Jerusalem, Jerusalem- Rev. Wallace W. Bubar- March 16,2025
The Rev. Wallace W. Bubar
First Presbyterian Church
The Second Sunday in Lent, Year C
March 16, 2025
Jerusalem, Jerusalem
I had the chance some years ago to spend a few days in Jerusalem. It’s a magnificent city. Maybe some of you have been there. There’s this aura of sacredness about the place. A city holy to three religions. All the descendants of Abraham have some claim on it.
I remember going to the Western Wall, the foundation of the old Temple. Seeing the Jewish faithful press their faces up against the stone, roll up their prayers, stuff them into tiny cracks in the wall.
And the Dome of the Rock, that glittering mosque atop the city. Where all the devout Muslims take off their shoes, unroll their mats, prostrate themselves on the spot—they believe—where Muhammed ascended into heaven.
And the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where pilgrims from all over the world kneel down to touch the place where—Christians believe—Jesus was buried, and then raised from the dead.
Lots of memories of Jerusalem. But the most powerful of them, for me—and the one that sticks in my mind the most—is this. One afternoon, I was out walking around a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, the Arab Quarter. There was a group of Palestinian children—maybe six, seven, eight years old—boys and girls. They were out playing soccer on a dirt courtyard in a public playground. Laughing, and running around like kids anywhere.
Except that all around them were these Israeli soldiers—not that old themselves, at eighteen or nineteen—standing alert with Uzi submachine guns, ready to fire at the first hint of trouble.
I stood there and watched for a while, trying to wrap my head around it. I asked our Israeli guide if all this security was really necessary in a playground. “These days,” he said, “you can’t be too careful.”
You can’t be too careful.
* * *
It’s kind of funny. The name Jerusalem—you know what it means, literally, in Hebrew? Heritage of Peace. How ironic is that? Heritage of Peace. It’s never really been that, of course.
Jerusalem has always been a dangerous place. It was in the time of Jesus. At the time, Jerusalem was the center of Roman occupation in the region. The Romans ruled Palestine with an iron fist. There were periodic uprisings. Violent outbursts among Jews. They even had an insurgent group called the Zealots—one of them was a disciple of Jesus, in fact—who resorted to violence to try to overthrow their Roman oppressors.
Jerusalem was—and always has been, really—like a tinderbox. One little spark could set the whole thing ablaze.
The man in charge at the time was a brutal tyrant named Herod. Put there by the Romans to maintain order, at any price. He was the one, you’ll remember, who’d had all the babies slaughtered in Bethlehem. He was the one who’d had John the Baptist thrown in prison, and then beheaded. And now, he’s after Jesus.
These were horrible and gruesome things. But if it kept the Romans in power and the people in line, then it had to be done, right? That was the way things worked in Jerusalem.
I guess that’s the way things still work in the world, all too often.
* * *
So in our New Testament reading, Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem. Earlier in the Gospel, chapter nine, Luke tells us that Jesus had “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” Set his face. He’s going there with a sense of mission and purpose and resolve. Like God has called him to go there.
And he’s on the road to Jerusalem, when some of the Pharisees come up and try to warn him. They say, “Get out of here, Jesus! Don’t go to Jerusalem! Don’t you know: Herod wants to kill you!”
Now normally, the Pharisees are some of Jesus’ biggest opponents. But here, they’re trying to warn him. As Will Willimon says: “You know you’re in big trouble when even your enemies are concerned for your safety!”
But Jesus says: “No, I must go there. I must be on my way.” And he uses that word—must. He knows how very dangerous it is. He knows the fate that awaits him there. But nothing will stop him. Nothing will deter him. Not Herod, not the Romans, not the Pharisees, not the threat of violence. Nothing will keep him away from Jerusalem.
The world says: You can’t be too careful. Jesus says: Oh, yes you can. You most certainly can be too careful.
* * *
The conflict in the Middle East has been going on for so long, it’s impossible for me to sort it all out. And that’s not my job, anyway—to figure out who’s responsible, or assign blame. Seems to me there’s enough blame to go around, right?
Back on October 7, 2023, Hamas was behind that brutal terrorist attack. Nearly 1,200 Israelis massacred. 250 hostages taken—some of them still in captivity. Or who knows if they’re alive or dead? And then, the utter destruction of Gaza by the Israelis. Around 50,000 people killed—14,000 of them, children. Entire area left in ruins. And the fighting continues to this day. The whole thing is just heartbreaking.
I look at that, and just ... throw up my hands, sometimes. We seem so powerless, in the face of something that huge. That overwhelming. What do you do with that? What can one person do about it?
Or what’s going on in Ukraine, after three years of fighting. The suffering they’ve seen there. The world seems to be falling apart, sometimes, doesn’t it?
And I won’t even get into what’s happening in this country—how incredibly divided we are, how polarized, how angry. It seems like we’re just being pulled apart at the seams somehow. And I worry where all this is headed.
I’ll be honest. I look around at the state of the world these days, and it’s…it’s hard to find the right word. Troubling? Distressing? Lamentable, maybe, is what it is.
* * *
Jesus stands there overlooking Jerusalem. And you know what he does? He laments. That’s what this passage is called. Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” he cried out. He goes on to lament the violence, the injustice, people turning against each other, refusing to what God wants them to do.
And he says—and this is the really poignant part—he says, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. Yet you were not willing.”
What a powerful image that is! Jesus as a mother hen. And all he wants to do is hold his little chicks, hold his brood close, and protect them, and shelter them, and keep them safe, in the midst of a hostile and turbulent world.
Contrast that with Herod, by the way, who Jesus calls a “fox” in this same passage. And when the fox meets the hen, you know how that’s gonna go down, right? There’s no scenario in which the hen is gonna come out unscathed.
But Jesus doesn’t let that stop him. He keeps pressing on toward Jerusalem, because that’s where people are suffering. That’s where he’s needed. That’s where he’s set his face to go.
Barbara Brown Taylor says: “If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you can understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them.” But all you can do is open your arms.
That’s the way it’s always been with God, I suppose.
* * *
Lisle Gwynn Garrity is a Presbyterian minister and artist. She painted the artwork on the cover of the order of worship this morning. Part of our Full to the Brim Lenten series. It’s an illustration of this image of “under the shadow of God’s wings.”
And she said what inspired this particular piece, was on the day she started working on it, she saw in the news that forty Afghan refugees would be coming to the town where she lived. They were being resettled there, escaping the violence that had engulfed their nation.
And she said she got to thinking about these people who had been forced to flee their home. And she imagined a boy, peeking out from the open folds of a canvas tent in a refugee camp. She started to draw that boy. But then, as she painted—reflecting on this biblical imagery—she said, she felt compelled to turn the tent flap into a wing instead, with feathers lined in gold.
It was a way of expressing a hope, a promise, a way of saying to that child: “You are under God’s wing. May you dwell there,” she said, “surely and safely, all your days long.”
And fortunately, there were people here waiting for those Afghan refugees when they arrived. Who threw their arms around them and welcomed them. My church in Des Moines, in fact, helped to resettle a couple of those Afghan refugee families.
* * *
How are we supposed to live these days? As people of faith? In the midst of a world like this?
There’s plenty to lament about, to be sure. We can absolutely shake our heads, and throw up our hands, and shed our tears, and ask, “How long, O God, is it going to be like this?” Jesus did that, too, over Jerusalem. So we’re in good company there. And that’s a faithful response—lamentation. And if that’s all we can summon up sometimes, that’s okay.
But you know, those of us who follow Jesus—I guess we have to keep on doing what he did, don’t we? Keep going into those places of brokenness. Those Jerusalems. Not turning away. Not stopping. Not being deterred. But pressing on. Setting our face. Even when it seems like there’s not much hope. Even when it may be dangerous or costly. Even when it seems like no one else cares.
We don’t get to not care. So we keep looking for ways to shelter the vulnerable. To throw our arms around them. Wrap them up in the safety of God’s love and mercy.
Just like that mother hen that Jesus talked about—wanting nothing more than to gather up her children—all her children—the Israeli hostage, the baby in the ruins of Gaza, the kid in a bombed-out apartment building in Kiev, the Afghan refugee, the trans teenager in Granville who’s really scared right now, for that matter—all of God’s vulnerable and beloved children, and hold them safe and close under her wings.
Amen.
