Lent 2 C, March 7, 2004
Dear friends, friends of the cross of Christ! Have you ever been addressed like that: “Friends of the cross of Christ”? In our Epistle reading the Apostle Paul pleads with the Philippian Christians: “Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.”
There is a common element in all three of our readings today. It has to do with tears; tears over loved ones who are choosing the way of destruction rather than life. Have you ever cried over someone you really cared about, who was making some terrible choices in his life? In the fourth century there was a woman called Monica. She was raised in a Christian family, but married a pagan. Her first son, Augustine, did not follow her Christian example, but lived a loose life. This troubled Monica greatly and she often prayed with many tears for Augustine’s conversion. After many years God finally did get through to Augustine and his mother was blessed to see him baptized just before her own death. Augustine, as many of you know, went on to become one of the most famous church fathers. But his mother is credited for never having given up in her fervent prayers for her son’s conversion.
Tears: In our Old Testament reading, it is God who is crying for the conversion of His people of Judah, for His holy city Jerusalem. They had turned their backs on Him. If only they would reform their ways and obey Him, they could have life. But they chose the way of death and destruction (Jeremiah 26).
In our Gospel reading we hear Jesus crying for Jerusalem: “O 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, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34) Here we have the picture of a hen who sees danger approaching, a hawk swooping down for the kill. She calls out to her chicks to come and find protection under her wings, but to no avail. Her chicks ignore her calls and are lost.
Our Scripture readings give us a window into God’s heart. Here we see the pain in God’s heart over the bad choices we make: Choices that ignore His loving will for us, choices that ignore the needs of our brothers and sisters. God’s heart is anxious for me and for you. He is anxious because He loves you. Yes, God really loves you.
It may be hard for us to understand why God should love or even care for us. After all, we are sinners. We have disobeyed Him and turned our backs on Him. Even as Christians, we have often grieved Him with our indifference and callousness towards Him and other people. So, how can He really care about us? Would we not expect God to treat us the way we have treated Him?
If you have seen Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” you may wonder what on earth moved God to let His own beloved Son suffer such senseless brutality. The only one for whom you might suffer like this must be someone who is very, very close to your heart. In the passion of His Son God is telling us very passionately that we are very precious to Him.
Because God really cares about us He also cares about all the choices we make. Everything we do leaves a lasting impression, either for good or for bad. And I know that if everything I said or did would be remembered forever, there would be a lot of things I would be more careful about saying and doing, things that are simply not worthy of the life to which Christ has called me heavenward.
In our Epistle reading the Apostle Paul pleads with the Philippian Christians: “Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.”
What does it mean to live as an enemy of the cross of Christ? How can we be sure we are not living like that? That is such an important question it moves the Apostle to tears because many do not understand this reality.
The answer to this question has a lot to do with our attitude and perception of reality. Paul writes that those who live as enemies of the cross have their minds set on earthly things. Their thinking is preoccupied with the cares of this world: With wealth (things), with health (body), with fame (popularity/friends/relationships) and with pleasure. Do any of these things consume an inordinate amount of the resources (time, talents, treasures) God has entrusted to you? Then you know that your mind is on earthly things and that your destiny is destruction and shame. Unfortunately, all of us in this room are guilty of having our minds preoccupied with earthly things.
But thanks be to our Lord Jesus Christ into whom we have been baptized. For our citizenship is not in this world. It is with Christ in heaven. How do we know that our minds are on heavenly things? We know this because we eagerly await our Saviour, the return of our Lord Jesus. We heard Jesus’ promise in our Gospel reading: “You will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord.’” (Luke 13:35) In a few minutes we will be singing these words in the Sanctus, the “Holy, holy, holy, …” With these words we welcome our Lord Jesus as He comes to us with His body and blood in His Holy Supper.
Because we all are afflicted with minds that easily become distracted from our heavenly goal to the cares of this world, Jesus comes to us each week in His Word and Sacrament. There He forgives the errors of our short-sighted fascination with temporal things and refocuses our attention on His eternal riches. Then, with eager expectation we can sing, “Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord.” As Jesus welcomes us to His Table we receive a foretaste of the great joy we will experience at the heavenly feast when our lowly bodies will be transformed to be like His glorious body (Philippians 3:21).
There are two hints I would like to share with you about how the mind of Christ is formed in you. Firstly, you need to know that there is nothing you can do to make it happen. It is not your desiring or doing that can give you the mind of Christ. Rather, it is something you receive, something that happens to you. You receive the mind of Christ by what God does in you through His Word. It becomes part of you when you believe that word and promise of God. Believing and trusting God, you are enabled by the Holy Spirit to live according to the pattern Jesus gave His disciples.
The second hint is: Stop resisting the work of God’s Spirit in your life! You see, when it comes to having the mind of Christ, it can only be received passively. But when it comes to not having the mind of Christ, it is something we do quite naturally. In order for that to make sense you need to understand something about how God does His work. He does His work in us through the cross. By withdrawing His physical blessings, by allowing us to fail in the eyes of the world, that is when God is doing His greatest work in us. That’s because it is here God strips away our pretensions, our false sense of security, anything that prevents the power of the cross to be evident in our lives.
But how do we normally respond to this work of God? Of course we resist it, we complain bitterly, we accuse God of being unfair, of having forsaken us. That is why, when it comes to spiritual maturity, we are all really still babies. Only the person who has suffered greatly can truly claim to have the mind of Christ on an experiential level.
So let me encourage you not to welcome God only in the good times of life, when things are going your way. No, at such times God is really quite far from you because your mind is preoccupied with the things of this world. Rather, let me encourage you to see God also in the difficult times, when your world seems to be falling apart. That is when God is working most powerfully in your life, forming within you the mind of Christ. Here it is important that you don’t resist God’s loving work or spoil its fruit in your life.
The Apostle Paul recognized the value of suffering. That is why he was able to rejoice in all his sufferings, his imprisonments, beatings, scourgings, stonings, shipwrecks, etc., because he saw it as a privilege to be counted worthy to share in the sufferings of his Lord. Our own sufferings remind us that one day our bodies will be transformed to be like Jesus’ glorious body. Sufferings help us see the deceptiveness of the pleasures of this world and to refocus on the eternal pleasures of heaven. That is what it means to be a friend of the cross of Christ, to have the mind of Christ: To be able to rejoice in all things, expecting God to work His best in you and for you, especially when things are not looking so hot in your life through the eyes of this world. Amen.
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