Lord, I’m telling everyone everywhere–”His love endures forever!”

It’s the most important thing I’m learning about you.

It’s the most important thing I’m sharing about you.

Your love endures forever.

When I look back through the story of my life, I see this truth on every page.

When I rewind the movie of humanity, this quality appears on every frame.

Your love is endless.

I shout praise to you Lord because your love never gives in, runs out, dries up, or winds down.

[image]

In the second century, Celsus, a critic of Christianity, labeled God a “cosmic cook.”[1] Celsus was referring to the Christian doctrine of hell.  He mocked Christianity because it portrayed God as a “cosmic cook” who was going to roast unbelievers in a fiery hell.  And for this reason, and others, Celsus could not embrace the Christian faith.

On Sunday mornings we are exploring this problem of hell.  For many the doctrine of hell is troubling.  It keeps some from even considering Christianity.  Specifically, we are exploring four concerns that people have about the traditional doctrine of hell.

• Last Sunday we looked at the reality of hell.  The problem is put this way: Hell is fabricated.  Some believe hell is just made up by preachers and churches.
• We’ll look at the capacity of hell.  For many, the traditional Christian teaching means there’s just going to be too many people in hell who do not deserve to go there.  The problem is put this way: Hell is overcrowded.
• We’ll look at the eternality of hell.  For many, the thought of people suffering forever seems cruel.  The problem is put this way: Hell is unrelenting.
• And we’ll look at the severity of hell.

That’s where we begin this morning.  Many people have a problem with the severity of hell. Hell seems too unloving.  It seems too barbaric.  It comes down to this question: How could a loving God treat people in such an unloving way?

What I want to say at the outset is this: Some problematic pieces of hell’s severity are not found in the Bible. When the average person thinks of hell, she may think of images that do not come from the Bible.  Instead, they come from movies, art, philosophy or non-biblical literature.  Before we can truly understand the severity of hell, and attempt to reconcile it with the notion of a loving God, we need to first empty our minds of many of these others images.

I’ll illustrate some of the non-biblical images that have endured for centuries.[2] From the second to the fourth centuries, Christians created descriptions of hell that were unbelievably gruesome.  For example, in Christian literature from this time period we find blasphemers in hell hanging by their tongues.  There are adulterous women in hell who hang by their hair over a boiling pit.  There are slanderers who have hot irons burning out their eyes.  Idolaters are driven up cliffs by demons and then they plunge to the rocks below, only to be driven up again.  These were some of the images used to describe hell in the second through fourth centuries.

In the fourteenth century, Italian poet Dante Alighieri published his Divine Comedy.  He imagined a hell as a place filled with the loud wails of sinners boiling in blood and people running from hordes of biting snakes. In Dante’s hell, some remain forever trapped in encasements made of lead.

We must recognize those descriptions are man-made and cannot be found in the Bible. What many people think of when they think of hell comes from works like these.  It doesn’t come from the Bible.  When someone says “I don’t believe in God/the Bible because I don’t believe in hell,” we might say, “Tell me about the hell you don’t believe in, because it may not be the hell found in the Bible.”  When people object to the severity of hell, they may be objecting to images like the ones I’ve just described.  That doesn’t necessarily mean the Bible’s portrayal of hell is not severe.  It is severe.  But we need to be sure that the severity in mind is the one the Bible discusses.

What then, does the Bible actually say?  And how do we reconcile its severe images with the love of God?  The Bible describes hell’s severity in three images: fire, weeping, and darkness. The two dominant images are fire and darkness.  When the Bible portrays the actual punishment of hell, it is framed in these two images: fire and darkness.  Weeping is the result of the fire and darkness.

The Jews in Jesus’ day used these three images when describing hell.  Jesus affirmed their usefulness in his own teaching.[3] Here are a couple of examples from Matthew 13. As Jesus tells a parable about “wheat” and “weeds,” He says: “³⁰ Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’” (v. 30) Jesus goes on to explain: “⁴⁰ Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. ⁴¹The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, ⁴² and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. .”   Jesus describes hell as fire and weeping.

Jesus also uses the image of darkness.  In Matthew 8, He says: ¹¹ I tell you, many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, ¹² while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness.  In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (vv. 11–12).

Thus, for Jesus, hell could be described as a place filled with fire.  It could also be described as place filled with darkness.  Both the fire and the darkness lead to weeping and gnashing of teeth.  These are the three most common images used in the Bible to describe the severity of hell.

Oddly, the two main images are contradictory.  If a place is filled with fire, that means it is filled with the light of that fire.  There can be no darkness.  But if a place is filled with darkness, that means no light is present.  Thus there can be no fire.  If these images are literal, they describe something that cannot exist.  This is our first hint that there’s more to these images than we might have imagined.

The Bible uses these images symbolically.  Many of us already recognize the Bible’s use of symbolism when it comes to the opposite of hell—heaven.[4] For example, in Revelation 21 heaven is described as having “a great, high wall with twelve gates” (21:12).  Today we would never describe a great city—like Paris, for example—as having walls and gates. But in the ancient world, every major city had walls.  Until the time of gunpowder, cities were surrounded with thick walls and sturdy gates.  Thus Jesus and John used that language to help the earliest Christians get a sense of what heaven is like.  This description doesn’t necessarily mean heaven literally has walls and gates.  These are symbols used to help us see that heaven is going to be secure and protected.

The same is true regarding the images of fire and darkness used to describe hell.  As I mentioned earlier, these two images are somewhat contradictory.  Fire and darkness are mutually exclusive.  And Jesus is not the only one to hold these two images in tension.  Jude describes hell as “eternal fire” in verse 7, and then depicts it as the “blackest darkness” in verse 13.  The writers of the Bible aren’t necessarily telling us that hell is literally filled with fire and that it’s also literally filled with darkness.  That would be impossible.  They are using these images to help us see something about the severity of hell.

Consider, for example, the third image: weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Mark Goodacre is a professor of New Testament at Duke.[5] He tells of Irish comedian Dave Allen.  Allen had a well-known piece about preachers: “In Ireland you get the fire and brimstone preaching.  ‘I will tell you about the great judgment day!’  ‘I will tell you on that day the great book will be opened and all your sins will be on that book!’  ‘And the Lord will banish the wicked and there will be a great weeping and gnashing of teeth.’  At that point in the sermon, an old woman on the front says, ‘I don’t have any teeth.’  The preacher screams:  ‘Teeth will be provided!’” It’s a funny attempt to be very literal with Jesus’ description of hell.  In fact, Princeton professor Paul Coleman-Norton once published a scholarly paper professing to find a previously unknown fragment of the Bible.  With tongue in cheek, Coleman-Norton said he found a fragment from Matt. 24 which contained a previously undiscovered dialogue with Jesus.  It occurs just after Jesus has described hell as a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth.  A disciple asks, “How can these things be if they be toothless?” Jesus replies, “Thou of little faith, trouble not thyself.  If happily they will be lacking any, teeth will be provided.”  It is, again, a humorous way of pointing out that Jesus’ language was less than literal.  He did not mean that people would literally gnash their teeth in hell.  It is a symbol for immense grief and regret.  Likewise, the images of hell and darkness are images of something else.  To explain, I’m going to build off of last Sunday’s message.

The darkness of hell points to relationship and role being removed. Last Sunday I mentioned that hell as banishment is the elimination of relationship with God.  Hell as destruction was the elimination of our purpose or role in the cosmos.  And the darkness of hell points to both of these.  Darkness is us being totally removed from relationship with God and never truly in relationship with another human again.  In other words, hell is that place where relationship with God and others is fully severed.  Darkness symbolizes this.  It is the darkness of being profoundly alone.

And darkness is also us having no purpose, no role, never being able to fulfill the reason for which we were created.  It is that excruciatingly sad circumstance in which we are no longer given the chance to fulfill any higher purpose or pursue any grander scheme in life.  Darkness symbolizes that we’ve lost our usefulness and we’ve been discarded.

C. S. Lewis wrote, ““There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.“  If, during our life, our will has been to live without relationship with God and without genuine relationships with others, then God will finally say, “Thy will be done.”  He will banish us.  And hell will be the dark absence of any life-giving relationship with him or others.  It will be the darkness of being forever isolated and abandoned.  And if, during our life, our will has been to not fulfill our greater purpose, to not play our kingdom role on earth, God will finally say, “Thy will be done.”  And hell will be the dark absence of any larger purpose or role in life.  It will be the darkness of having no meaning at all to your existence.

This darkness is not the result of a blood-thirsty and vindictive God.  It is the result of a God who finally gives us what we’ve already chosen.  We’ve already chosen darkness in this life.  Hell will be an extension of that choice—but to a degree we can hardly even imagine.

Thus the darkness of hell points to two of the three points I made at the end of last Sunday’s sermon: hell as banishment and hell as destruction.  The fire of hell also points to the third element: hell as punishment.  The fire of hell points to justice being released. The fire of hell signifies God’s delivering of justice.  All the wrongs that have gone unpunished are finally punished in hell.

In his book Simply Christian, N. T. Wright says that there is a fundamental human longing for justice.^[6] This hunger for justice is found in every culture and in every generation.  It exists because there is so often a lack of justice in our world.

And the fire of hell points to that justice finally being released.  It is the fulfillment of what humans have dreamed of for millennia.  Rob Bell points to this in his book Love Wins.[7] He shows that the Old Testament prophets dreamed of this time of justice.  Bell writes, “Their description of life in the age to come is both thrilling and unnerving at the same time. For the earth to be free of anything destructive or damaging, certain things have to be banished. Decisions have to be made. Judgments have to be rendered. And so they spoke of a cleansing, purging, decisive day when God would make those judgments. They called this day the “day of the LORD.” The day when God says “ENOUGH!” to anything that threatens the peace (shalom is the Hebrew word), harmony, and health that God intends for the world. God says no to injustice. God says, “Never again” to the oppressors who prey on the weak and vulnerable… And that’s what the fire of hell points.  It is God finally saying “Enough!”  It’s God finally releasing that justice longed for by so many.

And while it might be hard to reconcile the images at the beginning of this sermon with the love of God, it is not that way with these images of fire, darkness, and weeping.  The severity of hell does not disprove but rather proves the love of God. Miroslav Volf, a Christian theologian from Croatia, used to reject the concept of God’s wrath.[8] He thought that the idea of an angry God was barbaric, completely unworthy of a God of love. But then his country experienced a brutal war. People committed terrible atrocities.  And suddenly, he realized that the wrath of God was necessary.  He writes this in his book Free of Charge: My last resistance to the idea of God’s wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come. According to some estimates, 200,000 people were killed and over 3,000,000 were displaced. My villages and cities were destroyed, my people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry.  Or think of Rwanda in the last decade of the past century, where 800,000 people were hacked to death in one hundred days! How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandfatherly fashion? By refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators’ basic goodness? Wasn’t God fiercely angry with them?  Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God’s wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn’t wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil. God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love. Only an unloving God would refuse to release justice.  Thus, rather than disproving God’s love, the fire of hell actually proves his love.  It’s God finally delivering what so many so desperately need.

Timothy Keller refers to author Becky Pippert:[9] “Becky Pippert writes, ‘Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers? Far from it…. Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.’ Pippert then quotes E. H. Gifford, ‘Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.’ She concludes: ‘If I, a flawed, narcissistic, sinful woman, can feel this much pain and anger over someone’s condition, how much more a morally perfect God who made them? God’s wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer of sin which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being.’”  God’s love necessitates the darkness and fire of hell.  Because God loves us, he will not force us to choose relationship with him or force us to choose his role for our lives.  He wants us to freely choose those things.  Thus, in the end, his love necessitates letting us have what we’ve chosen.  And God’s love will not stand by forever while injustice overwhelms the human race.  His love demands that eventually this injustice be dealt with.  His love requires finally dealing with the cancer of sin. The darkness and fire both bring us back to the love of God.

I want to close each of these lessons with three brief words of application.  Here they are: Hell stirs our mission, spurs our maturity, but does not summarize our message.

First, hell does not summarize our message.  Last month Kendra and I ate dinner with parents of a girl on Jordan’s volleyball team.  When the father learned I was a preacher, he told me a religious story (that happens a lot).  He said that one day when his son was about ten years old, the son came home weeping.  “What’s wrong?” the father asked.  Through tears the son said he had been talking to a neighbor.  The neighbor was a very devout Christian.  And the neighbor said this to the ten-year old boy: “You’re going to hell.”  Because the boy was not a devout Christian, the neighbor felt it critical to warn the boy of hell.  Hell is very important.  But it’s not what we lead with.  It’s doesn’t summarize our message.  The word gospel means “good news.”  Our message and our faith is primarily about good news, the love of God.

But second, because hell is a severe reality, it ought to stir our mission. There are millions of people in danger of the darkness and fire of hell.  We must do all we can to help them experience a different future in Christ.  Hell stirs our mission.

And finally, because hell is a severe reality, it ought to spur us toward greater spiritual maturity. There should be no greater priority in our own lives than to grow in our relationship with God, in fulfilling our role in his kingdom, and in praising him for the one who went through hell so that we never would.

[2] Ibid., 46-48.

[3] Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle, Erasing Hell (David C Cook, 2011), 50-74.

[4] Crockett, 54-61.

[5] http://podacre.blogspot.com/2010/08/nt-pod-40-teeth-will-be-provided-joke.html

[6] N. T. Wright Simply Christianity (Harper One, 2006).

[7] Rob Bell, Love Wins (HarperCollins, 2011), 32-38.

[8] Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge (Zondervan, 2006), 138-139.

[9] Timothy Kellerin Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, editors, Is Hell Real or Does Everyone Go to Heaven? (Zondervan, 2011) Kindle Edition, 1201-1212.

When we stop seeking you, God, we start serving ourselves.

I’ve seen it again and again. 

Person after person marginalizes you.  And before long, they marginalize those around them.

We simply do not love neighbor when we do not first love you.

When we write you out of our Story everyone suffers.

Especially you.

[image]

 A life without you God

is like a tree without roots.

Trusting in possessions and power

is like trusting in a dry and dusty creek.

 But a life with you God

is like a tree with deep roots.

Trusting in your constant and steady love

is like trusting in a cold and steady stream.

[images]

I’m going to read some words out loud.  As I read these words, picture in your mind the person who first spoke them.  Try to imagine his face.  Picture the forehead, the eyebrows, the eyes, the lips, the teeth, and the skin color.  Is he happy?  Is he sad?  Is he mad?  Here are his words:

“…woe to you…hypocrites!  For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.”

“Woe to you…hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.”

“Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing, but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ You blind fools!…”

“Woe to you…hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!”

“Woe to you…hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence….First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.”

“Woe to you…hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”

When you picture the person who first spoke those words, what do you see?  Do you see a forehead creased in frustration?  Eyebrows bent in anger?  Eyes narrowed in wrath?  Lips stretched thin and teeth clenched with fury?  Skin bright red with rage?

I wouldn’t blame you if that’s the image that came to mind.  Because these are hard words aren’t they?  They hurt.  They cut.  And when we hear hard words, we picture them coming from a hard person.  We assume that radical words like these must come from a wrathful and raging individual.

I saw this in a humorous way over Spring Break.  We were staying at my niece’s house in Tempe, Arizona.  My niece is a six year old girl named Brianna.  One night I watched Brianna walk into the kitchen, get a prepackaged cup of applesauce, rip the top off, and then walk back into the living room with the applesauce.  Having sat down on the couch, she proceeded to lap the applesauce like a dog.  Her grandmother took her by the arm into the kitchen and said, “No, Brianna.  You are not going to lap applesauce like a dog.  No.”  To a six year old, “No” is a hard word, isn’t it?  It’s a cutting word.  And Brianna responded in this way: with arms crossed, eyebrows down, eyes tearing, and lips pouting, she said, “Why is everyone always so mean to me?”

When we hear hard words we assume they are coming from a hard person.  And that can be the case with the words I read earlier.  Those words come from Jesus in Matt. 23.  They’ve been the topic of our five week series called Masquerade.  And when we hear these hard words, it’s tempting to imagine that they come from a hard Savior.  We may wonder, “Why is Jesus being so mean to me?”

And what is our response to hard words from hard people?  Recent events in the Middle East illustrate what we humans tend to do in the face of hard words.[1] What do we do?  We revolt.  We protest.  Hard words from hard people lead to passionate protest.

• For example, in Yemen protestors are calling for the ouster of their President who has ruled since 1978.  The protestors cite government corruption and lack of political freedom.
• In Libya, protestors have run a defiant Gadhafi out of power because of high unemployment and a lack of freedom.
• Citizens of Tunisia recently removed their President from power due to corruption and political repression.
• In Egypt, demonstrators forced President Mubarak from office.  They were angry over lack of free elections, high food prices, low wages, and high unemployment.

Again and again, people living in the Middle East have faced hard word from hard Presidents, hard Prime Ministers, hard dictators and hard leaders.  The response has been revolt.  The response has been insurrection.  Hard words from hard people often lead to passionate protest.

That is exactly how some of Jesus’ original listeners responded to him.  When they heard Jesus’ hard words, they rioted and revolted against Jesus.  Here’s how Jesus describes it: “29Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, 30saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. 33You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? 34 Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, 35so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. 36Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. 37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” (Matt. 23:29-37 ESV).

Jesus gives a little history lesson here.  It’s called “React 101: How Religious People Respond to Hard Words.”  Jesus starts way back in the Old Testament with what his listeners would call “the days of our fathers.”  Their forefathers were faced with some teachers called prophets.  Prophets typically come with challenging words from God.  And how did those forefathers react to those prophets?  Jesus says they shed the blood of the prophets.  They murdered the prophets.  That’s how violently they reacted to the hard words coming from the prophets.  They revolted. They ignored the message and they killed the messengers.  Historically, hard words from hard people lead to passionate protest.

Then, based on this little history lesson, Jesus makes a prediction.  Jesus talks about how he and God are going to send people whom he calls “prophets and wise men and scribes.”  Jesus is probably referring her to his own followers.  Jesus is going to send his followers to preach his message after he dies and is raised from the dead.  Some of those followers will carry some pretty hard words.  And Jesus predicts how his current audience will react to those hard words.  Jesus says some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town. The people who will soon hear the hard words of Jesus’ followers will repeat history.  They will do exactly what their own forefathers did when God sent prophets to them.  They will riot and revolt against those hard words.

Finally, Jesus turns from just the scribes and Pharisees whom he has been addressing and looks over the entire city of Jerusalem.  And Jesus laments, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” The city of Jerusalem is caught up in the same violent response.  Every time God sends messengers to that city with hard words, the people of that city kill them and stone them.  Hard words from hard people often spark passionate protest.

Timothy Keller writes that the Bible is filled with hard words, no matter what culture you are from.[2] Many of us read a certain passage of Scripture and say, “That’s so regressive, so offensive.” But we ought to entertain the idea that maybe we feel that way because in our particular culture that text is a problem. In other cultures that passage might not come across as regressive or offensive.  Let’s look at just one example. In individualistic, Western societies, we read the Bible, and we have a problem with what it says about sex. But then we read what the Bible says about forgiveness—”forgive your enemy;” “forgive your brother seventy times seven;” “turn the other cheek;” “when your enemy asks for your shirt, give him your cloak as well”—and we say, “How wonderful!” It’s because we are driven by a culture of guilt. But if you were to go to the Middle East, they would think that what the Bible has to say about sex is pretty good. (Actually, they might feel it’s not strict enough!) But when they would read what the Bible says about forgiving your enemies, it would strike them as absolutely crazy. It’s because their culture is…more of a shame culture than a guilt culture…If the Bible really was the revelation of God, and therefore it wasn’t the product of any one culture, wouldn’t it contradict every culture at some point?…Therefore when you read the Bible, and you find some part of it outrageous and offensive, that’s proof that it’s probably true…”

No matter what culture you live in, you will be offended by some words in the Bible.  You will find some of those words hard to hear.  And that often leads us to engage in our own little revolution.  Our own little protest.  We don’t go around murdering and stoning the Bible’s messengers as Jesus’ audience did.  But we have our own ways of protesting the tough words of Scripture.

One of our most common strategies of protest is to simply ignore Scripture.  When the Bible becomes too offensive or too cutting or too regressive and backwards, we protest by simply ignoring it.  We shut its cover and refuse to open it.   In her book Amazing Grace, the writer and poet Kathleen Norris shares what she calls “the scariest story” she’s ever heard about a Bible.[3] Norris and her husband were visiting a man named Arlo.  Arlo started talking about his grandfather, a sincere Christian. The grandfather gave Arlo and his bride a wedding present.  It was an expensive leather Bible with their names printed in gold lettering.  But Arlo had no use for Scripture.  He didn’t care for the Bible.  He either found its words irrelevant or offensive.  But either way, Arlo left that wedding present in the box and never opened it.  For months afterwards his grandfather kept asking Arlo if he liked the Bible. Eventually Arlo got tired of the grandfather asking.  So, strictly out of curiosity one day, he opened that Bible.  Arlo said, “I finally took that Bible out of the closet and I found that granddad had placed a twenty-dollar bill at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, and at the beginning of every book … over thirteen hundred dollars in all. And he knew I’d never find it.”  Sometimes our strongest response to the hardness and sharpness of Scripture is to just keep the covers shut.  But ironically, when we do, we miss what is truly meant as a gift from someone who loves us.

And that’s where Jesus seeks to lead us this morning.  When we first hear these words from Matt. 23 their hardness makes us assume that Jesus is hard.  And our gut response is to revolt.  To protest.  To shut the cover and listen no more.  But Jesus seeks to move us far beyond that initial reaction.  Notice the end of our text this morning.  37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!” (Matt. 23:37 ESV).  Jesus does something remarkable here.  He transforms our image of him.  If we imagined him vengeful and raging and hate-filled, he paints just the opposite image.  His paint comes from the songs and poetry of ancient Israel.  Jesus dips his brush in the book of Psalms.  One of the favorite images of God in the Psalms is God as a bird who protects his people under his strong wings:

• Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings… (Psalm 17:8 ESV)
• How precious is your steadfast love, O God!  The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. (Psalm 36:7 ESV)
• Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by. (Psalm 57:1 ESV)
• Let me dwell in your tent forever!  Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings! (Psalm 61:4 ESV).
• for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. (Psalm 63:7 ESV)

Jesus tosses out the stern portrait we may have in our minds as a result of his hard words.  And he dips his brush in the book of Psalms and paints us a newer and truer portrait of himself.  Jesus describes himself as a hen or bird protecting her chicks with her outstretched wings.  Even though Jesus knows that his listeners will respond to his hard words by killing him, he nonetheless shows himself to be the loving and tender mother who only wants to protect her chicks from all harm and all evil.

Barbara Brown Taylor explains the tenderness of this image:[4] “On the western slope of the Mount of Olives, just across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem, sits a small chapel…According to tradition, it was here that Jesus wept over the city that had refused his ministrations…Down below, on the front of the altar…is a mosaic medallion of a white hen with a golden halo around her head. Her…wings are spread wide to shelter the pale yellow chicks that crowd around her feet…The medallion is rimmed with red words in Latin. Translated into English they read, “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!” Brown then imagines the rest of this scene: “In the absence of a mother hen, some of the chicks have taken to following the fox around. Others are huddled out in the open where anything with claws can get to them. Across the valley, a white hen with a gold halo around her head is clucking for all she is worth. Most of the chicks cannot hear her, and the ones that do make no response. They no longer recognize her voice. They have forgotten who they are.  If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world –wings spread, breast exposed… Given the number of animals available, it is curious that Jesus chooses a hen…What about the mighty eagle of Exodus, or Hosea’s stealthy leopard? What about the proud lion of Judah, mowing down his enemies with a roar? Compared to any of those, a mother hen does not inspire much confidence….But a hen is what Jesus chooses…What he will be is a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm. She has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles. All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body. If the fox wants them, he will have to kill her first.  Which he does, as it turns out. He slides up on her one night in the yard while all the babies are asleep. When her cry wakens them, they scatter. She dies the next day where both foxes and chickens can see her — wings spread, breast exposed — without a single chick beneath her feathers.”

That’s a very different image isn’t it?  Nothing hard.  Nothing stern.  This is a tender, loving, self-giving, compassionate and vulnerable image.  That’s who is speaking these hard words.  That’s who has delivered this sermon of Matt. 23.  Not a raging lunatic.  But a devoted mother ready to die for those to whom he speaks.  Hard words from a loving Lord.

And that image of Jesus ought to impact what we do with these hard words.  That image of Jesus ought to keep us from passionate protest.  Instead, it ought to lead us to passionate practice.  Hard words from a loving Lord lead to passionate practice. Jesus delivers this agonizing sermon because he adores us.  He longs for us to experience real religion.  He wants to keep us from the fox of fraudulent faith.  He knows that fox is out to get us.  That fox looks harmless.  But the faith of the frauds has sharp teeth and a ravenous appetite.  And Jesus speaks these words because he wants to keep us from that fox.

This section of Matt. 23 is like the end of Matt. 7.  In Matt. 7 Jesus ends his Sermon on the Mount by urging us to not just hear his words, but to put them into practice.  Jesus says if you do that you are like a wise man who builds his house on the rock.  Storms come but the rock and the house stand.  Jesus ends his sermon on the religion of the real by urging us to practice his words.  And Jesus ends his sermon on the faith of the frauds in Matt. 23 in the same way.  He is urging us to practice these words.  But he wants to make sure we understand who’s issuing the invitation.  It’s not a dictator.  It’s not a tyrant.  It’s a loving Lord with arms open wide ready to protect even if it means dying.

In his book The Bible Jesus Read Philip Yancey writes that in Jesus’ day sometimes fires would sweep through the land and destroy farms.[5] In the aftermath the farmer would find the scorched bodies of hens, wings outstretched.  As the farmer kicked the corpse aside, chicks would scurry out, alive.  The mother had sacrificed herself to save the chicks.  That’s the one who’s spoken these hard words.  These words are his attempt to save our life.  These words are his attempt to rescue us from the fox and the fire.  They are words of love.  So do not protest against them.  Rather, practice them.  Embrace them.  Go and live them out.

[2] Tim Keller, in the sermon Literalism: Isn’t the Bible Historically Unreliable and Regressive?, PreachingToday.com.

[3] Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (Riverhead Books, 1998), 95.

[4] Barbara Brown Taylor, “As a Hen Gathers Her Brood,” The Christian Century (February 25, 1986), 201; http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=638.

[5] Philip Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read (Zondervan), 210.

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Sometimes, Lord, I am expected to sing praises.  But all I can manage are the blues.

Sometimes I am expected to forgive.  But all I want is revenge.

Sometimes I am expected to bloom where I’m planted.  But all I want is to be uprooted and planted somewhere else.

Most of the time I fall short of your expectations.

But even then, I know your presence remains and your love abides.

You are more than I could ever expect.

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 One thing I know for sure, Lord–your passion for people perseveres.

It was your passion for people that drove you to craft humankind and create our home.

It was your passion for people that compelled you choose and champion a nation that would bless all nations.

It is your passion for people that led you to put food on my plate this morning.

We’ve stabbed you, scorned you, and saddened you.  At times we’ve given up on you.  We even tried to kill you.  But your love has lingered.

One thing I know for sure, Lord–your passion for people perseveres.

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The names and faces of my friends.  That’s one of the highest things, Lord, on my list of what’s good in life.

There’s nothing more pleasant than knowing I’m not on this journey alone.

My friends are a source of refreshment and renewal.

I count them as one of your greatest and most abundant blessings.

Thank you God for friends.

My words are few today, Lord.

Rather than speak to you, I seek only to be with you.

I calm myself.  I quiet myself. 

Like a young child sitting contentedly with his mother, I sit contentedly with you.

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Lord, I’m standing at the bottom of the sin-hole I’ve dug.  The walls of shame stretch upward forever.  The darkness of my deeds envelopes me.  I am so far from you!

And this isn’t my first visit here.  You could shove a foot-thick report in my face detailing all the other times I’ve succeeded in doing what’s wrong and failed in doing what’s right.  I’ve been in this pit more times than I can count.

But what’s more unbelievable than my mess is your mercy.  You are a God of unfailing love. Again and again you reach down and lift me out.  Even now I can see the light of your love shining in this horrible hole.

My sin is deep.  Your grace is even deeper.  Even here, way down here, your grace reaches me.

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