Sermon – A Moving Target
Psalm 27; Luke 13:31-35
Farmville Presbyterian Church
3/16/25
There was a man golfing by himself out at the Wedgewood Golf Course this last week. On the third hole, an uphill par three, the man shanked the ball hard to the right and a distant kerplop sound was barely audible. He uttered something about a divine being condemning the ball to a place where none of us wants to spend eternity. His tone was so aggressive that it caught St. Peter’s ear, who immediately brought it to God’s attention, “Are you going to let Bill get away with that?” “Absolutely not,” God replied, “just wait.” On the next hole, a tricky par five with a sizeable pond right at the beginning, the fellow went to the tee box and crushed the ball. Sure enough, the ball went spinning viciously toward the water, but just as it hit, a turtle rose, and the ball bounced off the turtle for another 100 yards. It hit the cart path, bounced off a tree, and a stiff breeze helped carry it toward the green. It was at this time that a stray lightning bolt blasted behind the ball, sending it with renewed force just onto the green. A curious squirrel was scurrying by and thought the ball was something worth saving. It picked up the ball and placed it in the nearest hole, one with a flag in it. To the golfer’s astonishment, he just hit his first ever hole-in-one and on a par five hole, to boot. Understandably, St. Peter was perplexed about this. “I thought you were going to teach him a lesson,” Peter puzzled. “Yes, indeed,” God replied. “There was no one around to see it.”
The theme for today is how we ask for trouble. Some might ask for trouble on the golf course as my fictitious golfer did. Some might ask for trouble in the car – that’s an easy one. We can honestly act out anywhere in ways that would embarrass our grandmother, if that can be some kind of standard – “Don’t do anything your grandmother wouldn’t want you to do.” Another easy, easy place to ask for trouble is in social media. I will resist asking for a show of hands of those who have said things or posted things or written things to be shared that, after the fact, we realized probably should not have been shared. But my guess is that could be all of our hands.
I don’t know about you, but I was raised with the expectation that I should NOT cause problems. Stay out of trouble. Certainly, don’t ASK for trouble by doing things I should not be doing. While I was not always terribly successful, that was the baseline that my parents instilled in me. Avoid getting in trouble.
So you might understand my perplexity over Jesus seeming to ask for trouble. Jesus, the good guy, the Lamb of God, the Prince of Peace, was asking for trouble. He seems to have no trouble at all making a target out of himself. Yes, he is a moving target, always going from one place to another, but he is fine confronting the most powerful person in that region. He is fine calling out the nation’s capital in a way that foreshadows his own death there. Jerusalem is a city that not only resists God, but it is the place that kills those sent by God, according to Jesus. There is a lot there that we just don’t know, but because it is the center of politics and power and control, it is never going to be easy to help. Jerusalem, the Jewish capital, is where the people of God go to die. The town will not hear their pleas for repentance but will instead kill anyone who wants to rock the boat. And Jesus has a one-way ticket there. Not only is he asking for trouble and telling his enemies where he is going and taunting them, he is giving a reason for his death. “This is what happens to people like me,” Jesus says. “I wish it could be different. I wish you would listen. I wish it could be any other way, but you just fight every step.”
It is like walking into the worst part of town and making a loudspeaker announcement that that evening you will leave your expensive car parked, unlocked, and the keys in the ignition. You cannot be surprised if the next day it is no longer there. Maybe the Pharisees were thinking they would scare Jesus. Maybe they wanted to keep him away from Jerusalem. Maybe they were being sincere about trying to help Jesus avoid trouble. Certainly, not all Pharisees were against him, and Jesus had no problem with ALL Pharisees. In this passage, he has nothing negative to say about them. They simply seem to be couriers of Jesus’ message.
So what is Jesus’ message? He is not intimidated by Herod in the least. This is the same Herod who had Jesus’ cousin, John, executed. He is the son of the Herod who tried to murder him as a baby. These were not nice people. In fact, they were ruthless, as much as we might see on television today. Jesus gives us the kind of confidence that we heard in Psalm 27. This is the “walking through the darkest valley of death” kind of confidence. Even though enemies are all around, we will not fear for God is with us.
Yet, Jesus continues to poke the bear. He admits to doing signs that show he is the Messiah, the very person who will institute God’s justice and restore the throne. Herod was not even Jewish but a sham king appointed by Rome. Jesus is doing things that point to God’s overhaul, and his three days is a warning that he is coming to Herod but also a foreshadowing of Jesus’ end. Not only is Jesus not intimidated by Herod, but he is coming TO him. Jesus has eyes wide open as to what he is getting into. He knows how hard his people are being. He knows how much they fight the very help he is trying to bring. He knows how precious they are but how stubborn and vicious they can be. Sometimes, it sounds like Jesus writes off those who do not get him or seek him or try to join his movement. We can do the same thing today, but we also need to see the heavy heart that he brings even to those who would condemn him and put him to death. It is so tempting to only care about those who are with us or on our side or who are friends. Jesus came for us all, though.
The same Jesus who forgave the very people who were torturing him and executing him is the same Jesus who stands before us today to walk with us through the rest of this season of Lent. His statement here exposes just how fickle we can be toward God. He is steadfast and willing to process right into our danger and ignorance and greed and malice and hatred and idolatry. He is willing to face our valley of the shadow even when we want to run the other way. When the people called out “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” that is code for the Messiah. But the crowds could not buy into his kingdom. They wanted a quick fix, a violent move against Rome, someone to get things done. Those kinds of people are dangerous. That is how the Herods or the Romans operate – push your agenda at the expense of everyone else. Who cares about the little person?
Jesus knew full well that they would praise him as the Messiah but that his welcome would run out very quickly. While Herod is the enemy here, we become his enemy before the end. Even his closest friends desert him at the cross. Prepare to hear this story, again. Prepare to allow yourself to embrace this story of grace and forgiveness. Our expectations are never the same as Jesus’. He walks right into our brokenness and does something new. That is where he does his best work, even if it is hard for us to hear. Lent is a time of confronting the hard truths. We need Jesus and truth he brings. Our hypocrisy will not stand up to his cross. We cannot have lives of peace and comfort from a world that lives for itself. Our peace and comfort come at a much higher price, but it was one he was very willing to pay. To God be the glory. Amen.