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February 28th, 2010 Luke 13:31-35 Pressure! Where do you feel the pressure
in your life? (after some congregational sharing, allow a time of silence to
acknowledge what has been shared) I have a deep belief that we gather as church
each week, at least in part, in hope that the fears, concerns, worries, and grief
that drive many of our feelings are not the final word in our lives. We come
together even with a faint hope that the guilt that surely lives somewhere
within each of us and the rage that sometimes consumes many of us are transient
feelings, not permanent and not ultimately real for us. They are not the reality
underlying life. We gather and proclaim that what we fear most is not the most powerful
force in the universe. Life is filled with pressure.
There is the pressure of finances and the pressure of relationships. There is
pressure due to expectations at work and at home. There is pressure in being a
parent, in being a child, in being a teenager or a young adult. There is
pressure from expectations at school. The expectations we have for ourselves
can bring about some sleepless nights. At worst, they can lead us to despair. Pressure is real and it is largely
self-inflicted. Feelings of guilt or shame are somehow our ways of coping with real
or perceived dangers. Pressure can lead to self-doubt. It can affect our
performance in many ways. Pressure has an effect on how we cope with life: distracting
us, absorbing our energy, destroying our concentration. Why does a great shooter
miss two free throws at the end of game when the team needs them to win? Pressure!
In the Winter Olympics, why does the alpine skier miss a gate in the slalom or
the speed skater slip? Why does the figure skater fall? Pressure! We cannot really know Jesus from
reading the New Testament. It offers a vision of him through the eyes of the early
church. They saw him as the Messiah. The stories of his work were not intended to show us Jesus as a
person, but rather to persuade people that he was the Son of God. Nevertheless,
we can learn a lot about dealing with pressure by seeing Jesus' interactions and
behavior in his life as described by the Gospel writers. We can watch him in
action and learn. The interchanges between Jesus and the Pharisees were filled
with the same dynamic and often confusion that many of ours are today. In today's Gospel lesson, Pharisees
seemed to care about Jesus' well-being. They were warning him about Herod's deadly
intentions in a cauldron of confusing relationships. But Jesus seemed to know
better. He had a clear sense of who he was and what he was doing. It had been a long day for Jesus—a
day filled with challenging teachings, and controversial healing. The Pharisees
continued to criticize him for healing people on the Sabbath in violation of
their interpretation of the Law. An underlying fear of reprisal from the authorities,
Herod or the Romans, was present. Herod clearly was trying to kill him, which
was the usual approach to silence troublemakers in a culture that tended not to
value the lives of the poor or of prophets especially when they hit close to
home. The Pharisees were harassing him. Jesus could see that his days were
numbered—the number was three—but he chose to use those numbers as a source of
strength and power. "On the third day I finish my work." (Luke 13: 32) What did that mean to those early
Christians who first told this story? It was clearly a reference to his death and
resurrection. Jesus seemed to know his destiny. He knew that almost certain death
awaited him in Nothing would turn him aside from
that destiny. It was his choice. The power lay completely within him to walk that
path, not wishing to die, but unwilling not to finish his work with the same integrity
with which he lived his life. Finishing the work for Jesus was not
to focus on his death. It was to focus on his life, how he lived, and what his
life stood for. To the early Christians, who gave us the
story of Jesus, his death was not the end
of his story. Even the resurrection was not the end of his story. Finishing the
work meant being faithful no matter what. It was the threshold to new life for
him and for us also. The ability to finish our work is not only a perspective
from the end of life, but a continuing process of new life unfolding. One
writer expressed it well: Jesus "took away the sin of the world" by exposing [that
sin] as different than we imagined, letting us know that our pattern of
ignorant killing, attacking and blaming others, is in fact history's primary illusion
and its primary lie. Through Jesus, we all have to face the embarrassing truth
that we ourselves are our primary problem. Our greatest temptations is to try
to change other people instead of ourselves. Jesus allowed himself to be transformed
and thus transformed others. That is the meaning of the necessary death of
Jesus. (adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality,
195) What does it mean for us to
"finish our work" as the church? Think of the image of the closer in baseball, or The Closer television series, or of players
in basketball who finish well around the basket, who always seem to make the
key shots. These are people who come through under pressure to achieve the goal. What is your
goal for this church? What is your goal for how faithful this body will be to
that vision of church we received from Jesus? How faithful will we live in the oneness
of Shalom in this faith community. How faithfully will we promote peace and justice
in And how
faithful will we be when the pressure is on—when the pressures of money, time,
fear, and fatigue set in? How well will this community hold open space for each
of us, for everyone who comes here, to grow, to discover ourselves, and to live
our journey? So how are we doing so far? How will we finish the work? What
is your dream for your own life? What is your goal? What does it mean to live
on your journey with integrity? (pause for people to consider these questions) Do you have a sense of how you want to invest
your life whether you're young or not so young? How you answer these questions
will be crucial to how well this congregation will do in being church? As we
seek to finish our work together, we must each be finishing our own work, as
author Elizabeth O'Connor has written: Each person, no
matter how old (or young), has an important work to do.... This good work not
only accomplishes something needed in the world, but completes something in us.
When it is finished a new work emerges that will help us to make green a desert
place, as well as to scale another mountain in ourselves. The work we do in the
world, when it is true vocation, always corresponds in some mysterious way to
the work that goes on within us. (Elizabeth O'Connor, Cry Pain, Cry Hope) There
is pressure. There will also be pressure. The choice is ours whether that
pressure will distract us or focus us on our work, on the new thresholds that wait
for us to cross. Let us cross them with courage in the sure hope that God loves
us without condition and without limit. We can do this, in Jesus' name. Luke 13:31-35 31At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, "Get
away from here, for Herod wants to kill you." 32He 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. 33Yet
today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible
for a prophet to be killed outside of |
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