Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

that’s kind of a strange passage of scripture.

It begins with some Pharisees …

People who are pretty much

opposed to Jesus and his teaching …

who nevertheless come and warn him

to get out of town,

because Herod wants to kill him.

That’s a very strange thing

for a Pharisee to have done.

And then the subject changes very quickly …

first, to Jesus’ prediction of his own death in Jerusalem,

and from there to a lament over Jerusalem,

and its lack of understanding,

lack of love,

lack of the knowledge of God.

Very similar to another scene later in Luke’s gospel,

right after Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem,

and waving palm branches

and singing hosannas and all that,

a scene where Jesus weeps over the city,

and foresees terrible things happening

because they have not seen, or heard, or understood.

That’s not quite our usual picture of Jesus, is it?

When I think of scenes from Jesus’ life,

I usually imagine him teaching,

or healing someone,

or in the boat with his disciples,

or maybe a specific scene like

the baby in the manger,

or riding a donkey into Jerusalem.

The image of Jesus weeping or lamenting

would be far down on my list,

I have to admit.

And yet, it is a vitally important

image for us to have,

because it tells us something important about Jesus …

and, therefore, by implication,

something very important about God.

Have any of you ever read or come across

Jonathan Edwards’ sermon,

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?"

Jonathan Edwards was a Congregational minister,

educated at Yale, lived 1703-1758,

a brilliant and very original mind.

And a powerful preacher,

and this particular sermon was one of his most powerful.

He talks about how human beings

are sort of like little insects in relation to God.

And he uses a vivid image, of us

as being like spiders, spinning our webs,

constructing our world our way,

completely engrossed in it,

oblivious to two very important things.

One of those things according to Edwards,

is the flames beneath us.

We don’t realize, he said,

how close we are to hell,

and how fragile the cords are that keep us out.

The other thing we fail to recognize, he said,

is the hand of God above us, that holds us up.

It’s as if God has hold of just one tiny thread

of the web of life we’ve spun,

and God is holding us up by that thread,

to keep us out of the flames.

And so, concludes Edwards,

if we sin, and make God angry enough,

God can simply drop us into the flames beneath,

and watch us fry.

As I said, a very vivid image!

and very effective in Edwards’ day and time.

And he gained many converts,

because he quite literally

scared the hell out of them.

Or at least, scared them out of hell!

Now I have some problems with that …

I don’t think it’s bad theology

by any stretch of the imagination.

We are sinners,

and we are far more dependent on the grace of God

than many of us like to admit!

But it is one-sided theology,

and I believe this side has influenced us

more that the side of the story

reflected in this morning’s gospel lesson.

We do tend to think of God as being angry with us

when we do something wrong,

or when we make a mistake, or whatever.

You know how we sometimes say to our children,

"Just wait until your father gets home,"

and they know Dad’s going to be mad

and they’re going to be in deep trouble!

We tend to think that way about God, too …

when God finds out I did this,

I’m really going to get it.

And we may not fear so much being dropped straight into hell,

but we do tend to think that God

is going to punish us in some horrible way …

make us sick, take something away from us,

or make something terrible happen.

Our theology tends to be something like Jonathan Edwards:

when we sin, God’s judgment and punishment

will be swift and severe.

We may not like it,

but we know that justice demands it,

and it will make us a better person in the long run.

Now there is truth to that,

but we often treat it as if it were the only truth.

Look instead,

at Jesus lamenting,

Jesus weeping over Jerusalem and its sin,

Jesus shedding tears because God’s people

have wandered so far from God’s way.

And these are not fake tears,

manufactured just to make a point …

They are not angry, frustrated tears …

They are genuine tears, genuine grief,

at the mess God’s children have gotten themselves into,

and at the ways in which we hurt ourselves,

and other people, and God.

You know,

we tend to think of "sin" as

doing something wrong,

or saying something bad,

or any kind of action that we did

that we shouldn’t have done,

or even something we should have done

but neglected to do.

But at an even more basic level,

sin is nothing more and nothing less than our separation from God,

which then often will lead to

our doing bad things,

or not doing good things!

But what’s fundamental is, the separation …

and that does grieve God.

Just as parents grieve when there is

misunderstanding, hurt, and separation

between them and their children.

There may be anger too,

but there is that terrible sorrow that’s a part of

seeing your children get hurt

by the choices they’ve made,

watching them make mistakes

that you could have helped prevent,

if only they’d let you.

And when we think of God as being our parent,

that’s a side of the picture

we need to be sure to see.

The father or mother who

grieves over us, grieves with us,

not just stands in terrible judgment over us.

Now for us Presbyterians,

who are accustomed to thinking of God

as sovereign, big, above us …

It may seem strange for some of us

to think of God as being affected by us,

much less, hurt or grieved

by our actions and choices.

And yet, such is the case.

The whole Old Testament

is a history of God’s working

to build a relationship with God’s people.

And a history of the people

starting with good intentions,

but invariably messing up,

and God’s willingness to back up,

try again, start over,

give us a second chance, or third, or fourth.

That whole strange story from Genesis this morning,

about Abram taking the animals,

and cutting them in half,

and after dark God passes between them

in the form of a flaming torch

and then a smoking fire pot …

all that strange stuff is part of the ritual

of God making a covenant with Abram.

It’s the beginning of the story, in a way.

God promises us care and protection,

and God keeps returning to that promise,

even when we have strayed far away,

and gotten ourselves into all kinds of trouble.

It’s probably in the books of the prophets

where we see most clearly in the Old Testament

God’s sorrow and God’s grief

over the way humankind has acted.

Certainly there is anger expressed too!

But time and again we hear God’s lament

over the unfaithfulness of Israel as God’s spouse,

or the waywardness of Israel as God’s child.

God grieves for us,

and our lostness, and our sin.

And I find that to be terribly comforting,

in a perverse sort of way!

Because it changes how I think about myself,

and my mistakes and my sin.

My tendency is to be angry at myself

or disgusted with myself

when I find I’ve done something wrong.

And I think for most of us,

that’s the response we’ve learned.

And sometimes, it’s probably appropriate!

But other times,

the more appropriate response is grief.

Grief over our separation and distance from God,

that sometimes leads us to do dumb things,

and to hurt other people.

Grief over how far we still have to go

to become the people God created us to be.

Grief that mirrors God’s.

As we take this season of Lent

to meditate on ourselves and our lives …

we need to be careful

not to beat ourselves over the head

for the sins and failings we discover.

Most often, that tends to depress us

and entrench us further.

Instead, we need to see ourselves as God does,

and lament over ourselves as God does.

Tears will heal us, and help us turn to God,

who wants to gather us in as a hen gathers her chicks.

God will receive us,

and we will dry our tears together.

Amen.

© 2007 Julie Adkins (e-mail: DrJAdkins@trinitypresdallas.org)