Date Sunday 4th March 2007

Luke 13: 31-35 Decisive or Desolate

Many are ambivalent about cities, often unaware why they think and feel the way they do.

Towns have always been seen as places of life, activity, challenge. Cities and towns are human institutions, like all forms of institutions, develop their own creaturehood and a personality which is greater than the sum of its parts which takes on a life of its own and influences all who come to live within its bounds.

It is not the architecture of the buildings that gives a city its personality and spiritual state, rather is the collective decisions made by its people over the generations. We are products of our past and are influenced by the good and bad decisions of our forefathers.

Cities can simultaneously be places of lively diligence and lethal destruction; places of life and death; physical death as well as emotional and spiritual death. Suspicion, fear. jealousy, greed, power, survival, independence, self-sufficiency, all seem to take on new qualities when experienced in a city.

Jesus was warned about the dangers of the city. Some Pharisees suggested that alter his plans. Don't go to Jerusalem. The place where for generations prophets had met their fate when they challenged authorities, rulers, powers. The centre of community and religious life where the final challenge to all power would soon be enacted.

Jesus laments: "0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you." Jerusalem, whose name means city of peace, ordained to be a place of prosperity and praise now is a place of conflict, controversy and confusion where God's character was being misrepresented. But for Jesus there is no choice if he is to fulfil God's will for His life. He had to continue the deliberate path to Jerusalem, knowing that opposition and death awaited him..

What might it would mean if Jesus were to look over our city. Someone once wrote "Christian presence that is divorced from the example of our Lord Jesus is not Christian"

"Tall Trees to Trinity" gives valuable insights into the psychological and spiritual foundations of our church, showing a particular relationship with the community of which the church was an integral part. Why did our ancestors build these buildings? What is the real purpose of our church? Why does it appear that there are so many nominal Christians in the community who never step inside a church. Where are the 1275 people living in postcode 3175 who in the 2001 census claimed to belong to the UC? In what ways have we over the years so innoculated our people to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ that they no longer hear?

Today we review the past year. Church Council is beginning the process of planning for this year we hear the lament of Jesus "how often have I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings." What a beautifully maternal image of God.

What IS the depth of our longing to gather together the dispersed children of God in our city? What safer place than under the wings? A place where we have to put ourselves at risk to protect the gathered ones. Is that not an accurate image of the action of Jesus. Is not that to be the image of the church - a place of refuge and security. A haven.

Is the charge made to the Jews relevant today? Are we not willing to be gathered? Or are we being prevented because we have not really made our citizenship in heaven. Is it too hard for us to really serve others, live simply and accept rejection for the sake of the gospel.

Maybe it is that we are still bound to the spiritual forces of our past and are too comfortable in them to be willing to let the Spirit of God cut us free to live the radical life of Jesus. Whatever the reason, unless we are decisive for Jesus our place will also become desolate to us. God will abandon us.

If we ARE the people our words claim us to be, a people reborn - born of the Spirit, then we have been born to re-produce. Evangelism is to be our lifestyle. Bringing people to Christ is our first and foremost task. And there will be opposition. People will try to distract us, warn us off, frighten us by pointing out the logical consequences, force the unwritten mandates of political correctness on our words and actions.

But still the three fold ministry of Jesus is before us as a model. As Jesus preached to them he explained that demons are to be cast out and people healed. The task of claiming this city for God requires nothing less than the bold exercise of this threefold ministry.

We live here only by the grace of God. Our citizenship is in heaven and we have been given heavenly assignments in this foreign country. Let us keep going today, tomorrow and the next day, drawing on the power of the Holy Spirit, fed and strengthened by the bread and wine of Christ’s presence.