All by Myself

Text: Luke 13:31-35
Other texts: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

There used to be a children’s book called All By Myself. It taught children how to manipulate the fasteners of everyday life. The pages inside contained zippers and buttons and snaps and laces. Children could play with these things and develop small motor skills. The point of the book, implied by the title, was to build confidence and independence. That is part of growing up. Eventually, sometimes to the dismay of parents, children can do more and more all by themselves, and need their parents less and less.

The readings today trace a long journey in time, from the infancy of Israel in the promise to Abram (who is later known as Abraham) to the glory that was Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. This is the temporal journey of the whole Bible. A people growing up under the watchful and loving eye of God, but who increasingly feel that they can do it all by themselves.

The story starts with just one family: Abram and Sarai (soon to be called Sarah). They are childless, wanderers, old. They earlier had been told, as this episode in Genesis begins, that they would be the start of a great family that would in turn become a great and prosperous nation. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you,” God had said, but things have not worked out. Abram is skeptical, to say the least. Nonetheless, God reassures Abram. He believed, it says. This shows that one can be skeptical about something and believe the same something as the same time.

The relationship between God and Abram was exactly the relationship between God and Israel. It was personal and intimate, one on one. The nation at this time existed only in this one person. God speaks to Abram. Abram speaks back.

God makes a promise. The one person (or the two: Abram and Sarai), will be many. Abram is skeptical because he has been disappointed in the past. God’s promise has so far been just words. But Abram is faithful because in the end he trusts in the sovereignty of God. God is the creator and ruler of the universe. Humans are creatures. God makes promises and fulfills them. Abram trusts that God’s word is good.

And so it turns out to be. Fast forward to the time of Jesus. Israel is a nation, and has been great. The descendants of Abraham and Sarah have populated the land. The story has had its ups and downs, but now Jerusalem, the center of political and religious life, is a great city. A center of commerce, religion, and politics. Jerusalem was like a cross between DC and New York. Diverse, full of foreign business people, merchants, and travelers. Plus leaders of the state and religious institutions (which at the time were not two different things).

No longer was it God and just one fledgling family. No longer did God and Israel speak one to one. There were many children. They were no longer wanderers. They had homes and institutions and bureaucrats and officials and armies. They were numerous and vital and independent. They could do things all by themselves.

But as a result, where Abram was humble and thankful, they were proud. In some ways, they had forgotten God in all but name. Or better to say: they had begun to forget God’s sovereignty. Humans had usurped some of it for themselves. They believed in themselves more than in God.

This had happened before. (And clearly still happens.) The history of Israel by then covered many centuries. During that time, God had sent prophets to the people, reminding them of God’s commandments and reminding them that they were God’s creation. Yet the prophets were rarely well-received. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” says Jesus, “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.”

Including, it will turn out, Jesus himself. “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”—Jesus quotes Psalm 117. The people hear Jesus. They see what is going on in the city. Does Jesus speak for God or for someone, something else? They are not asking so much whether Jesus is the one, the new king, the messiah. Instead, they want to know: is this man, this Jesus, is he blessed or is he not? Is God speaking to us through Jesus? Can we trust him to guide us?

Like other prophets, Jesus preaches and acts against the prevailing systems of power that forget God. Jesus proclaims good news to the poor and freedom for prisoners, as we heard him a couple of weeks ago. He will fill the stomachs of the hungry and send the rich away empty. He tells us, in Luke, not to judge others, not to charge interest on loans, to give whenever and for whatever we are asked. To check for the log in our own eyes before we go condemning the sliver in our neighbor’s.

If you acknowledge that Jesus is blessed, speaking for God—is God—then you must accept that these are God’s words. If you accept these are God’s words, and you ignore them anyway, you debate God’s sovereignty. As Jerusalem did, and as we often do today.

There is pity and compassion in Jesus’ wish to be as a hen gathering up her chicks. Young animals seek their mother for protection and comfort, and then march out into the world in confidence, knowing that they can always return. The God who speaks to Abram sends him out confident that God is with him. But the Jesus who speaks to Jerusalem as if they were chicks is full of sadness because they seem to have no need for God.

Jerusalem, having a difficult adolescence, has forgotten that it owes its existence to a gift from God. The whole of Israel came as a gift from God. Starting with God’s promise to Abram, God makes agreements, with Israel. “I am the Lord who brought you out of [your birthplace] to give you this land to possess.” You are my people, says God repeatedly. This is your land that I give to you and that I bless for your use. Over and over in this passage the word is repeated: give, gift. “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying ‘to your descendants I give this land.’” And the land God is talking about is the land in which Jerusalem sits. For which they are reminded to be grateful.

It is dangerous to lose one’s gratitude. It makes you think that what you have is a result of your own efforts, that you have done it all by yourself, and that you deserve what you have because you are able and righteous. And it makes you lose your respect for forces that are way beyond your control (which are most of them). It makes you forget to be humble, which is a risk; and in doing so, in being proud of yourself, it makes it hard to remember God.

But Jesus’ sadness does not come from thinking that the people are arrogant. It comes because he knows that a life deprived of gratitude is a life of fear and deep loneliness. Imagine the chicks without a hen.

Jesus reminds Jerusalem and reminds us that we are neither self-created. Nor are we adrift. We did not do this all by ourselves. Nor are we in this all by ourselves. We are creatures of a God who remains by our side. Sending us out, welcoming us back. We are not alone.