalem, but the city is not interested in this hen-love. After all, Jerusalem has a fox, Herod, and a fox is much stronger and more aggressive than a hen.
One of today’s great preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor, recalls the time when she was visiting a chapel that had been built supposedly where Jesus wept for Jerusalem. On the front of the altar was an image of a rooster with a flock of chicks under his wings. Taylor speculates that the artist used the rooster image probably because a rooster can defend himself. A hen cannot. All she can do is shelter the chick against a predator such as a fox. “At the very least,” Taylor writes, “she can hope that she satisfies his appetite so that he leaves her babies alone.”
We like this artist who prefers to understand Jesus as more of a rooster than a hen. When our world is leaning and sinking in violence and things are getting out of hand, we rather have Arnold Swartznegger with assault weapons in each hand killing the outlaws than Danny DiVito.
While this image may be satisfying to many of us, it is not how Jesus is. Jesus does not become a fox or even a rooster to protect his chicks. When Herod and the other outlaws come after Jesus, Jesus does not pick up assault weapons and start blasting away. Even though Jesus is the weak and defenseless hen, he will win and God knows it.
Violence Today
One of the tragedies of our time is the way in which our society fails to grow toward love and justice and peace. Children are infected early on with violent toys and video images that find their roots in our cavemen past. How many more Columbines and school killings like the one in San Diego this past week can we endure? Movies, like Hannibal and other forms of entertainment, are overly enjoyed by adults. The end result includes heavily armed paramilitary groups with Nazi-type ambitions for taking over the country. We see across the world, the trust in violence goes all the way to unashamed genocide.
Last Sunday, an Arab suicide bomber kills three Israelis and injured 50 others. On Monday, Charles Andrew Williams, 15, killed two students and wounded 13 other people at Santana High School. On Tuesday, a 15-year old Belmont student was arrested after handing in a school assignment that threatened to blow up the school and causing people harm. On Wednesday, a 14-year-old girl at a private school in Pennsylvania shot and wounded a classmate in the school cafeteria. On Thursday… When will all of this end?
Our world is like the Leaning Tower of Pisa with its foundation sinking down into the ground because of violence. We were designed to be upright, perpendicular and looking upward but instead we are in the danger of falling down.
The only answer to the violence in the world is Jesus’ way of love that promises peace and justice. In our time, we have seen love do what violence has failed. The United States will never be the same again because Martin Luther King, Jr., and his colleagues dared to try Jesus’ way. El Salvador will never be the same again because Archbishop Oscar Romero spoke up for human rights against a bloody civil war and dared to try Jesus’ way.
South Africa will never be the same again because Nelson Mandela could have kept his bitterness after 27 years of imprisonment but instead he loved his tormentors and dissolved apartheid. He dared to try Jesus’ way.
Our leaning world that is falling down with hate and degradation still needs to hear the message of peace and justice and the end of violence.
Jesus’ Way
Jesus does not become a fox to protect his chicks. In the gospels, Jesus refuses to become one of the foxes, and he refuses to run from them. He lets himself be killed by the foxes, and then he comes back with a love stronger than death.
The church is like a mother hen. The church is to shelter all kinds of chicks, all kinds of people, including the outcast, and maybe even a couple of ducks. The church is to protect its brood from the foxes. It is to stay true to Whose body it is by resisting the temptation either to run from the foxes or to become one of them.
Maybe this is why the church is called, “Mother Church.” The church, after all, is where we Christians come not only to be fed and sheltered by the mother hen but also to act like the mother hen, standing firm against violent foxes and caring for those who need our protection. It is in the church that we chicks grow to become “chickens,” learning how to love instead of fight as we have been loved by the mother hen. Let them call us, “chickens!”
Leaning Christians
The message of calling us to end violence and to become like mother hens sounds great and fantastic, but is it possible?
Remember the Leaning Tower of Pisa? The engineers are not planning to bring the tower into a perfectly upright position. We can learn from this illustration because God does not expect that any of us will reach moral perfection either. Jesus didn’t expect Jerusalem to fully comply with the laws of God either.
But Jesus did expect Jerusalem to listen to the prophets. God does expect us to be faithful and obedient.
But perfectly perpendicular? Loving others all the time? No.
We are fallen, tilting chicks, redeemed by the grace of God. The tilt has been arrested, and not only arrested, but readjusted. We are now closer in alignment with God’s purpose of living our lives focusing on peace and justice. Although we will never be perfectly straight with God, we can certainly strive to seek maturity in Christ.
Jesus looked upon Jerusalem and said, “Your house is left to you, desolate,” according to Matthew 23:38. We have a big mess on our hands, and we have rejected all attempts to straighten out.
We need to stop our spiritual house from tilting until it collapses. Because, if we ignore the warnings, it will fall as surely as the Tower of Pisa would have fallen and as, indeed, the house of Jerusalem did fall. We read now how friends of freshman Charles Andrew Williams thought he was just joking when he spoke of bringing a gun to school. They tragically ignored the warnings.
Perhaps it’s time to do a soil and soul analysis. Is our house built on sand of prejudice, hate, and fear? Will your faith stand the threat of an earthquake of bigotry and discrimination? Or is your life based on the Rock of Ages, our God?
This is a call to recover our spiritual center, to recognize that without God as the center of our lives, everything else becomes meaningless. This is a call to invite Jesus who has straightened out the leaning world that was about to fall down to also reinforce and retrofit our own personal lives. We know that we may never be perfectly perpendicular as we know our heavenly Father is perfect. But we can begin to mature in our understanding of what it means to love peace and justice. We can begin with our own lifestyle to bring an end to violence. We can stop being the Jerusalem that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to save us.
Jesus Weeps for Us
Jesus weeps for Jerusalem because he loves Jerusalem. He sees how far Jerusalem is from itself, and he despairs. Jerusalem symbolizes for us our own world as a family of God that should be as closely caring for each other as a brood of chicks is cared for by the mother hen. But instead, it is a frightening, conflicted place, where no one is really safe.
Jesus weeps for us because he loves us. He does not want us to keep leaning away from him and continuing to hurt each other. On this second Sunday in Lent, may we as the church of Jesus Christ gather around Christ, the Perfecter of our faith, and find peace that is everlasting. Let us go from this place and bring peace and reconciliation into the world.
Let us pray.
Lord, we pray today with a deep concern in our hearts that our world and our lives are leaning away from your plan, leaning so far with violence and hate that we have lost sight of you. Forgive us for our sins and renew us with a faith and commitment to serve you in righteousness and peace. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.