Sunday 16th March 2025
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3: 17-4: 1
St. Luke 13: 31-35
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give
this land.” Genesis 15: 18a
I’m not a politician nor a diplomat. I’m just an old preacher who wants to bring some living water to a thirsty world… The way I figure to do this is to help us to figure out what the Bible actually says, and how the message therein can help us live in a way which is beautiful, individually and together. Nothing more. Nothing less. Yet what the Bible has to say about Jerusalem can be read as being politically touchy…
In the children’s story The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, it’s a little girl named Lucy who first catches a glimpse of Aslan, the great lion. Aslan is a presentation of Jesus Christ, the lion of Judah… Lucy is understandably a bit timid to encounter a wild lion, and so she asks, “Is Aslan (the lion)… safe?…” The wise reply is, “Aslan isn’t safe – but he is good…”
When we encounter Jesus Christ, we can be assured that our lives will not be safe, in the conventional sense… We will be confronted; challenged; we will have to be prepared to leave behind what is not God’s best – to repent!… We need to be prepared to face persecution; to take up our crosses with Jesus, and to follow him… Life is not the same with Jesus as it is without him. We will be very safe, because we will be safe in his arms for ever, in a love which will never let us go. But we shouldn’t expect that we will encounter the risen Lord, and that our lives stay exactly as they were before!… Those old lives aren’t safe any more… So, part of being confronted with the gospel is that we all – you as well as me – need to expect to be challenged somehow…
If it’s a choice between worldly wisdom and the claims of the gospel, the choice for Christians is clear: We dare to follow the lion of Judah, the risen Jesus Christ…
Today’s first reading is from Genesis 15… God speaks to Abram (later called “Abraham”), to tell him that he’ll have a whole pile of grandkids and great-grandkids, and great-great-grandkids, so he can’t count them any more than Abram can count the stars in the sky! God also promises Abram that he will live in this land, between Egypt and the local tribes around him… Abram’s descendants, the text reads, will belong here…
Today’s gospel reading is tied to the first reading… In Luke 13, the Lord Jesus laments over the city of Jerusalem – the place where there is death for the prophets of the Lord, and the death of the Lord Jesus himself – a place of violence and destruction… Jesus uses a kind of feminine image for himself, saying that he longs to gather the people together, like a hen gathering her brood under her wings…
I’ve read that, in a barn fire, a hen will gather her chicks under her wings for protection. After the barn fire, the hen may be found dead, but under her wings are the living chicks, quite unharmed. The hen gives her own life, for the protection of her little ones… That sounds like… Jesus, doesn’t it?…
It is notable, isn’t it, that the Lord Jesus mourns over the city of Jerusalem, not for what it was, but for the future violence which will take place in the city… The Lion of Judah sees with his vision something which the apostles cannot see…
The city of Jerusalem, and the surrounding district, has faced wave after wave after wave of violence in the years which followed. In the year A.D. 70, the Jewish people tried to rebel against the Roman occupiers; the city and even the temple were invaded, and the rebels were terribly crushed – as the ancient prophesy anticipated… Another revolt was crushed about the year A.D.132…
In the late patristic period, Jerusalem and the surrounding district of Palestine were invaded – again! – this time between Jewish leaders and what has become the religion of Islam. And yet more: The dreadful Christian crusades brought more bloodshed…
Moving on to the contemporary era, following the unspeakable atrocities of the Second World War, the modern nation of Israel was established, Palestinian Arabs who had occupied the land for generations were displaced. In the establishment of Israel, there was, most understandably, deep post-war angst over the mistreatment of the Jews by Nazi Germany; it was politically expedient to establish a friendly state in the region; and many devout Christians, as well as Jewish people themselves, regarded this as the fulfilment of the ancient promise to Abram, that the land would be his…
The mid-twentieth century did not bring peace to Jerusalem and the surrounding district. Instead, there have been on-going skirmishes, terrorist actions, reprisals, and more extreme political rhetoric on both sides… Even as we gather half a world away this morning, the on-going conflict of the last 17 months or so still lingers… I firmly believe that with broken human nature, there is fault all around. With regard to the recent developments, which prevent adequate food and medical supplies to be provided to a population, I can never imagine that to be consistent with God’s will; and I fear it will only stoke more extremism and violence, not quench it…
Is God’s promise to Abram so many years ago being interpreted well today? The promises of Genesis 15 are clear enough. No one – neither Jew nor Christian nor Muslim – no thoughtful person can deny that God has been working his purposes out in history, and that Jewish people have suffered historically – principally at the hands of people self-identifying as Christians, I am sorry to say – historic discrimination and persecution cannot be denied…
Let’s engage with the Bible again… We take having property deeds for granted. I imagine that those of us who are homeowners have copies of our deed somewhere safe nearby. That sense of claim on a portion of land which we call our own is rooted in the opening book of the Bible. Do we remember when Abraham’s wife Sarah dies? Abraham buys a cave from Ephron the Hittite to bury Sarah for 400 shekels of silver. It was a legal agreement by both parties. (We can read it in Genesis 23.) Abraham’s grandson Jacob, after Jacob went to Egypt, made his son Joseph promise that he would bring his body back to that land for his burial…
We, we westerners often take for granted that land can be parcelled up by legal agreements, and we can do almost whatever we want on our own territory… But let’s notice that is not true for all cultures… Part of the historical conflict between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Canadians has come out of 2 very different worldviews, about what it means to possess the land… I’m not arguing for one side or the other. We simply observe that the way we are used to doing things is not the only way to do it…
Even within scripture itself, the boundaries of the land were somewhat fluid… When God’s people left Egypt, there was a long period when they captured territory, and then lost it – depending on their faithfulness to the living God. (We can read that, for instance, in the Book of Judges…) The guarantee of the land was not fixed; it depended on the people’s faithfulness…
We can read in Second Samuel 24 that near the end of his life, King David unwisely undertook a census of the land. The territory which was described in II Samuel 24 is actually smaller than what is described earlier, in Joshua 18-19… Last, let’s notice that there was the invasion by the Babylonians in 587B.C., when God’s people were driven from the land because of their disobedience… The land was no longer theirs, because of their disobedience…
Lastly, we note there are times when God used the neighbouring peoples to accomplish his purposes for the Jewish people – such as King David’s grandmother being a Moabite, to provide for David and his descendants… Hmm!: Let’s consider that again: The Bible records how God worked with other people, as well as the Jews, to bring about his purposes for Israel – and ultimately, his purposes for the world… So we see that, even within the Bible itself, the promise of land is not automatic, but depends on the people being faithful to God. God also works among the Gentiles for his purposes, working together ultimately to the redemption of the world through Jesus Christ…
So, we have God’s promises for the land – but we also see that God works among all people ultimately for his purposes.. The promise of the land is tied to the faithful covenant living of God’s people…
So, how does that work out today?… How does the biblical message speak into the deplorable situation in and around Jerusalem, over which the Lord Jesus mourned so many years ago?…
The New Testament doesn’t address issues of the land very much. (The future end of heaven and earthly kingdoms are the topic of another sermon!…) The historical fact is that God’s people in Jesus’ day were dealing with Roman occupiers – much like some countries in Europe experienced Nazi occupation during World War Two… The New Testament doesn’t focus much on the land itself. However, the New Testament has a lot to say about our relationship with Jesus Christ, and what that means for our lives…
Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we understand that we are in a new covenant relationship with God and with one another. We are reconciled to God through Jesus, and that ought be reflected in our relationships with one another… St. Paul puts it this way in Second Corinthians 5:
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (vv. 17-21)
This reconciliation overflows into our relationships with one another… Let’s just take 2 examples out of many: Romans 12: 18 reads, “If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” Ephesians 2: 14 reads, “For (God himself) is our peace, who has made us (Jews and Gentiles) one, and broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us…”
God’s final desire, Christians believe, is for there to be reconciliation among all nations and peoples, through his Son Jesus Christ…
Peace and reconciliation seem very far away from the present-day Jersualem and the surrounding district, don’t they?… Yet they are God’s desire, which we are to pursue above all… Let us pray for peace and reconciliation; let us model peace and reconciliation in our own lives and let us seek to live it with others – as the old children’s hymn reads, “You in your small corner, and I in mine…”
Amen.