Jack McKinney

Pullen Memorial Baptist Church

March 4, 2007 – Second Sunday in Lent

Text: Luke 13:31-35

You Can’t Tell Some People Anything

What is it with some people and their obsessions? Do you have a friend or family member that is always talking about the same thing? Maybe it’s the Kennedy assassination or college basketball or Krispy Kreme doughnuts – actually I’m okay with people obsessed with Krispy Kreme as long as they are willing to share.

Jesus had an obsession. But it wasn’t a person or game or fried dough that filled his mind. It was a place. Jesus was obsessed with Jerusalem. The holy city seemed to represent several things to him. It was his spiritual home, as it was for all Jews of his era. It symbolized eternal hope, as was true of many others. But what made Jesus’ obsession with Jerusalem even more intense than those around him was that he saw the city as his destiny.

How deep was Jesus’ fixation on Jerusalem? Well, in Luke 13 we get a picture of it when some Pharisees come to Jesus and say: “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” Now just to refresh your memory, the Pharisees were the religious group that Jesus had been hammering publicly. They were the bad guys in many of his parables. They were portrayed as hypocrites. And many of them had to be so angry with Jesus that they could have cared less what happened to him. So how serious does the threat have to be when even the people who are furious with you come and say, “Man, you gotta get out of here. Herod is going to get you.” And, of course, this was not an empty threat. Herod had already killed John the Baptist and no one doubted that he was ruthless enough to kill Jesus, too.

When confronted about the dangers of continuing on to Jerusalem, Jesus replies in a way that reveals the depth of his determination to go there:

…it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!

You see what I mean about obsession. Jesus claims the role of prophet in this text and states that the prophets must be killed in Jerusalem. This is a matter of conscience for him. He is making a principled stand. His religious conviction tells him he must go to Jerusalem, even though it means certain death.

And I’m sure that struck the Pharisees as being at least weird if not downright illogical. Who makes a conscience decision to go to a place where you are certain to be killed? But think about this. If the people who were ticked at Jesus had this much concern over his obsession with Jerusalem, imagine how his family and friends felt? Every attempt they made to talk sense into Jesus was swatted away in anger, and now they are watching this man they love and revere march off to his death. What was his mother, Mary, thinking and feeling? What were his friends saying behind his back? Actually, it’s not that hard to imagine, is it? If someone you love made a decision that seemed illogical to you, and jeopardized his or her safety, you know how you would feel. You would be scared and worried, and you would probably feel terribly helpless.

I have been on both sides of this divide. I have watched people I care about make decisions that are beyond my comprehension, and I have made decisions that baffled those who love and respect me. Either way you cut it, it’s not pleasant. There is a terrible suffering for those who have to watch as their loved one marches off in a direction they can’t understand, and if you are the one marching off, you hurt as well because you hate that your conscientious stand causes others to suffer. But it is what it is. And there is rarely any middle ground where everyone ends up feeling okay.

In 2002 I got obsessed with a place. It wasn’t Jerusalem, however, but St. Louis. Soulforce, a national organization that combats the spiritual violence perpetuated against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, was meeting in St. Louis that summer. Their intent was to conduct a large campaign of civil disobedience during the annual Southern Baptist Convention meeting that was being held in St. Louis. And I decided I had to be there. I didn’t really know many people associated with Soulforce, and I had never been to St. Louis, but after watching the Southern Baptists say and do horrible things against the GLBT community, I felt compelled to go and take part in the civil disobedience. As I prepared for the trip I told a friend what I was doing, and I made it clear that my intent was to be arrested with dozens of other people in order to make a point. And when I told my friend, I could see the concern in his eyes. The more we talked, and the more he voiced his reservations, I knew he thought this wasn’t my smartest decision. But to his credit he didn’t ever tell me not to do it, or it was stupid to do it, he simply asked me to stay in touch with him while I was in St. Louis so he could know how to support me.

When I got to St. Louis for the Soulforce meeting, I was impressed by the presence of grandmothers of gay grandchildren, straight siblings of gay brothers and sisters, and moms and dads who had lost their gay children to suicide. All of these people, along with many GLBT activists, shared my determination to take part in the civil disobedience in order to show the Southern Baptists, and the rest of the world, that spiritual violence against gay folks must stop. As promised, I touched base with my friend who was concerned about my decision, and I could tell on the phone that his anxiety was even higher. He did a good job, though, of simply reminding me of the consequences of my decision without saying, “Don’t do it.” I appreciated his willingness to support me even though I knew he would have made a different decision.

And the thing is, the end of the story turned out differently than either one of us had planned. The night before the civil disobedience action, after we had gone through nonviolent training and had our marching orders for what to do, I was approached by some of the leaders of Soulforce and asked to do something else. They needed a few people to actually dress up like Southern Baptists and enter the convention center to do secret taping of the civil disobedience. That way there would be a record of what actually happened. And when they looked around the room to decide who looked like a Southern Baptist, guess who they picked? So here I had gone off to St. Louis to get arrested at the Southern Baptist Convention, but instead I was being asked to look and act like a messenger at the convention. To say I was deflated would be an understatement. And when I called my friend to tell him what had happened, and that I wasn’t arrested, I could hear relief in his voice. But again, to his credit, he didn’t say it was for the best. He knew I was disappointed and spoke consoling words to me. And if I had to tell you the greatest lesson I learned from that whole experience, it would be how my friend responded to me even though I was not doing what he would have chosen for me.

We talk a lot about love in the church. We talk about inclusion and caring for others and following the way of Jesus. But all of that is just talk until we are put in a situation to test those platitudes. And the situation I am describing today is one of the toughest for all of us. What do we do when someone we care about makes a decision that we cannot comprehend? What does the peace-loving, liberal family do when their child decides to enlist in the military? What do good liberal Christian parents do when their kid grows up and rebels by becoming a good conservative Christian? What if you are a teenager and you cannot even begin to understand why your parents are being so strict, or if you are a parent of a teenager and can’t understand why your child is being so unreasonable? And if we take it out of the family dynamic, what happens when our minister or church as a whole makes a decision that we find baffling? What do we do then?

And because we are talking about decisions related to conscience, and principles, and deep convictions, there is often little middle ground. There is no compromise that will satisfy everyone. So, the options we are left with are limited. We can cut off communication because the pain is too great to keep talking about the division. We can remain engaged with the person who feels different from us in the hope of changing his or her mind. Or, as my friend did when I got obsessed with getting arrested in St. Louis, you can decide to look for ways to support even if you disagree. All of these responses are legitimate, and over the course of our lives we will likely choose each one. But I tell you, it takes a tremendous amount of love, grace, and patience to try and support someone who is making decisions you disapprove of. That is when all of our church rhetoric about love and inclusion and care gets tested. Because it is no big deal to support someone who thinks like you think, and who chooses what you would choose, but when the other person keeps marching off toward Jerusalem and it breaks your heart, well, how do you support that?

In the end Jesus’ friends and family went with him as he followed his obsession and journeyed on to Jerusalem to die. For 2,000 years the church has celebrated Jesus’ willingness to go to the cross, and has derided the disciples who abandoned him at the last minute. But maybe we should remember that before that last moment, there was another decision they made to go with him to Jerusalem even though they didn’t understand it. They supported him even to the point that the disciple, Thomas, uttered the famous line, “Let us go with him, so that we might die with him.” (John 11:16) I pray that is the kind of support I can give, and receive, when conscience and conviction separate me from those I love.