The Second Sunday in Lent - February 21

Lifestyle Choices
Luke 13:31-35

Two different ways of life are outlined in today’s Gospel. Two different ways of living.

One might be called the Jesus movement. I had a harder time coming up with a name for the Jerusalem one. The Jerusalem heap/rat race/lifestyle…

The Jesus movement. And the Jerusalem lifestyle.

In the Gospel passage Jesus is warned to flee because evidently Herod is out to kill him. I love Jesus’ reply. He says: Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow. I can’t flee; I’m busy. Today and tomorrow.

His calendar is full. He’s busy bringing hope and healing. He won’t be deterred from God’s work, even at the threat of death. The Jesus movement.

Then there is Jerusalem, or the people of Jerusalem. Who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to them. People who are so unwilling to be deterred from their personal agendas by anything related to God that they silence God’s voice in their midst. They would rather, in the extreme, kill God than have to hear God’s voice or do God’s work.

The phrase “Jesus movement” comes from our relatively new Presiding bishop, installed back in November. I’m sure others have used the phrase before him, but it is a hallmark of his preaching and leadership. We are the Jesus movement, he says. We are the Jesus movement!

I like the phrase because it connotes activity or action. To “be a Christian” is a very good thing, but it does have sort of a static sound to it. A movement, on the other hand, goes somewhere, does something. The Jesus movement is active.

And that activity, Bishop Curry says, works to fulfill God’s dream for the world. Participants in the Jesus movement go out of their way to make things right. To work for reconciliation, between human beings and between human beings and God.

Living the Jesus movement means being busy in the world, with a calendar full of God’s work of hope, healing and reconciliation.

That’s one way of life, being a participant in the Jesus movement.

Or there’s being an inhabitant of Jerusalem, a participant in the Jerusalem lifestyle. Being someone for whom anything and everything other than God’s work is more important. Everything else is more important than God’s work.

Remember: there are other ways to silence God’s prophets besides crucifying them. There are other ways to eliminate God’s presence other than crucifixion. Indifference to God’s word in our lives. Choosing (and it is always a choice!) to fill our calendars with godless activities. Ignoring God’s call to serve others in his name. Tolerating or turning away from injustice in our world.

In today’s Gospel Jesus also expresses tender yearning to care for those very people of Jerusalem, and he grieves or laments that they are unwilling even to be cared for. I pause to wonder sometimes at the depth of grief God must feel looking upon our world. It’s unimaginable.

So what does this mean for us? What about you or me? Are we participants in the Jesus movement or in the Jerusalem lifestyle? There isn’t really any middle ground. Anytime you are not doing God’s work, you’re living the Jerusalem lifestyle. Anytime something other than God’s work is more important to you, you’re in Jerusalem. There is no middle ground. So all of us move back and forth from one to the other. Only Jesus, I think, can live the Jesus movement 100% of the time. And none of us is Jesus. We spend some percentage of our time in the Jesus movement and some percentage in the Jerusalem lifestyle.

What percentage of your time are you living the Jesus movement?

Something to think about during Lent.