“Toward the finish line”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Friday, November 4, 2022
Luke 13:31-35 (Forward, p. 6) CEV p. 1080
It is sad, but all too often true, that there are many runners—especially in a long-distance race—that begin but never finish. To me, as someone who used to be a runner, this is altogether rather sad, as it means that those runners didn’t even get a place in the standings. It is almost as if they never ran at all. And so, as important as the beginning of the race is key and is important, it is that final stage, that final few laps, that is the be all and end all. How this part of the race is run, and whether it is completed, is crucial.
This is something that Jesus knew all too well and is reflected in the two small pericopes or sections that make up today’s reading. In the first part some Pharisees come to Jesus with a warning about Herod Antipas and his machinations. They tell Jesus that Herod wants to kill Him. Now, let me pause for a moment before proceeding to pose several questions. Firstly, were there any grounds for this suggestion? Had they ‘heard something’? Did Herod really want to kill Jesus, and at this stage of His ministry no less? (We don’t have any other evidence that this might have been the case, so we have to wonder). And secondly, why were these Pharisees, Jesus’ erstwhile opponents, warning Him? Were they being sincere in this—or, were they trying to deter Jesus from His course? About this, unfortunately, we can only speculate. We can never know for sure, at least in this life.
However, it is Jesus’ response to them, His words to them, and later His words to Jerusalem, that reveal His mind and illustrate His mission. There are two things that He says to the Pharisees that we, from a Western point of view, can all too easily miss. When He describes Herod as ‘that fox’, He is not using the word ‘fox’ as we do, as giving him a kind of grudging but backward praise. We think of foxes as sly and conniving and stealthy, but in their own way, somewhat wise individuals. In the Middle East parlance of Jesus’ day, it was none of these. A ‘fox’ for them was like a jackal or a hyena. It was a scavenger who existed only in the shadow of something or someone greater, a lion perhaps, and who lived solely by what pickings he could find when that greater being was ‘finished.’ Jesus was saying that Herod was just ‘Caesar’s jackal’, Caesar’s dependent, whimpering, needy underling. In other words, He was saying that Herod no power at all, no power of his own.
That takes us to Jesus’ second saying, His comments about ‘today, tomorrow and the next day’ (or three days). He is not speaking literally, counting down an exact number of days. No, He is saying that His time has ‘not run out’, that He still has work to do, and that He won’t be quitting—no, not for any or all of their warnings—until that work is over and done with. To return to the race analogy, He is saying that He still has a few more laps to complete before the race is finished.
That sense of ‘work still to be done’, a race still needing to be completed, is echoed in what He says next in His lament over Jerusalem. He laments two things about them. First, He grieves over its propensity to murder the prophets, an historic, age-old habit. And, secondly, He is saddened by its continued refusal to accept His love and His care. How He has yearned to gather them under the covering wings of His protection, like a mother hen with her brood, but they would not let Him.
What all of this says to me is that Jesus is not willing to be deterred in His overall mission, nor in His love for each of us. Even with our stubborn determination to spurn His love and care, even with our wilful rejection of His claims, He is not about to give up in His love for us. He is determined to keep on, yes, right to the ‘bitter end’, right until the very end of our lives. To return to the race analogy, until we are ‘finished’, He is not finished either and will keep on running the race, even if just for a single one of us!
Yes, until the final finish line draws nigh. Amen.
Forward notes: At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you. ”He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work’” (verses 31-32).
“There have been moments in my life when I have felt the pressure of experts or people in authority directing me in ways that I knew were inconsistent with those of the Holy Spirit. My prayers became laundry lists of ‘But Lord, this person tells me I must do this, and that person says I must do that!’ Numerous times God’s reply to my desperate prayers was simply, ‘Just wait. It’s not up to them.’
“Christ’s boldness comes through in this passage. He is unruffled by those who speak with human authority. He refuses to bow to the demands of the powerful. Instead, he follows the priorities of God and continues to minister to those who lack any power and authority, despite the not-so-subtle threats to his own life.
Moving Forward: “Is waiting hard for you? Pray for patience—and an open heart.”