C, Lent 2 - Genesis 15:1-15,17-18, Psalm 27, Phillippians 3:17-4:1, Luke 13:31-35, "Forsaken House - Forgiven House"

Luke 13:31–35 (ESV) At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”  And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.  Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!  Behold, your house is forsaken.  And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ”

Two of the readings today speak about a house. 

First there is Abram.  He saw his house would be inherited by a servant of his household and not a born heir.  Then, in the Gospel reading, Jesus speaks about Jerusalem and its house being forsaken.

Saint Paul’s epistle to the Philippians, speaks of the body of a person being transformed into a glorious body by Jesus, to be like Jesus.  He teaches the listener to imitate him and others who set an example, as those who have been made Christ’s own (Phil 3:12) through the righteousness of faith (Phil 3:9).

There is no mention of a house in this text per se,  but the body of a person houses one’s understanding, feelings, and desires.  Paul laments over those who have let their bodies become houses of unrighteousness, just as Jesus laments over Jerusalem becoming a forsaken house, that no longer was willing to allow God to gather its people from danger.

These two examples of unwillingness and rejection to follow God’s will, are warnings for us as individuals and church who wish to be of the house of God.  Do we above all else seek God, and want to be with God?

In Psalm twenty-seven it reads, “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.” (Psalm 27:4 ESV)

Is your ultimate goal to do as the Psalmist does?  To dwell in the house of the Lord, ALL the days of your life!  Is God the most beautiful of all beauty to you?  Do you wait for the Lord?  Or rather, do you trust in your own efforts? 

Those Paul speaks of as putting their understanding, minds, or feelings in earthly things, will be misguided, and will not be transformed from our lowliness into the glory God wants for us.  He says their end is destruction.  They’re unwilling to stand firm in the Lord, and therefore, are enemies of Christ.

Jerusalem is the centre of Jesus’ attention, and he says of those who should be the children of God, but have rejected the prophets, “your house is forsaken”.  If God’s house in Jerusalem can be forsaken, then so too can the house of your body, if you or I push away God’s protection and the transformation, he seeks to perform in all of us. 

This makes us more like King Herod than King David.  Have we become sly cunning foxes, parading  as people of God, justifying ourselves in a princely lifestyle and seeking Jesus for our entertainment only as Herod did? 

Should we be more like King David who trusted in the Lord, even though he was the highest in the land?  Who allowed God to confront his sin as an adulterer, and murderer, and confessed his sin to the Lord?  Who despite being king of Israel, allowed God to make him increasingly aware that his greatest enemy, was not the foreign countries around him, but rather the very core of his own sinful being?

If all this makes you feel uncomfortable and uneasy, good, it should!  If you feel like a fox that has been caught in the spotlight of God’s glory, and your life has been one of secret doubling back on yourself to hide your tracks in the darkness, this too is good.  If you feel, understand, and realise your situation as caught out, with impending doom as a result of your activities, it’s not a bad thing.  And if this hasn’t happened in your life as of  yet, it will.

When your death is put on your agenda, when the end of your life is imminent, if you haven’t beforehand realised what the consequence of sin is, death will show you.  How does the thought of death make you feel?

Abram saw his house was dead, because he had no heir onto which he could pass on his inheritance.  In his old age he was as good as dead, and an heir seemed impossible.  But it’s when we are as good as dead, that the power of God can be realised, and we’re called to put all our understanding, feelings (good and bad), and trust in him.

With Abram God first takes him outside and shows him the stars, then after this he makes a covenant with him.  But this is a covenant like no other in the Old Testament.  Covenants require both sides to make a promise.  Here though there is only a promise made by God.  Abram was in the state of deep sleep, a stunned, or deathly state, and is solely the recipient of God’s covenant.

When the severity of God’s law comes upon us, it causes death within us, and although it makes us feel woeful and as though we are dead, it’s a good thing.   We need to see what the house looks like if God vacates and leaves the house empty.  Here I am speaking specifically of the house of your body.

Jesus declares Jerusalem forsaken, dead, rotten, and off.  Like a piece of rancid meat, he rejects its house.  Yet Jesus returns to Jerusalem to die and be cast out, as if he was the cunning and sly fox that we have become in our sinfulness.  He becomes our rottenness and is cast out!  He dies because of the deadliness we bear.  That which he wishes to expose in us, he covers with forgiveness.  He also casts out feelings of guilt and gives us his blessing.  We are blest because he comes to us in the name of the Lord!

When we allow the Holy Spirit to expose our sin, so we can confess it, it gets covered by Jesus’ death.  When we allow the Spirit to invoke the death of our sin, we allow him to raise us with Jesus Christ to life eternal. 

When God does this, he out foxes the fox within us, he out cunnings the cunning within us, he shrewdly uses fear of eternal death to save us from our second death.  We are reminded in baptism eternal death is now deceased in those who hold onto faith in God and reject faith in oneself.

We also know of the deadliness of our house and the life Christ brings to it, and in this we continue in hope for those who have become dead to God’s church, and to be restored in love.  So we pray, doing the work of God, asking they be once again given the desire to be in God’s presence, and receiving his gifts of life, that will take all who seek God to death and through it into God’s eternal presence.

Saint Paul holds out hope for the Jewish people, despite their unbelief.  He knows, he was made dead by Christ but was graciously grafted into him through his death on the cross.

We too, stand before God with the same hope as Paul, having been grafted into Christ, despite being as good as dead…

Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness.  Otherwise you too will be cut off.  And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again.  For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.  (Romans 11:22–24 ESV)

If God can sever his chosen people, the Jews, and graft them back in, he can also revive the faith of those who have become dead in the faith.

Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ,  despite the deadliness within.  In fact, we can thank God for showing us our deadliness, in just the same way Jesus knew Jerusalem was the place where others died and he would die, yet declared, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Let us pray.  Heavenly Father let us die to self, pick up our cross and resolutely walk with Jesus.  Protect us from all that can sever us from eternal life, and hear our prayers for those whose faith has died, so they might be grafted back into the life-giving blood of Jesus Christ. Amen.