So, the Pharisees always manage to surprise me.  I often wonder, had I been alive at the time, whether I would have been a Pharisee.  I think I probably would have been; that wouldn’t surprise me.  But we see, throughout the Gospel accounts, that not every Pharisee is a sworn enemy of Jesus.  You know, there are always those who mean to have the power, make the decisions, and ensure things go the way they want.  Maybe they’re insecure.  Maybe they just like bossing people around or feeling smug and superior to the fools all around them.  Then there are others, who try not to get tripped up in the power trips and power struggles, who decline to get sucked up into the anxiety vortex.  For these, the focus mostly is on their own walk with God.  Many Pharisees, I suspect, were just trying to get that walk right, well aware of the pitfalls both outside the way of meticulous obedience as well as the pitfalls along the way of such single-minded devotion to God.  Once self-pride creeps in, it’s easy to start making all kinds of mistakes.  God-willing, the mistakes won’t become fatal to salvation.  Jesus is always a strong reminder for us all that our mistakes—past, present, and future—don’t have to be fatal to salvation.  The biggest mistake anyone can make is to reject Christ.  Not every Pharisee did; Paul received him, eventually.  We read in Acts that there were Pharisees in the early church in Jerusalem.  They were a mixed group.  Their avowed aim was to get that walk with God right.

Those who value the way of holiness also value those who demonstrate that way.  These Pharisees warning Jesus want to protect his life—let’s remember that, at least.  They aren’t telling Jesus anything he doesn’t already know: the powers of this world are hellbent on driving out, silencing, or if need be, killing Jesus.  The miracles are okay; even some of what Jesus says is okay, but some other things Jesus says . . . not okay.  When the threat of death loomed, there were those prophets who fled.  Elijah comes to mind.  There was no dishonor in seeking to preserve one’s life, especially if it was a life devoted to the Lord.  Prophets were used to be threatened, but nobody likes to be threatened.

Jesus replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal’” (13:32).  As much as to say Herod isn’t the one to stop Jesus.  It will take more than threats or rumors of threats.  But if we consider carefully, Jesus is also saying that there is something much bigger at work, through all of this, beyond Herod, beyond Judea, beyond the Roman Empire, beyond this world.  A plan, a purpose.  In the beginning was the Word, sent at the right time for those chosen, those “predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will” (Eph 1:11).  We “have been called according to His purpose” (Rom 8:28), “the mystery of [God’s] will [. . .] which He purposed in Christ” (Eph 1:9), who was “chosen before the creation of the world” (1 Pet 1:20). Cosmic, eternal significance.  Is Herod the one to hinder or undo God’s purpose?  Is China, or Russia, or Trump, or Schumer, or whoever manages to keep a firm finger on our panic button, our outrage orifice?  As followers of Christ, let us strive more and more to learn from our Savior the way of peace, confidence, and hope: these are in line with Christ’s heart.

There is also a history to consider in what Jesus is saying, as he points out: “In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!” (13:33).  Jerusalem is the goal, and Jesus shall arrive no matter the resistance thrown at him along the way.  Peter is the one who tells us that judgment begins with God’s household (1 Pet 4:17).  Sometimes, the one place God’s Word is least welcome is in the very heart of our worship: the one place we least want God’s Word is inside the walls, inside the temple of our heart.  All the life of Jesus has been one drawn out story of struggle and resistance, of struggling against the entrenched resistance he finds on all sides.  There, in the holy city, the city of God’s special favor and presence—the Temple was there in Jerusalem, after all—there was where God’s messengers went to die, where, each time, they would be rejected, scorned, insulted, abused, wounded, and then killed.  Jesus isn’t being dramatic: he is reviewing their shared history.  And our own experience confirms it.

We’ve probably all attended a church, maybe as a visitor, where we just didn’t feel it or, worse, where the message was not in line with our faith.  And that’s just it.  What Jesus was proclaiming was a message that was not in line with the faith of many in Jerusalem and in Judea, even Galilee, for that matter.  People don’t like to hear what is not in line with their core values, with their preferred version of religion and faith.  The last books of the New Testament are full of cautions and warnings about this, about teaching that blesses whatever we want blessed and condemns whatever we want condemned.  It doesn’t matter where one falls on the politico-theological spectrum.  And we could say, well, yeah, but my faith is the true faith.  But that’s just what someone on the opposite side of any matter will say, too.  Yeah, but they’re wrong and I’m right.

How, then, may anyone know whether he or she is truly in Christ, truly a Christ follower?  Beloved, first, this is for God, by grace through faith.  God knows who are His.  Second, a Christ follower will demonstrate Christ—his attitude, his ethics, his actions, his teaching.  Jesus is the Incarnate Word.  What is contrary to the Word is not of Jesus.  What does not look or sound like Jesus is not of Jesus.  We all have in us that which is contrary to the Word.  The point isn’t to obsess over that, let alone give it room to grow and spread, but continually to turn to Jesus, confident in his salvation, his power to save.  We have a Savior: a powerful, pure Savior who loves us and gives his life for us.  We do not save ourselves; God saves us.  God does not save us because we are righteous and therefore worthy of salvation.  God saves us because it is God’s good pleasure to do so, according to His plan and purpose that already were in place long before there was anyone or even anything at all on this planet.  Praise be to His holy name.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (13:34).  It’s not just the carpenter’s son from Nazareth, speaking there, is it?  “Not willing.”  It’s not just those in Jerusalem.  Different people want a different message, a different emphasis.  The world has made its mark, on all of us.  Without the Spirit, effectively working sanctification, it doesn’t take much for people to reject what doesn’t speak to them, doesn’t exalt their personal, preferred values.  They are heavily invested in their personal values; we are almost all of us rather heavily invested, that way.  The point, however, is to let God invest us with His values, His way, His will, His Word.  Not my will but Thy will be done.  Which means I do not trust my will.  My will!  Oh, my will.  I trust God’s will.

I don’t assume God’s Word must be wrong when culture tells me something at odds with Scripture.  And I don’t trust culture when it tells me the church simply hasn’t understood Scripture properly all these two thousand years.  What those who stoned the prophets and killed those sent to them wanted was a God who didn’t get in the way of what they wanted.  You can be our God and all, so long as you let us do what we like.  Scripture is a long, rather wearying account of that story.  In Isaiah, we hear God, sorrowful, saying, “What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it?” (Is 5:4).  Every opportunity—God has availed Himself of every opportunity, and still there are those who will have nothing to do with Him, will not see, will not listen.

Shall God then switch off their free will and force them to come to their senses?  But if God created us with a free will—entirely fallen though it has since become—that was given as a blessing; what relationship is it when it is a compelled relationship?  God will not change our relationship with him involuntarily; He is the Lord; He is no tyrant.

And what, then, is left for Jesus to say to the people who will not receive him, who would be quite happy if he would just shrivel up and blow away like autumn leaves?  “Look, your house is left to you desolate” (13:35).  What’s that supposed to mean?  Well, Jesus seems to be calling to mind Isaiah, again, through whom God tells His people that the way they’ve chosen is the way of desolation.  What does the word suggest to you: desolation?  A desolate place is often remote, lonely, with none of the comforts of home.  A wilderness, in which survival is dubious, at best.  No comfort.  That’s just what the word means: de-solate—the absence of solace.  Your house is left to you.  What house?  Beloved, in Jerusalem, there was only one house that mattered: the house of the Lord.  Repeatedly, the prophets came to tell the people that for them to put their trust in themselves, in their works—all while persisting in God-dishonoring habits—could only end in disaster—desolation.  Jesus is saying the Temple will remain—for a few decades longer—but it shall provide no solace, no comfort, no help.  Salvation was not in any building or seat inside a building, or in making a costly offering at the prescribed time in the prescribed way.  True help was and always had been in a living relationship with the one who has the power to save.  It still is.  Being here today won’t save us.  Putting our offering in the plate won’t save us.  Saying Amen at the proper times won’t save us.  Knowing, loving, and obeying Jesus Christ—this is salvation.

We have a king, if we will have him.  We have a Lord, if we will have him.  But if we will have him as our King and Lord, we must submit to him, be subject to his rule and his lordship, and obey.  Submit . . . be subject . . . obey—these are harsh, hard, distasteful words to our modern ears: offensive.  We can’t imagine taking offense at Jesus: dear, sweet, gentle Jesus.  So soon as we start living to do what God wants rather than living to do what we want, we’ll feel the weight of the cross . . . O, let us learn in company with Christ that it is a joyful weight!