Reimagine Devotion

In a Glance

In this message inspired by Luke 13:34, I reflect on Jesus’ haunting lament – “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often have I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!” The message draws parallels between the unwavering love of a parent and God’s persistent call for humanity to return and be saved, exploring themes of hypocrisy, redemption, and the enduring bond between God and God’s people.

Watch the Live Video

Read the Biblical Texts First: Matthew 23:1-12 & Luke 13:31-34.

Message Text

Note: This is the raw text that I preach from. It is minimally edited, written for speaking, not reading, and will differ from the live video recording – for whatever that’s worth.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!”

This vivid, rather tragic, and haunting passage that has always captivated me.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often have I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34)

You know, all the vivid details aside, I think what makes this passage stick so in the mind is the tone in which Jesus speaks here, particularly the fact that is Jesus speaking in that tone. There’s this edge of desperation inside the grief of this passage. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. The desperation of a parent who just cannot think of anything else to try—or, perhaps, even beyond that. A parent who, at least deep down, knows there is nothing left to try, that what has been done is indeed beyond remedy, that every avenue has been exhausted, that the child will never change.

But what then?

Is there ever a time when the parent truly gives up on the child?

I’ve been watching a lot of true crime documentaries recently—which hasn’t been fantastic for my ability to sleep through the night, but… What can I say, they’re mesmerizing. And the parts that I find most fascinating are the reactions of the families—not of the victims, but of the people who do these terrible things. The parents, the siblings, the really close friends… And what I see over and over again is that even in the most horrendous of crimes, these people who, once all the facts are laid out, it becomes clear these aren’t just ordinary people pushed to some kind of limit—the very reason these particular cases among all the cases in this country and across the world even qualify for true crime documentary status is because there’s something extra going on in these people’s brains, there is a pattern of behavior in their personalities and surrounding these types of crimes that shows these are not ordinary people, that they probably qualify diagnostically and clinically as at least some form of psychopath or sociopath—that is people who are emotionally detached from reality, who like children born with a missing limb, were born without the ability to truly empathize, or who, like amputees, somehow, for some reason, lose that ability later in life—people who are then driven by their own broken psychology to see other people as disposable things…

But even in these extreme cases, the healthy people in these stories, the families, parents and siblings, over and over again I see that even when it comes to the worst possible examples of humanity on this earth, those bonds, blood relationships and close, long time friendships, are never actually broken.

And in watching enough of these documentaries—which again is maybe not the healthiest thing for me to do—but watching enough of these documentaries, I have noticed these patterns emerge. The families of these criminals seem to consistently fall into three categories.

There is, (1) the category of family members who will just never accept the truth, who spend years and decades and entire lifetimes maintaining that their family member is in fact innocent, even when guilt has been established beyond any reasonable doubt—or, who know their family member is guilty, but find ways to justify or rationalize what they have done. Sometimes this goes so far as the family becoming somehow complicit with the crime itself, particularly with the covering it all up part of the crime.

And then there are two categories of family members who do accept the truth.

The first are those families who accept the truth and cannot move on from it cannot forgive cannot live with what has happened sometimes literally. These are the people who cut all ties with the criminal family member, never speak to that person again, cut ties even with other family members who do not cut ties, sometimes…

And this is not an example of the bond between family dissolving because of these terrible crimes… and I don’t think it’s even an example of families giving up on each other because of these crimes. This Is what happens when the bond remains and becomes a poison that cannot be walked away from.

But there’s another example of how this can play out another category that families who do accept the truth about their loved one’s actions. The family members who see it, acknowledge reality, try to understand without justifying or covering anything up, who maintain whatever degree of contact is healthy, and who ultimately move on with their own lives.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you!”

Which one of these categories, what type of parent of the criminal, is Jesus proving to be, here, as he speaks about the tragedy of Jerusalem?

Now this is not an isolated expression in the bible. This same sentiment recurs, spoken by God, again and again and again. To prove it, I have a whole list here which I got from searching for just one phrase related to this passage:

And what I mean by that is…

For anyone who doesn’t know, there are online bible databases that, first of all, have every translation of the bible ever written including the original Hebrew and Greek texts… And they’re also searchable. You can search any word of phrase, and it will pull up every single verse containing that word or phrase. Again, there are a few of these, the one I use is biblegateway.com. It’s free. And if any of you have ever wondered why I don’t always carry a physical copy of the bible with me—first of all, I really should. It’s a habit I should cultivate, and I only own something like 20 physical copies of the bible to choose from—which might actually be part of the problem. But real reason I just don’t rely on physical copies of the bible is that I have on my phone an app—which is just a direct connection to that online, very user-friendly bible database. It really is a fantastic tool for reading and studying the bible.

Anyway, commercial over, back to the point—”O Jerusalem, Jerusalem…”

Now this is not an isolated expression in the bible. The same sentiment recurs numerous times, and to prove it, here is a list of honorable mentions, JUST from the prophets—that long collection of books at the end of the Old Testament—and from me going to that database, Bible Gateway, and searching JUST one phrase, the phrase “Return to Me.”

And here it is:

Isaiah 55:7

Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the Lord, And He will have mercy on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon.

Jeremiah 15:19

Therefore thus says the Lord: “If you return, Then I will bring you back; You shall stand before Me; If you take out the precious from the vile…

Joel 2:13

So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the Lord your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness; And He relents from doing harm.

Zechariah 1:3

Therefore say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Return to Me,” says the Lord of hosts, “and I will return to you,” says the Lord of hosts.

Jeremiah 3:7

And I said, after she had done all these things, ‘Return to Me.’ But she did not return.

Malachi 3:7

Yet from the days of your fathers You have gone away from My ordinances And have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” Says the Lord of hosts. “But you said, ‘In what way shall we return?’

Again, these are just the honorable mentions—they are far from the only results that came up in my search. They are only results from the prophets—I didn’t look at any of the other books of the bible that came up in the search. And they are only the passages that, in one particular English translation (NKJV) literally contain the words “return” “to” and “me.”

This idea, of God desperate to gather humanity under the protection of God’s wings is not an isolated idea. Humanity being the barrier between humanity and God, the side of the relationship that is unwilling to grow or compromise or work on the relationship is not an isolated idea. The whole wing thing isn’t even an isolated metaphor.

But I do think that this example of the ongoing theme is particularly gripping. In every other example, God is speaking through a human filter—usually through a prophet, but always, a person. Here we have Jesus, physically in our world, looking down the road toward the real city that is used, in many ways, to represent all of humanity in our relationship with God, and saying, one more time: “Please, just return to me.”

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Who kills the prophets and stones those sent to her! How often have I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34)

And so, because humanity will not, it is in fact Jesus, God, who returns himself to humanity, and to Jerusalem.

That is—spoiler alert—what our journey of Lent, this season before Easter, is meant ultimately to reveal to us—that unwilling and unable to return to God, God always returns to us, no matter what. On God’s side, that bond is never broken.

Now, this passage appears in two of the four Gospels, Luke, which we read this morning, and Matthew. The passage we read from Matthew this morning is actually the beginning of a chapter, 23, which ends with “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.” And we read it because how this lament over Jerusalem begins is, of course important, in both gospels.

In Luke we’re given the historical context for how Jesus comes to speak this lament. We’re told that he is on his way or planning to be on his way to Jerusalem for—we know—the Passover feast, the highest holiday of the Jewish calendar, at least back then. And when preparing for this journey, a group comes up to Jesus and tells him: Don’t you go down to Jerusalem. It’s not safe. And this is Jesus’s response is, No, of course it’s not safe. It’s never been safe for prophets, for teachers, for people of God sent with a message humanity does not want to hear. No, of course it’s not safe. It’s just what I must do. I am the mother who will never give up on her children. That bond will never be broken by me.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.”

Now, in Matthew, we have a more thematic context for Jesus’s lament. It’s a list, really, of the actual behaviors that get between humanity and God—beyond the dramatic extremes of killing prophets and stoning messengers, Matthew 23 first explains the slippery slope of more ordinary evils that lead to killing prophets and stoning messengers and ultimately humanity reaching that point of no return, at which people our only hope is for God, instead, to return to us.

And this whole chapter, Matthew 23, struck me this week as the reverse of another more famous passage. You all know the Beatitudes, right? This list, also in Matthew, “Blessed are the humble… the peacemakers… etc. Matthew 23 is the inverse of that list—the list, instead, of things not to be and not to do. The Beatitudes is the list of behaviors and mindsets to cultivate in order to develop a relationship with God. Matthew 23 is the list of behaviors and mindsets that get in the way of our returning to God and taking shelter under God’s wings.

I’m calling it “The Way of Woes” – as in, “Woe to you, Pharisees, hypocrites.”  In the Beatitudes, the recurring line is “Blessed are the…” Here, the recurring line is “Woe to you, hypocrites, who…”

Now we didn’t read that list this morning. We read the introduction to the list, where Jesus of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, this group which, for better or worse, has gone down in history as synonymous with hypocrisy. In reality, I’m sure they weren’t all evil or hypocritical. In fact, several of Jesus’s followers were Pharisees, and Jesus’s own teachings align more closely with the general teachings of the Pharisees than with other groups of his time.

In fact that’s sort of the point here isn’t it here in Matthew 23 is in Jesus’s whole point that the teachings of the Pharisees are indeed correct, that they occupy a place of authority in religion and that that authority is to be respected. Respect their authority, Jesus says, accept their teachings. But don’t do what they do.

And that of course is where the hypocrisy of it all comes in. Hypocrisy being the number one problem Jesus points to throughout all four gospels. Hypocrisy does seem, at least in Jesus’s teaching to be that main barrier between humanity and God. And I think this makes a lot of sense, because deep down on a fundamental level, I think all humans know the difference, the very basic difference, between right and wrong. Every documented culture throughout history has come up with essentially the same legal code. The 10 Commandments, particularly the second-half of the 10 Commandments—thou shalt not murder, steal, break your word, abuse other people, etcetera—those really are universal human values. When it comes down to it, our biggest difficulty as humans comes not in knowing the difference between right and wrong, but in rigorously applying what we know to be the difference between right and wrong to ourselves and our own lives. That, of course, is hypocrisy, a different standard for ourselves than for others, or from the universal standard we know to be true.

And what I was really struck by when reading through this way of woes hearing Matthew 23 is how, like the 10 commandments and like the beatitudes, the “woe tos” in this list are universal, not specific. How applicable these limiting behaviors are to every age and every group. How easy it is for any age any group any human to fall into these things and allow them to become a barrier and stumbling block in our lives. And so that is what I plan to talk about on my website and YouTube channel over the next four Thursdays here in Lent. As Lent is the season for self-reflection and growth, let’s look at this list and see what might or might now apply in our world today, in our own lives.

The point, for me, in doing this Way of Woes study is largely to get in the habit of posting online every week. Lent just seems like an opportune time to develop that habit anyway. If you have time in our own journey this Lent, stop by, check it out.

But what I want to leave you with this morning, as we move on to our next song here, is this image of God the protector, the nurturer, the mother—father usually, but this particular metaphor in this particular passage is female, and it’s not the only one in the bible. Again, nothing in this passage is unprecedented. But on your Lenten Journey, particularly as we do embark on this Way of Woes—take strength and comfort in that image—the parent who never gives up, the mother who is always there waiting to give shelter, the bond of family that no matter what never actually breaks because God our Creator is the origin of all life, and all love, and all family.

This Sunday Message was originally delivered at Bristol United Methodist Church on March 16th, 2025. The sermon text is provided for anyone who would like to follow along.

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