Second Sunday in Lent

Second Sunday in Lent (C)

March 13, 2022

Text: Jer. 26:8-15; Luke 13:31-35

            It is the prophetic pattern.  God graciously sends His man to preach to the people.  To warn them of His impending wrath over their sins.  To bid them repent.  To proclaim the Good News that our God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, ever ready to forgive those who return to Him.  Then the LORD gives His prophet to confirm this preaching by miraculous signs.  Only to be rejected, despised, persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, killed.  Such is the pattern: Preaching and miracles, resulting in rejection.  And today we see the pattern play out in the life and ministry of the Prophet Jeremiah. 

            Jeremiah preaches the Word of the LORD to Judah: Repent of your sins.  Repent of your idolatry.  Repent of your promiscuity, perversion, greed, and the cruel disregard of your weakest neighbors.  Repent… Or God will destroy this place, this nation, this holy city, and even this Temple by the hand of the Babylonians.  And whoever survives He will drag off into exile.  Many were the signs the LORD performed through Jeremiah to confirm his preaching.  But now the people have heard enough.  The priests and false prophets drag Jeremiah before the Judean officials.  It is a trial before Church and State.  The people cannot bear the Words of his prophecy.  They reject the Prophet and his preaching.  It is just one more of the many rejections Jeremiah suffers for His faithfulness to God, and to the very people persecuting him.  “This man deserves the sentence of death,” they say, “because he has prophesied against this city, as you have heard with your own ears” (Jer. 26:11; ESV).  See, they testify against themselves that they have heard the preaching.  And though Jeremiah escaped from their murderous hands this time, they would, ultimately, drag him against his will down to Egypt (the very place he had warned the Jews not to flee), and there stone him to death for speaking God’s Word. 

            So it goes for all God’s prophets.  Preaching.  Signs.  Rejection.  Suffering.  For many, martyrdom.  For one and all, dying a thousand deaths as the people reject the preaching, the prophet, and the God who sent him.  Throughout his ministry, Jeremiah lamented the rejection… for himself, certainly (preachers are notorious whiners!)… but most of all for the nation and Church he loved.  He even wrote a whole Bible Book called Lamentations, Scripture we would do well to read and pray ourselves, in light of our own generation’s unfaithfulness. 

            And so it was for Moses and Elijah, Isaiah and Joel, and all the great prophets of old.  And in this way, these men, not just in their specific words, but in their very lives and ministries, in their rejection and suffering and in death, are, each one, a prophecy of THE Prophet par excellence, our Lord Jesus Christ.  And it should not surprise us.  The pattern is fulfilled in Him.  It all points to Him.  It all centers in Him.  Jesus is the Prophet Moses proclaimed: “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen” (Deut. 18:15).  Jesus comes preaching the Word of the Lord, and He is the Word of the Lord in the flesh.  He comes preaching repentance, that we forsake our sins and so flee God’s impending wrath.  He comes preaching God’s merciful forgiveness and salvation, and He is God’s mercy in the flesh.  And then, the signs.  Behold, He casts out demons and performs cures today and tomorrow, and the Third Day He finishes His course (Luke 13:32).  He does the very things the Prophet Isaiah said He would do (Is. 61:1-2; cf. Luke 4:18-19): He proclaims good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, the year of the LORD’s Jubilee.  And then… Go and tell John what you have seen and heard… Even as the Prophet suffers, rejected and doomed to death in Herod’s dungeon, a Word of hope.  Here are the signs: The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the Good News preached to them (Luke 7:22).  There is only one conclusion:  This is the One we’ve been waiting for!  God’s Messiah has come.  “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). 

            Jesus preaches and performs miraculous signs.  And we know what it will get Him.  Herod wants to kill Him.  The Pharisees want Him to “Get away from here” (Luke 13:31).  How He longs to gather Jerusalem’s children as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings… the hen, who will shelter her young with her own body and take the danger and the death upon herself… this is the very picture of our Lord Christ.  But in the case of Jerusalem, they would not (v. 34).  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…  He laments their obstinance.  He laments their rejection.  Not for His own sake, understand.  Jesus is no whiner.  But for their sake.  They do not know the things that make for peace (Luke 19:42).  So their house is left to them desolate (Luke 13:35), just as Jeremiah said it would be (Jer. 26:9), and was, in fact, in the time of the Babylonians, and would be again at the hands of the Romans.  And so it is to this day.  Why?  Because Jerusalem would not have Jesus.  Our Lord would ride into the City to shouts of Psalm 118 (v. 26): “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 13:35).  But that same week He would be betrayed, arrested, tried before the courts of Church and State (just like Jeremiah), suffer, and die, nailed to a Roman cross.  Thus the prophetic pattern is fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God.  And all of this in faithful obedience to God His heavenly Father, and to the very people who reject and kill Him.  The Jews.  The Romans.  You.  Me.  All to swallow up God’s wrath into Himself.  All for our forgiveness, healing, and liberation. 

            And so the pattern continues in the life of the Church.  The Apostles preached Jesus as the Savior of the world, and God confirmed their preaching by miraculous signs.  And they were rejected.  They suffered.  All but one, reportedly, were martyred.  Gruesome deaths suffered for the Name of Jesus.  And so it was among our Fathers in the Early Church, and among all the faithful, men and women, and even children, who confessed Jesus through the ages.  So it is in the Church today.  There is the preaching.  There are the signs.  For us, the signs are the Sacraments, great miracles of God’s gracious presence with us in the flesh, to forgive us, restore us, and enliven us.  And the rejection.  Pastors are rejected for preaching the unpopular message of repentance, and salvation exclusively in Jesus Christ, the truth of God’s Word, and our Lord’s coming again to judge the living and the dead.  Christians are shunned, persecuted, and martyred for their insistence that Christ is Lord, for their unwillingness to dance to the world’s tune, worship the world’s gods, engage in the world’s promiscuity, perversion, greed, and cruel disregard of the weakest among us.  God’s people are rejected for their faithfulness to God, and to the very people to whom they confess the Gospel of Life.

            And yet, not all reject.  There were those, of course, who believed the preaching of Jeremiah and the Prophets.  They were the faithful remnant of Israel.  There were those who believed the preaching of our Lord Jesus.  The Twelve.  The Seventy-two.  The faithful women.  And all those with them.  There are those now, who by God’s grace, hear the preaching of the Word, behold the signs, and believe in Jesus Christ the Savior.  The Spirit brings them to saving faith.  Here you are among them, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1) who confessed and suffered and lived and died by faith in the Savior and His Word. 

            It should not surprise us when we must suffer fiery trials, as though something strange were happening (1 Peter 4:12).  That is the pattern.  We are baptized into Christ.  We are one with Christ.  So what do you expect?  You are not immune from suffering, simply because you belong to Him.  In fact, you will suffer precisely because you belong to Him.  Not only will your sinful flesh go kicking and screaming into the baptismal water, and that will hurt… Not only will the world hate and despise you for the preaching of the Lord… You are now a target of the devil.  And Creation itself still suffers the subjugation of the fall, even as it groans in expectation of the revealing of the children of God (Rom. 8:19 ff.).  There will be war and bloodshed.  There will be plague and pestilence.  Crops will fail.  Fire and tempest will rage.  The earth will quake.  The mountains will fall into the heart of the sea.  And yes, there will be rejection and persecution.  Perhaps even a martyr’s death.  But when this happens, rejoice and be glad.  Blessed are you.  For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matt. 5:11-12).  And we know the disciple is not above his Master.  If they called the Master of the House Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of His household (Matt. 10:24-25)?

            But there is one more component of the pattern, and it is wholly unexpected and completely new with Jesus.  This did not appear with the Prophets and Apostles.  But it has now appeared in Christ.  That is, after rejection and death, He is risen!  Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!  Bodily!  Our Lord cast out demons and performed cures in the “today and tomorrow” of His earthly ministry, in the preaching and the signs.  But on the Third Day He finished His course!  And now the pattern will repeat.  Jesus is but the Firstfruits.  There is more fruit to come.  And that is to say, the goal, the culmination, the end and fulfillment of the whole pattern is bodily resurrection from the dead.  For Jesus, and for us.  Why could the Prophets suffer and give their lives for the preaching?  Why did the Apostles, the Fathers, the Martyrs march confidently to their executions?  Why do men and women, boys and girls, believers of all ages and backgrounds, including you, suffer patiently in the Name and for the sake of Jesus?  Because He will raise you from the dead.  We know this, and we wait for it with great hope and expectation. 

            Until then… the Today and the Tomorrow… the preaching and the signs, the water, the Words, the Body and the Blood, the casting out of demons and the performing of cures.  And yes, the rejection.  But always borne in faith.  The Third Day is coming, and then we finish our course.  That is the pattern.  Christ is the fulfillment.  He is risen from the dead.  Very soon, He will raise us.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.