March 7, 2004 — Second Sunday in Lent
Christ Lutheran Church, Columbia, MD
Pastor Jeff Samelson
Luke 13:31-35
Check Your Ego at the Door
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear Friends for whom Christ Suffered, Died, and Rose Again:
Restaurants, clubs, and upscale bars sometimes have rather strict policies about what you can bring in with you. Some want to keep things like hats, coats, and briefcases out of people’s way, and so they put a check room just inside the door, and post signs at the entrance that say something like, “For the safety and convenience of all our customers, please check your hats, coats, and bags at the door.”
Those of you who were alive and alert back in the 80s may remember something about the recording of the song “We Are the World”, whose proceeds went to help famine victims in Africa. Recording artists from a wide variety of fields all got together to sing the song.
Now Quincy Jones, the producer, had been in the business a long time, and he knew very well what stars and celebrities are like. But he also knew that the project they were working on was important, and that if they did it well, the whole would be greater than the sum of its parts — their cause was bigger than any one star, or even than all of them put together. And so he put a note at the entrance to the recording studio when all the stars came: “Check your ego at the door.”
Apparently the sign did its job — it was quite remarkable how that group of very diverse stars was able to work and sing together to record “We Are the World”. They understood — for that little time, at least — that there was no room for pride, arrogance, or celebrity when they had such a big and important task ahead of them.
There was a much bigger and infinitely more important task ahead of Jesus at the time he spoke the words of our gospel today. His mission wasn’t the feeding of thousands or even millions of hungry mouths — it was the salvation of billions upon billions of lost souls, and the forgiveness of their countless sins. We’ve talked a number of times in the last few months about how Jesus set aside the glory that was due him as the Son of God — we can hardly call it “ego” — and humbled himself to become a man to save us.
But for anyone to receive the benefits of what Jesus came to do, or to be a part of what he’s still doing today through his church, he or she must also leave all pride and arrogance behind. When you enter into God’s House, into the kingdom of heaven, check your ego at the door.
As I reread today’s Gospel, Luke 13:31-35, try to look at the various people who talk or whom Jesus talks about and consider how pride plays into what they are and where they’re heading:
At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”
He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day — for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!
“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” (NIV)
This is the Gospel of our Lord.
I. So what was going on with these Pharisees and their egos? Well, first we have to ask ourselves why they were giving Jesus this “warning” about Herod wanting to kill him. Could they really have had Jesus’ best interests at heart?
Not likely. We can safely assume that these Pharisees did not have the best of intentions. Since Jesus gave them a message to take back to Herod, they were probably working — at least indirectly — with Herod and his people, even though normally they didn’t get along at all. They were willing to work together for a common purpose, though — getting Jesus out of the way.
That was why the Pharisees were being such “nice guys” and warning Jesus about Herod — who probably really had no intention of killing Jesus. Jesus was a threat to them and their position in Jewish society, because up till now, everyone thought the Pharisees had all the answers and so they had tremendous influence. But the bigger Jesus got in the eyes of the people, the smaller they became, and they didn’t like that. So far they hadn’t had much success stopping or discrediting Jesus, so now they were trying to manipulate him into moving out of the countryside, where the people were flocking to him, and on to Jerusalem, where they had more influence and he could be more easily controlled. In their sin-blinded unbelief and arrogance, they didn’t see that they were trying to pull a fast one on the all-knowing and almighty Son of God.
But Jesus, of course, would not be fooled. His answer to them was basically, “It doesn’t matter what you say to me or what anyone might do. I am going to do what I came to do, and I am going to finish it when it’s time to finish it. I will not be manipulated into serving your selfish purposes.”
It’s pretty easy to see the sin in what these Pharisees were doing. And when we look at all the times in the Gospels when they went up against Jesus, their arrogance is pretty obvious.
But, sadly, this kind of manipulative arrogance didn’t die with the Pharisees. It’s still quite common today, and it’s not always so easy to see, because it’s often disguised as knowledge or sincerity, just like the Pharisees’ warning about Herod here.
One common way that people try to manipulate Jesus today is that they try to “redefine” him, as though he is some kind of Play-Doh figurine that they can push and twist and shape into whatever they want him to be — whatever kind of Jesus serves their selfish purposes and justifies whatever it is they want to believe, teach, or do. That’s why we have the Jesus today who was just a misunderstood moral teacher, trying to help people live better lives. That’s why we have the Jesus who was full of self-doubts and never seemed to know what he was here for, and that’s why we have the Jesus who preached love and tolerance without teaching any law — the one who would never call anyone a sinner or condemn anyone for his sin.
But that kind of manipulation doesn’t work any better today than it did in our text. Because Jesus is who he is, and that cannot be changed. He is a Rock that cannot be moved, and we thank God for that, because he is the Rock of our salvation! Jesus said, “I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day”— he was determined to go all the way to the cross and do everything it took to achieve our salvation. And he shows that same determination today in giving us that salvation and all his blessings, just as he promised, through his Word, through Baptism, and through the Lord’s Supper.
Incidentally, this is why some people are having a really hard time with Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ. They’re not complaining that the Jesus in his film isn’t true to what the Bible tells us about him — they’re complaining because he doesn’t match up with their manipulated version of Jesus, and they’re afraid that if people see the movie, they’ll begin to see that their Play-Doh Jesuses are not at all the real thing.
Our reading from Philippians today identifies all Jesus-manipulators as what they are — they are “enemies of the cross of Christ”. Strong words, but true — the arrogance of trying to reshape the Son of God into a Savior more to your liking is absolutely incompatible with saving faith. Without the true and unmanipulated Jesus, there is no Gospel, no forgiveness, no salvation, and, quite simply, no point to being a Christian.
And for that reason, the Pharisees’ example of arrogance should not move us to a self-righteous pride that we’re not like them, but rather to repentance for every way and every time in which we ourselves have arrogantly tried to impose our selfish will on God, instead of humbly setting our pride aside and saying, “Your will be done on earth as in heaven.”
And so we check our egos at the door.
II. Herod — now he had an ego — both the Bible and history make that clear. Herod kind of defined arrogance, and he combined that with a ruthless cunning so that he usually found some way to get whatever it was he wanted.
And that’s what was going on here — Herod was trying to find a way to get what he wanted — which was Jesus out of the way. He probably didn’t really want to kill Jesus, because he had lost a lot of popularity with the people when he’d had John the Baptist killed, and Jesus was even more important to the people than John had been. But scaring Jesus away — that would work for Herod. He certainly didn’t want anyone around who might be a challenge his kingship, and Jesus’ calls to repentance — well, those probably didn’t make him very comfortable either. And with all the crowds following him around, Jesus was simply a threat to public order. Herod didn’t want any trouble, and so he wanted Jesus out of his kingdom and out of his way.
But because of the crowds, he didn’t want to do anything too obvious or open. He was sly, like the fox Jesus called him, and so he used his enemies, the Pharisees, to pass on the threat, “Herod wants to kill you.”
But Jesus doesn’t respond well to threats. Especially not when they come from upstart, evil kings. And so he doesn’t cooperate. He isn’t frightened or deterred. Instead, he publicly tells Herod that his cunning won’t work this time, because what Jesus came to do, he was going to do, and what he was going to say, he was going to say. He had a mission to fulfill, and nothing was going to keep him from reaching his goal.
And nothing did, thank God, because his mission was about much more than driving out demons and healing the sick. He had come to save the world — that was his goal, and he wouldn’t reach it without first following the way of sorrows all the way — the road to the cross — and then following that path the rest of the way through and out of his empty tomb on Easter morning. Herod in his arrogance, like the Pharisees and so many others, was doing the devil’s work — he was trying to get the Son of God to leave the path that the Father had laid out for him. But Jesus wasn’t fooled, and he put an end to Herod’s cunning plan.
Now Herod’s not the only one, of course, to try to outsmart God. People still try it today, because our egos drive us, and we, too, just don’t want Jesus getting in the way of what we want. And it’s not just the atheists and the pagans who are guilty of this kind of arrogance — we Christians try it, too.
Of course, when we think about people today trying to outsmart God it’s probably people like scientists who come to mind first. It seems that the more they learn about the wonders of God’s creation the harder they try to get rid of him by explaining him and his works away. They really don’t like the idea of a Creator, because if there is one, then they might have some obligation to him — they might have to acknowledge his authority in their lives and in their work.
Many modern philosophers also would belong in this category of arrogant cunning, as they seek to define away sin and make the concrete truths of sin and judgment abstract and relative. They try to use slick words and clever arguments to keep Jesus out of their way, so he doesn’t rain on their parade with his unwelcome judgment on sin and a grace they have no interest in.
But the prevailing relativism of our age has also made its way into Christian minds and churches. It’s one of the reasons denominational labels increasingly don’t mean much — you get people even in the same congregation saying, “Well, we disagree on what the Bible really says, but you have your truth, and I have mine. It’s no big deal.” And many of us have probably had situations where we were trying to explain something about what we believe, and what the Bible really says, only to hear someone reply, “Oh, well, I don’t believe in that kind of God,” as though God lets us decide who he is or isn’t, or what he cares and doesn’t care about. Creating God in our own image is the height of arrogance, yet it’s something we engage in — yes, even we engage in — anytime we make him out to be anything other than he is or to say anything other than he has actually said.
This is serious — because if God is anything other than what he has revealed himself to be in the verbally inspired and inerrant words of Scripture, then he is not our Savior. This underscores yet again our need to repent of any and every arrogance that we might ever show toward our Lord. Repent of your sinful pride. And check your ego at the door.
III. Now, the spiritual arrogance and unbelief demonstrated by the Pharisees and by Herod was tragic, but not unexpected, considering what else we know about them. You might be a little more surprised, though, at how the people of Jerusalem behaved toward Jesus, because they had everything to gain from accepting him and everything to lose if they rejected him. But they, too, showed a tragic arrogance in their dealings with him, just as their fathers before them had shown when they killed the prophets and those the Lord had sent to them.
This arrogance wasn’t so much clever or self-serving as it was self-righteous. It wasn’t so much that they saw Jesus as their enemy as that they saw him as unnecessary. He wanted to gather them, but they didn’t want to be gathered. Their response was basically, “We don’t want you; we don’t need you; and we don’t care about what you want to give us — we’re doing just fine on our own.”
They were wrong, of course — on their own they were heading to hell — and that’s why we hear this tragic lament from Jesus. He loved the people of Jerusalem, though they’d done nothing to deserve his love. He had compassion on them, as a mother or father has compassion on an erring child. He was willing to sacrifice himself entirely for them, as a hen sacrifices itself to protect her chicks when a hawk attacks. Jesus wanted to give them the thing they most needed — forgiveness of the their sins, so that they might have eternal life in heaven. But they didn’t want what he was offering. They “were not willing.”
It was a battle of wills — theirs against Christ’s — and sadly, they were winning, which meant they were going to lose. What’s perhaps even more sad is that this battle of wills wasn’t limited to first century Jerusalem. This is every rejection of Jesus and his salvation. It’s our will against his — he wants to save us and bless us, and we want to do what our sinful natures desire.
Thank the Lord that his will is stronger than ours! In his love and compassion he steps in and makes the unwilling willing, just as Christ’s love and compassion kept him on his way to Jerusalem to save people who didn’t want to be saved. The Holy Spirit works through the gospel to change our hearts and minds from arrogant unbelief to humble trust in Jesus. It’s not anything we do; it’s not even anything we really want until he gives it to us — we are saved by God’s grace alone, through faith alone.
And so in Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem we can find an invitation. He calls all people, everywhere, of every time, to repentance and faith. Jesus wants to take you under his wing, wants to save you, wants to bless you.
But that won’t happen if you think the way the people of Jerusalem thought — if you think that you are righteous enough on your own, that your good works will impress God enough to get you into heaven, or that God will welcome you into his house just because you haven’t done anything spectacularly evil lately. No, self-righteousness and faith in Christ are complete opposites. That’s why we are called to repentance — and not just once, when we first come to faith, but we are called to repentance every day, because our sinful nature is always promoting our pride.
And so we need this reminder, from Jesus’ words and from the example of the Pharisees, Herod, and the people of Jerusalem, to check our egos at the door. There’s no room for arrogance in the house of our Lord, and rejecting what Jesus came to give us will leave us outside his kingdom, outside heaven, alone with our sins and self-righteousness in a desolate house.
But for all who trust in Jesus, there is a home with him in heaven, where we have our citizenship. The blood he shed on the cross washed away all our sins of pride. The life he sacrificed for us paid the price for all our sins of arrogance. The new life he gives us through faith puts our egos in their place. And the eternal life he secured for us with his resurrection from the dead gives us every reason to eagerly await our Savior’s coming to take us home, so that we can join with the believers of every place and every age in saying, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” Blessed is he! Hosanna in the highest! Amen.
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
