Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
With Face Set Toward Jerusalem
Theme: Your Lord Jesus and His death on the cross will give you strength to
bear up under the injustices you experience in your life.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ!
Amen. In today’ Gospel, St. Luke speaks in a way that no other Gospel writer
speaks when he describes the manner in which your Lord Jesus headed toward
Jerusalem and the cross. Luke words it beautifully: Jesus “set His face to go
to Jerusalem.” Luke then repeats the phrase, stating that, “the people did not
receive [Jesus], because His face was set toward Jerusalem.” This phrase, “His
face was set toward Jerusalem” can be a great help to you in your everyday
life. This phrase will do a lot more than comfort you and assure you concerning
your own sins. The phrase, “His face was set toward Jerusalem” will also give
you miraculous strength and endurance to bear up under the sins that other
people commit against you.
Dear Christian friends,
Is it really so strange that James and John would want to burn an
entire village, just because the people did not want to welcome Jesus and give
Him a place to stay overnight? Before you answer that question, think about the
reactionary emotions that rise up inside of when you or someone you love gets
treated unjustly. Maybe James and John overreacted, but overreactions are what
we the people are all about. After all, injustices happen every day. Among the
injustices, the worst by far are those that are committed against me or against
my loved ones. Surely you feel the same way. For example:
· You do not have to travel very far in order to hear someone using crass
and foul language. Such language is demeaning, insulting, and loveless enough
when it is a regular part of daily speech. However, foul words feel much more
insulting and demeaning, and such words provoke a much hotter reaction, when
those words are spoken directly to you (especially when you don’t think you
deserved it). You or I might not have the guts to say anything in response to
the filth spoken to us, but man, does that guy tick us off!
· Boyfriends and girlfriends break up every day, but the boy who broke
your daughter’s heart? He should have his arms torn off and be beaten with them.
· Think of our US Judicial System, in which people are held responsible
for the harmful ways they treat you or someone you love. The courts have been
given to us as a gift from God (Romans 13) for the purposes justice and
redress. Still, does a prison sentence or a heavy fine really do anything to
take away those recurring emotions of pain and injury that you feel because of
this person? The judgment of the court might address the debt owed to society,
but the court cannot take away your nightmares or your fears.
James and John felt angry, insulted, and even personally injured at the way
Jesus had been treated by this “village of the Samaritans.” If you place
yourself into the heat of their moment, maybe it does not seem so outrageous
after all that they would ask Jesus, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come
down from heaven and consume them?” If you and I possessed such fire-breathing
power, we each would have our share of ashes piled up behind us.
But how does Jesus respond to their tantalizing request? “He turned and rebuked
them [that is, James and John].” Luke does not take the time to spell out the
details of our Lord’s rebuke to these two closest disciples of His, but it is
fair to suppose that their ears were burning.
· How dared these disciples—these Christian men who had been trained
differently by Jesus Himself—how dared they allow themselves to be ruled by the
pettiness and the passion of their fallen, impressionable, and unstable
emotions?
· Even more to the point, Jesus had “set His face to go to Jerusalem.”
There were much bigger fish to fry in these days: cross and rejection,
suffering and death, shed blood for the atonement of Samaritan sins and indeed,
for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2). “His face was set toward
Jerusalem” and everything in Jesus’ life shall be placed into the perspective
of Jerusalem and death and resurrection.
Do not be confused, dear saints: I do not mean to suggest that the injustices
you suffer in your life are inconsequential, or that they should be dismissed
without being addressed. That is not the point of today’s Gospel! Today’s
Gospel simply teaches this: When you suffer injustices, do not deal with them
from the perspective of your fallen and vagabond emotions. Your emotions will
tempt you to blow things way beyond their proper proportions, which is why
James and John wanted to call in an air strike in response to an insult. Set
aside your emotions, as Jesus demands of James and John in today’s Gospel, and
deal with your injustices from the perspective of the cross. Stated another
way, when you suffer injustices in your life, set YOUR face “toward Jerusalem”
in the same way that your Lord Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem here today.
Injustices happen every day. Even more to the point, injustices happen to you
and to me every day. Injustices will continue to happen to you and to me all
the days of our lives. Some injustices are big and they require the
intervention of the government, which is God’s gift to you. Other injustices
are small and can be set aside with relatively little cost or sacrifice. Deal
with all your injustices with your “face set toward Jerusalem,” as it were.
What I mean is this:
· When you suffer small things, such as when you get ignored or snubbed,
when you are insulted by someone or when you have to wait in line for too long,
set your face toward Jerusalem. That is to say, bear up and endure these petty
things by looking beyond them to the cross of your Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus’
blood is sufficient to cover and forgive all sins—both the sins you commit and
the sins that others commit against you. Think of Jesus when you are treated
badly by others and reason to yourself, “If my Lord Jesus can look beyond the
pettiness of the Samaritans, I also can look beyond what has happened to me.
Yes, I feel the strong grip of anger and the self-conscious exposure of
embarrassment, but what of it? My Lord Jesus focused His attention upon
Jerusalem and cross, and He suffered much more than I. So I too, will set my
face toward Jerusalem and my Lord who died there for me.”
· May our dear God forbid that a crime should ever be committed against
you or your family! However, if you should suffer a major injustice in your
life, such as an act of violence or some other crime, set your face toward
Jerusalem. Yes, those who are guilty of crimes should be punished by our
God-given courts. No, the civil courts will not be able to repair your broken
heart or rebuild your self-confidence or chase away your newfound fears simply
by putting someone into prison. Set your face toward Jerusalem. See there the
God who suffers prior to your suffering; the God who is deeply familiar with
your grief; the God who walked before you into the valley of the shadow of
death so that you might no longer fear evil. More than forgiveness comes from
Jesus’ cross in Jerusalem. Set your face toward Jerusalem and the death of
Jesus, for there also is your God’s fountain and source for your healing, your
comfort, your endurance and your strength.
“When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up, He set His face to
go to Jerusalem.” Do not merely use these precious Words as a way of thinking
about and coping with the sins that others commit against you in your life. Use
these words as your own defense! Use the Words “[Jesus’] face was set toward
Jerusalem” as a way of thinking about and coping the sins that you yourself
have committed. James and John felt pretty mad about the way Samaritans treated
Jesus, but these men were not without their own sins! Jesus gives a great gift
to the Samaritans by looking toward Jerusalem, refusing to take note of their
sins against Him. Jesus also gives the same gift to James and John, not holding
their sins against them, either. Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem. In
Jerusalem Jesus died for the sins of the Samaritans and the sins of James and
John and—Praise be to God!—also for your sins and my sins. Nothing is now held
against you, any more
than against James and John or the Samaritan village that refused to welcome
our Lord. Jerusalem and the cross still sit at the center of your Lord’s
thinking, now as always. Jesus will not deal with your sins in any way except
by means of the cross and the forgiveness He earned for you by dying upon it.
The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and
minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
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