Giving Up Our Cynicism

"Giving Up Our Cynicism"

Luke 13:31-35
February 28, 2010

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. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it
is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ 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! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until
the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

I receive a magazine called THE WEEK, which is a weekly periodical that tends to
summarize the news of the past week in a quick, USA TODAY fashion by picking out the
best of the press, and listing out the main points found in those articles. You can
always get a sense about what is going on in the world, or at least what is going on in
the press, by the main article highlighted on the cover, and the last couple of weeks,
the focus of so much angst by either the press or us, and sometimes the two are not
the same, is the idea that Washington is broken politically, that things have gotten so
toxic between our two main parties that nothing can ever seem to get done, especially
in the Senate, because of some rules around voting.   It’s all over the place, this
despair about how bad things have gotten between Democrats and Republicans, and
how it’s all about posturing and rarely about substance, about the real issues on the
table for the American people. And then you have the lobbyists, those professional
spokesman for various industries, who attempt to sway legislation one way or another,
those who we always complain about—well, except when they are OUR lobbyists,
fighting for our causes, our beliefs, though I guess one could argue that it has gotten
worse over the years, as the cost of campaigns have risen and risen, and the need for
dollars to run those campaigns have come flowing in through those lobbyists. And then
you have the recent ruling by the Supreme Court, opposed by 80% of the country, that
says that Citibank and me have the same right to free speech, though, of course,
Citibank never went to Afghanistan to fight for its country—no, it’s only interest in this
country is trying to find a way to make a buck off that war in Afghanistan. Not that
Citibank is different from most companies out there…we have become cynical because
we have begun to drop some of the pretenses about why we do what we do in this
world, and we’ve simply laid it out there on the line—human beings were created to
consume, and be consumed, so says corporate America, and what matters most is
turning an ever increasing profit at any cost, whether it be to humans, or the
environment, or even the soul…

And, yet, you know what? Despite this recent spate of articles in my magazine decrying
our broken political system, the truth of the matter is that I’m actual cynical about this
supposed cynicism! It’s just NOW struck people that our political system is broken—
NOW?! Listen, I haven’t been around that long, but I can’t remember a time when I was
especially hopeful about human politics, despite having some strong political
convictions myself. It’s almost as if the press, which doesn’t do much reporting
nowadays, beyond he said vs. she said, or trying to outspin the spinnmeisters, rather
than actually taking anyone at their word, it’s almost as if the press just needed another
cycle of stories where they get to declare how cynical it has all become, while forgetting
that they did that same set of articles about five years ago.

Listen, politics has always been a cynical business, and, truth be told, it was no less a
cynical business in the first century, when Jesus was doing his work in Israel. You have
only to look at our text today, to see political and religious cynicism being played. This
passage in Luke has Jesus in the middle part of his ministry, still in Galilee at the
moment, but which will later culminate in that fateful journey to Jerusalem, where he will
meet his death, though that is not the end of his work—his work on this earth will end
on the third day, the day of resurrection, as he says in this passage. You have some
Pharisees coming to him—Pharisees, the people who have not been allies in any way,
shape or form, coming to warn him about Herod, the ruler Herod, the son of the elder
the elder Herod that killed all those babies in Bethlehem to make sure there weren’t any
competitors to his throne; Herod, who was nothing more than a puppet king of the
Romans, who mistakenly believed that the Jews would welcome any Jewish king, even
one propped up by Roman power and Roman money. Why do the Pharisees come to
Jesus, to warn him of Herod’s threat to him, if he remains in Galilee? Certainly not
because they cared about him and his safety—no, I suspect it’s because Herod wants
to ship off this troublemaker to Jerusalem, to someone else’s jurisdiction, Roman
jurisdiction, shift the problem from the state level to the federal level, move it from
Lansing to Washington, so to speak. These Pharisees are not Jesus’ friends—they too
are playing politics with him, and though Jesus may be as gentle as dove, he is also
wise as a snake.

So, Jesus simply tells them to go back to that fox—you know, foxes, clever, but sly and
notoriously unprincipled, at least according to Hellenistic and Roman lore—he tells
them to go to Herod and simply tell him what he is doing and that he will do what he
needs to do on his own time, on his own schedule—and he says that seemingly without
fear that Herod could ever get to him, and the reason why he can say that is because
he knows where the story he is living is going to, about where he will end up, and
whose hands he will die, and in what city he will meet his fate, and at what moment he
will receive his life back again. Jesus is watching Herod play his political hand, and he
counters back with a seemingly arrogant belief in himself and what the future holds for
him. And what is so amazing, what is so amazing about his response to Herod’s
machinations, and maybe to all human politics, is that he doesn’t respond to it with
cynicism, he doesn’t give up on it, as so many of us have done, including myself.

You see, when Jesus then begins to speak of Jerusalem, there is a sense in which he
lives in a culture that sees Jerusalem the way so many of us see Washington DC, the
only difference, perhaps, is that the Jews added a spiritually symbolic dimension to it
that we rarely do with our own capital in this country. But, on the other hand, they were
often as cynical about religious and financial politics that haunted the temple in
Jerusalem as we have become about DC, or some have become about organized
religion in general. He knows that legend has it that Jerusalem always kills those that
come to save it, as the long line of dead prophets can attest to. And yet, instead of
walking away from it, instead of cynically not voting or not going to church, or simply
never believing in the possibility of change, Jesus doesn’t give up on the world, and
most importantly, he doesn’t give up on the people that play politics with the likes Herod
and his ilk.

Instead, his heart just breaks open in compassion for all of these forces, all of these
people, who think that politics and power and control will make them safe in this world—
How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood
under her wings, and you were not willing! he says to them, the image being so female,
so strong and nurturing and protective, like a mother with her children, a hen with her
chicks. Instead of ranting against Jerusalem and its religious and political
machinations, instead of crying out for the destruction of the city that kills prophets, or
the city that kills hope, like Washington, Jesus sees them for what they are—places and
spaces filled with people who think that power and control will make them safe in this
world, that believe that if we can get the politics right, then we can make the world
right—at least to our respective and often differing understandings of what a world
made “right” would look like. The people who use power and misuse power are not
despised by Jesus—they are only pitied and held in a compassionate embrace by him,
because he can see that all our efforts to control the world, for good or ill, often come
out of our deep fear about what the world might be if we aren’t the ones in control of
the future.   What he leaves to them and us, those of us who too much stock into
pulling the strings of power, in our family, in the world, in our country, in our church, is
an empty house, a desolate space, empty, ultimately empty, as anyone who has risen
to the top has quickly found when they finally looked into the dark power they had
spent a lifetime clawing and scraping to acquire.

And the sad thing about it is that all the emotional and spiritual cost of all these
attempts to control our fear by controlling others is so often born by the ones doing the
controlling—it can kill them and us spiritually. There is a pointed fable is told about a
young lion and a cougar. Both thirsty, the animals arrived at their usual water hole at
the same time. They immediately began to argue about who should satisfy his thirst
first. The argument became heated, and each decided he would rather die than give up
the privilege of being first to quench his thirst. As they stubbornly confronted each
other, their emotions turned to rage. Their cruel attacks on each other were suddenly
interrupted. They both looked up. Circling overhead was a flock of vultures waiting for
the loser to fall. Quietly, the two beasts turned and walked away. The thought of being
devoured was all they needed to end their quarrel (Homiletics Online). Oh, that we
would hear the warning in this fable, and the irony is that it doesn’t even quite capture
the full extent of our insane quests for power through politics and war—the reality is
that it is usually the other animals, usually the weaker and most vulnerable animals at
that same watering hole, that become the greatest collateral damage.

So, are we become cynical about government, Washington, whatever, cynical like so
many of our brothers and sisters. Well, oddly enough, I actually don’t think so, though
perhaps “skeptical” is a better word about the whole enterprise. I don’t think we
automatically need to give up government and politics, because, well, Jesus didn’t—he
just put it in the right perspective and reminded us that the only way to be secure in this
world, the only rock upon which to build one’s house, one’s life, one’s whole identity, is
not in being a Republican or a Democratic, or a liberal or a conservative, or even being
an American or a Canadian, or whatever else in this world—all empires, all countries
come and go, even our young country will one day cease to be—the only thing that can
anchor us, that can dissolve all of our plans and hungering after political or religious or
personal power is to root oneself in the One who unmasks all of our political pretenses.
Jesus has seen into the inside of the machinations of power, of religious and political
power, and those things will one day kill him, murder him, and what he sees are broken
people using broken means to help make themselves more secure in this world, to try
to stave off the darkness inside if they only had more power, more money, more
control. What Jesus sees doesn’t make him more cynical—it makes him more
compassionate, more loving, more understanding of the ways the system is broken,
and every system will always be broken, because we use politics—personal, religious,
and family politics—to avoid putting roots into the ground that will not shift underneath
our feet, the rock rather than the sand, the God who loves us rather than the power
that can never love us back.

When we are ready, says the last line of our text today, when we are ready to welcome
the One whose powers is in being a servant rather than a congressperson, then the
Christ will show up, both personally in our lives, and in the greater world. I don’t want
us to give up on politics—to vote, to campaign, to discuss and even to argue, it shows
that we care about the world that God calls good and that we think we can make a
difference—and there are certainly times when politics have made a difference in our
lives, personally and socially. I am personally thankful for the ways the government has
made college possible for me, has made safe roads and restaurant kitchens safer, and
believe it or not, somehow and in someway, government will have to be a part of health
care crisis, however mistrustful some of us have been its involvement in other parts of
our lives, including me.   These are good things, but they aren’t the only things, and
ultimately, we have to walk away from our passionate political positions, and recognize
that they cannot save us, they cannot give us the ultimate safety we seek so much.
The Jerusalems of this world, the Washingtons, though important, though not to be
given up on, they must be put in their proper place. When all is said and done, when
the history of the universe is finally wrapped up, and when are lives go before God, we
will not be asked whether we were Democrats or Republicans, conservative or liberals—
we will not even be asked who we loved in this world. No, God will ask us how we loved
others, how deeply we loved others, and we will be asked whether or not we gave up on
a world that God never gave up on. Cynicism isn’t the right response to the cynicism
we see in our politicians or in our political system—compassion, maybe even a broken
heart, but never despair or pessimism. There is a better way to respond than the way
the press is feeding us, and the better way starts with hope, with care and concern, and
with a rising chorus in our hearts, slow to start, but hopefully building into an incredible
crescendo of sound and wonder, one that says over and over again, Blessed is the
one who comes in the name of the Lord. Amen.