The Mission

Luke 13:31-35; Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:17-4:1

A year ago NASA released an image of the Andromeda galaxy, which is the closest galaxy to us. They captured the image using the Hubble Telescope, but they outdid themselves. They took 411 images and put them together to create the largest image ever taken. It’s a whopping 1.5 billion pixels and requires about 4.3 GB of disk space! [See the video.]

The image takes you through over 100 million stars and travels more than 40,000 light years. It’s likely to make you feel like you are a very, very, very small part of a universe which we are only beginning to understand the true size of. It is truly mind-blowing.

“The Lord . . . brought Abram outside and said, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars if you think you can count them. This is how many children you will have.’ Abram trusted the Lord” (Genesis 15:4-6).

Abram didn’t have the light pollution that we have. On a clear night he could see thousands of stars. But he couldn’t see the millions of stars that Hubble can see. And Hubble keeps seeing more. Our vision of the universe keeps expanding. 

The African slaves in the 18th and first half of the 19th century southern states had to think beyond their present circumstances. They put their hope in the promised kingdom, a kingdom not born or controlled by the powers of this world. One of their spirituals describes the kingdom of God this way: “There’s plenty good room, plenty good room, plenty good room in my Father’s kingdom.”(1)

We could say that this thought is a central theme in Luke’s Gospel. In story after story and encounter after encounter with the leaders of the religious institution of his time, Jesus was building a bigger kingdom. He kept tearing down walls, opening doors, and building bridges to get people into God’s kingdom. 

God’s passionate desire from before the time of Abram, through the nation building with Moses, the judges, and the kings, through the trials, tribulations, and chastising of the prophets, and finally through the Word become flesh – Jesus Christ – is to gather God’s human children closer and closer in God’s embracing love and grace. “How often I have wanted to gather your people just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings” (Luke 13:34).

God is building the kingdom one person at a time, just at the universe is built one star, one solar system, one galaxy at a time.

I understand building. It has been part of me since childhood. Before I was born my father built on a sunroom on the family house. When I was six or seven, he  redid the kitchen. Several years later they built on a major addition to make a first floor garage and second floor master suite. I used scrap lumber to build a small log-style cabin.

In high school I took an interest in the Connecticut Western Reserve of Ohio (land set aside in northeast Ohio by the early federal government as a way of paying the Connecticut citizens who served in the Revolutionary War. I became very interested in the old homes that dotted the area. I dreamed of restoring one someday.

Over the years, I have avidly watched “This Old House” and a number of shows on HGTV. Living in the manse, which is now a nearly 120 year old house, has filled my desire to work on an old house. We have done a lot to preserve and enhance its style. It has been fun.

It was a thrill to be involved in the design and building of this facility. Set against the wooded backdrop, it was designed to be open, welcoming, flexible, inviting, useful. The hope was that it would be a community gathering place. We are still working on that aspect. 

How do we enlarge our part of the God’s kingdom? How do we tear down the walls that separate people? How do we create open, inviting and safe space for people from many backgrounds – ethnic, economic, educated, racial, gender – to be in the presence of God and each other so that everyone may grow and benefit from the vastness of experience, knowledge, and faith? How do we dissolve the sameness which acts like a force field repelling the very diversity which nurtures fuller life in the majesty of God’s love?

It seems that we live in a world where everyone has a different notion of God’s kingdom, as well as how to enlarge it, how to live out the ministry of welcome. In Luke’s gospel, the first people to see Jesus after his birth are a bunch of shepherds. They represent a necessary but highly undesirable class of people within the society. As Jesus goes about his ministry, he associates with all sorts of people who are at the margins of society, the people who are not deemed respectable enough be at the center of things. 

A peasant girl is chosen to be Jesus’ mother. A wayward son is welcomed by an extravagant father whose love seems reckless. An outcast Samaritan willingly exercises compassion toward a robbed and beaten traveler. The penitent thief is remembered and welcomed into paradise.

We have heard the thoughts of Judas, who argued for and ultimately acted on a very different idea about kingdom building. The insurrectionists could not abide Jesus’ otherworldly kingdom talk, his lack of direct and decisive action. The people wanted action, not the preaching of God’s grace and gentleness of soul.

There’s a Peanuts cartoon which speaks to this reading from Luke’s gospel.

In the first frame, Lucy is standing next to a tree. Looking up, she shouts to Linus, “What are doing in that tree?”

Linus answers from the branches of the tree, “Looking for something.” Then he adds, “Can you see Snoopy? We climbed up here together, but now I don’t see him.”

Lucy unsympathetically shouts back up the tree, “Beagles can’t climb trees.”

The next frame shows Snoopy falling out of the tree right on his head with a loud “KLUNK.” “You’re right!” Snoopy concludes.

Then Lucy lets Snoopy have it, “You stupid Beagle, what are you doing climbing around in a tree?” Snoopy’s sore head is still spinning.

Linus interrupts from the tree, “Don’t yell at him…. We’re trying to find a strange creature in a nest….”

Lucy walks off saying, “You’re both crazy! Go ahead and knock yourselves out! I couldn’t care less!!”

Then Snoopy with his head still sore and spinning thinks, “Rats…I was hoping for a hug!” (2) 

Don’t similar scenes happen to us? We hurt ourselves – perhaps physically or emotionally or spiritually. A parent, friend, pastor, parishioner gives us a lecture about how stupid we were. “Rats,” we may say to ourselves, “I was hoping for a hug!” There are those times when what we need most is to know that somebody still cares and loves us, because we already know we have acted like jerks.

One of the most dreadful Christian sins is that we too often act like Lucy. We are too quick to open our mouths and give lectures to others. It is so easy for us good and righteous believers to judge and condemn others for their stupid mistakes. What compounds our sin is that we think that we are doing the proper and right thing by giving them all our good advice. “You shouldn’t have done that. You should have known better. You’re getting what you deserve.” And so on. 

Sometimes people need good teaching. Jesus is often teaching the people, but many times, especially after making a stupid mistake, people feel more like Snoopy: “Rats…I was hoping for a hug!” The image of a hen wrapping her wings around her chicks seems a lot like a hug to me – and that’s what Jesus wishes he could do.

The mission of the church of Jesus is to give hugs, to embrace, not to push away. On the way to the cross, Jesus attempts to embrace, to gather under his hen-like wings the entire world. The gospel writer John put it in different words: “God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).

How big is God’s world? How are you making it larger?

(1) Cited by Michael B. Curry, “Luke 13:31-5 – Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word; Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009) Year C, Volume 2, 69.
(2) Cited by Brian Stoffregen, “Gospel Notes for Next Sunday,” 2 Lent C Exegetical Notes on Luke 13:31-35 (http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=51bd49db6caae596e13e44534&id=c726dc3928&e=e9babc8d38) 

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.