Sermon Seeds: Warning

Sunday, March 16, 2025
Second Sunday in Lent Sunday | Year C
(Liturgical Color: Violet)

Lectionary Citations
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 • Psalm 27 • Philippians 3:17-4:1 • Luke 13:31-35 or Luke 9:28-36, (37-43a)
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?z=l&d=26&y=384

Focus Scripture: Luke 13:31-35
Focus Theme: Warning
Series: Sound the Alarm: Toward Good Friday (Click here for the series overview.)

Reflection
By Cheryl A. Lindsay

Warnings may come from several sources and address a multitude of situations. Weather alerts encourage caution when the meteorological elements threaten the safety of life and landscape in a geographical area. From hurricanes to drought, the actual conditions remain outside of our control yet warnings enable us to respond proactively and retroactively to mitigate our risks. Other warnings also serve to protect by influencing ongoing behaviors. Labels on cigarettes come to mind. Other warnings may be more personal. An elderly family member may share familial history as a warning when they observe generational patterns at work in the present day.

Warnings originate from a position of concern informed by knowledge. Sometimes, people ignore warnings because they lack trust or they doubt the information they receive. The person receiving the warning may have additional information the person offering the warning does not. The reverse may also be true, and the warning is rejected from a place of ignorance, arrogance, or denial.

The unfortunate truth about warnings forces us to contend with the reality that what is a warning toward one group may be considered good news to another. The deepening and widening political divide illustrates that on a daily basis. Anti-abortion advocates cheered the dismantling of the precedent and protections of Roe v. Wade while others mourned and raged against the loss of body autonomy and invasion of privacy. Segregationists and white supremacists decried the progress made through the Civil Rights Movement and the Voting Rights Act that enabled millions to finally have access to the right to vote and the pursuit of happiness promised in the Declaration of Independence, a document written in the ink of hypocrisy while holding a vision of democracy that even today captures the hopes of the oppressed. Each of these scenarios remind us that warnings must be evaluated based on truth, risks, and values.

The gospel narrative also supports that reminder. Jesus proclaimed good news to the poor, marginalized, oppressed, lost, and broken. When we position ourselves as the beneficiaries of the message of hope, redemption, and restoration, we may delude ourselves into believing that the Holy One comes to suit our needs…whatever they may be. The prosperity gospel serves as one of the most recent and obvious examples of the gospel being perverted in order to justify actions and attitudes out of alignment with the will of God and the way of the kindom. White Christian Nationalism, in all of its historical iterations, continues to manipulate and mutilate the gospel for its own unjustifiable and evil ends. Jesus demonstrates power, courage, and conviction in response to the threats of his day that we may adopt as a model as we confront the threats in our times.

In an ironic twist, the warning Jesus receives comes from a group of people that Jesus has warned his followers to consider with caution. Despite the unlikely source of the warning, Jesus listens. His response is based, however, on the fullness of his knowledge and goals.

Verse 31 binds this scene to the preceding picture of status reversal in the realm of God: “That very hour some Pharisees approached.” In their last appearance in the narrative, Pharisees listened to Jesus’ rebuke of their status seeking (11:43), among other less-than-admirable qualities, culminating in a caution to the disciples about the hypocrisy of Pharisees (12:1). So the image of “last-first, first-last” reversal in 13:30 forms a fitting transition to the Pharisees’ return appearance. (Luke 14:1–24 will continue to develop these connections among Pharisees, status- and honor-seeking, meals, and the reign of God.) Despite escalating conflict between Jesus and this character group, some of their number approach Jesus out of apparent sympathy, warning him that Herod (i.e., Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee) desires to have him killed (13:31). In view of past hostility between Jesus and Pharisees, it is conceivable that they have concocted the threat as a ruse to remove Jesus from their turf: “Go out; depart from here!” (see Tiede, Prophecy 71–73; Darr, Character Building 106; Johnson 218, 220–21). Whatever uncertainty may arise from Jesus’ past appraisal of the Pharisees’ insincerity, Luke’s audience will nevertheless find the warning plausible, in view of Herod’s desire to see Jesus and his brutal execution of the prophet John (9:7–9; cf. 3:19–20). Luke neither identifies the source of the Pharisees’ information nor directly evaluates it here.
John T. Carroll

Jesus does not automatically discount the Pharisees approach based on his prior experience with them. His warnings about them were to be cautious, even suspicious, but not to completely disassociate with them. Had he taken that stance, he and his companions would not have heard their warning at what Luke positions as a critical moment in his journey. Further, he would have treated those with good intentions in the same way as those with hidden agendas. Jesus exemplifies compassionate discernment in his openness to sympathetic members of a problematic group.

At the same time, his response remains true to his character and conviction. Jesus has no fear of Herod and wants his supporters, sympathetic allies, and even eavesdropping enemies to know that. Calling him a “fox,” Jesus issues his own warning to Herod. No one can derail his plans, which accounted for the risk to his life. Jesus knows that his ministry threatens the systems of power in the reigning empire and has chosen to continue to expand the kindom despite the peril associated with this ministry that continues the tradition of rejected prophets who have proclaimed good news as a blessing to many and a warning to others.

Still in the voice of Jesus, vv. 34–35 advance from the assertion that a prophet’s destiny awaits Jesus in Jerusalem to a lament that ties the Holy City’s destiny to its response to this prophet. The double address of the lament, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” heightens its poignancy, although the weeping that accompanies such a lament is delayed until the city is in view (19:41). A fox like Herod poses no real threat to Jesus, but the same cannot be said for a hen’s vulnerable chicks. Jesus has longed to gather Jerusalem’s children to himself, drawing them, as it were, to safety under his metaphorical hen’s wings (13:34). He is, after all, in the deliverance business. But Jerusalem is the city that kills God’s prophets and stones those whom God sends to it (some of Jesus’ own followers among them: see Acts 7:59–60; cf. James’s death at the behest of “Herod the king” [Agrippa I] in 12:1–2 AT). The city has therefore rebuffed—or will soon rebuff—Jesus’ offer of succor (divine visitation, as he will put it in Luke 19:44). So Jerusalem, pictured as a household (oikos),44 is henceforth desolate, bereft of the divine presence (13:35a). What this passage hints, Jesus will later state explicitly: the city that repudiates God’s visitation, forsaken (by God), will with its children meet destruction (19:43–44; 21:20–24; 23:28–31).
John T. Carroll

Empire has long attempted to co-opt the church for its own purposes. Too many within the Body of Christ have been complicit or complacent as the transformative, liberative, and radical message of the gospel has been diminished, demeaned, and dismantled. Too many faith communities have shifted attention from the work of expanding the kindom and being good news in the world to being preoccupied with self-preservation and becoming increasingly insular.

The biblical narrative testifies that this is not the first set of generations to struggle with faithfulness to God in light of the demands of empire and culture. The psalmist declares, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” Apostle Paul reminds the church at Philippi and the church today, “But our citizenship is in heaven.” (Philippians 3:20a) Empire cannot receive the allegiance of a faithful community rooted in the love and life of Christ, and may those who trust in the Holy One be as bold and fearless as Jesus in declaring the will of God to the agents of human power. Go tell that.

Warning.

Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent
The 33rd General Synod adopted a Resolution to Recognize the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). As part of its implementation, Sermon and Weekly Seeds offers Reflection from Voices of People of African Descent related to the season or overall theme for additional consideration in sermon preparation and for individual and congregational study.
“won’t you celebrate with me”
By Lucille Clifton
Toggle annotations
won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

For Further Reflection
“Just take this as a warning. Know that there’s always a price for not being yourself.” ― Benilde Little
“… truth, whose mother is history, who is the rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, example and lesson to the present, and warning to the future.” ― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
“I may do some good before I am dead–be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.” ― Thomas Hardy

Works Cited
Carroll, John T. Luke. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012.

Suggested Congregational Response to the Reflection
During the season of Lent, let us take on practices that strengthen our communal capacities. Consider the threats of complacency and complicity to your faith community as witnesses and agents of the gospel.

Worship Ways Liturgical Resources
https://www.ucc.org/worship-way/lent-2c-march-16/

The Rev. Dr. Cheryl A. Lindsay, Minister for Worship and Theology (lindsayc@ucc.org), also serves a local church pastor, public theologian, and worship scholar-practitioner with a particular interest in the proclamation of the word in gathered communities. You’re invited to share your reflections on this text in the comments on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SermonSeeds.

A Bible study version of this reflection is at Weekly Seeds.