On the Way to Jerusalem 4/3/49
Scripture: Luke 9: 51-62
Text: Luke 9: 51; ... “He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem.”
The gospel of Luke alone relates the determination with which Jesus made a great decisive choice. “He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem.” So evident was it that he was on his way to the Hebrew capital, the holy city of Jerusalem, that the people of a usually hostile Samaritan village would not even open the doors for him and his followers to spend the night. He was definitely taking a stand that was crucial and dangerous and that he would not now avoid.
In the same spiritual sense that marked his decision, all of us have a journey to make to Jerusalem. Not many of us will ever be privileged to see that ancient city as visitors. We shall imagine an entry into it when we think of Jesus Christ’s entry next Sunday. He went down there to lay claim to his Messiahship. But we shall be making no such trip. Here and there we know of someone who has seen the city while in the armed services during the war or who may have been there as a tourist. The purpose of their visits is quite different from that of Jesus. And yet we all have a journey, similar in purpose, to make.
Jesus was taking a definite stand for his convictions. We all have to do that sooner or later. We have to confront the enemy of our souls in his stronghold if we are to overcome him. You have your own personal problems. I have mine. The person sitting near you has his or hers. Maybe it is a ball-and-chain habit that imprisons your spirit. Perhaps it is a “thorn in the flesh” that won’t come out. It may be a domestic problem that stands across the path to happiness. Whatever it may be, we’ve all got to go to Jerusalem and have it out with our worst selves -- and sometimes with the worst in our fellows.
Several considerations are notable about that journey of Jesus to Jerusalem. (1) First, note that he made the journey in the right way. There were numerous possibilities open to Jesus. If he had desired it, he could have led an eager, if ill-trained, army. “Thousands of uneasy swords” were ready to flash from their scabbards if anyone wished to command them. Or Jesus might have slipped quietly into the city, lost amid the throng of pilgrims who entered to keep the sacred Passover. He might have been content to follow the precept of one of his own parables, letting the leaven of his principles work quietly in the mass of poor, disinherited humanity. Or he could have made some kind of political “deal” with those in power, taking a little share for himself from the profits of the ancient festival in return for discreet silence.
Obviously, he did none of these. He made a deliberate, open attempt to win opposition over to his side by moral and spiritual means. That is the only way for you and me to find ultimate victory over the evil our souls encounter on our “way to Jerusalem.”
There are those who think the only way to face an issue is by physical strength. If a child disobeys, whip him soundly. If the neighbor’s dog gets in the garden, kick him. If Russia strays out of line, conscript an army and drop some bombs. And we are told, “The end justifies the means.” There are times when firmness must be used. But there are other means to be used, too --- some of them better.
A skinny little brown man died not long ago. He held the opposite view. His means were always as important as the end for which he used them. Of course it cost a life -- his -- and has cost the lives of some others who were struck down during various passive resistance demonstrations. But the independence of his country was won from the British Empire by this good means. It cost bloody revolution to do the same for our country 170-odd years ago.
2) One must go to Jerusalem not only in the right way, but for the right purpose. A character in a novel “had the rare capability of looking behind and beyond everything that came into his view.” That is what we must do. Jesus did. He knew full well that, not only the means he used, but the end in view must be right. He did not choose to ride a donkey to glorify himself, but to glorify the kingdom of God.
If you’re contemplating a trip to Jerusalem to assert yourself, or to glory in conquest, or even to glory in self discipline, you’re missing the importance of this fact. Your purpose must be greater than yourself - and it must be an entirely worthy aim. Woe to us if we think only of ourselves! In Adolph Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” one may read these lines: “The only question regarding any policy toward foreign nations is, Does it benefit our nation now or in the future? Partisan, religious, humanitarian and all other points of view in general are completely beside the point.” We know what that philosophy leads to, whether applied to German policy or the policies of the United States. Are we, as a nation, serving a purpose greater than ourselves? For our country to adhere to a policy of keeping what we have, and getting what we can get for ourselves, would mean certain, and deserved, disaster.
3) A third factor should be considered. One must go the right way, with the right purpose -- and at the right time. It is easy to overlook this unless we read our New Testament carefully. At the outset of Jesus’ ministry there was danger in Judea, when his cousin John the Baptist was about to be unjustly beheaded for challenging Herod’s morality. Jesus didn’t stay down there then. He came up into Galilee, putting the whole state of Samaria between him and the evil going on in Judea. It was not time to force the issue. More than once he withdrew rather than force outright conflict. When an angry mob of his own townspeople in Nazareth threw him out of the Synagogue and led him to a hill to kill him, he passed through the crowd and went on his way.
Jesus didn’t go to Jerusalem until the time was right. Even then, he was not entirely settled as to the issue until he wrestled it out in prayer to God in the garden of Gethsemane, for he had to know if this was the time.
It is easy for us to get excited about an issue, to leap to the saddle and “ride off in all directions” at once. We can go hunting for bear and waste all our ammunition of rabbits. We may be like the five young women whom Jesus told about. There were ten of them waiting for a bridegroom to come and open the bridal feast. Five used up the oil in their lamps before he even got there and were off looking for more oil when he came and went in without them. The other five saved their precious lamp oil until he came and then they were ready to go in to the party. [Matthew 25: 1-13].
Of course this is only one-half of the strategy - to wait until the right time. The other half is not to wait until the time is past! President Lincoln had to replace a Union General who was forever preparing but never giving battle to the enemy. The Roman general Fabius is supposed to have said: “Don’t fight until the right moment arrives; but when the right moment arrives, fight.” Is it time now to fight the enemy of your own soul? Have you put off long enough your personal commitment to God’s purpose for you? Is it time now to “put off the old man” and “put on the new?”
Are we as a nation putting off the weightier matters of justice among the nations of the earth? It is time for us to challenge the insistence of communism right in its own back yard with a highly successful demonstration of genuine democracy, of justice, of peace and plenty and their right uses --- not with any hypocrisy of reaction-sustaining imperialism. Now is the time to go to Jerusalem!
4) One more fact is to be noted, amazing as it may be. Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem resulted in temporary defeat, even though it was made in the right way, for the right purpose, at the right time. Within five days, he was crucified to death! And these crosses, these temporary defeats on the path to right must be risked. It could be that any nation which elected to challenge the USSR on spiritual grounds alone, rather than by physical force, might be crucified. India was, for years.
The same may happen to our personal selves in the attack on the enemies of our own souls. It may be necessary, here and there, to lose a battle in order to win a war! Not always. But the risk has to be understood and accepted.
Mark Twain found himself in circumstances that placed him heavily in debt. In a race with time and old age, he managed to lecture himself out of it by driving himself on a tour of speaking engagements all around the world.
Sir Walter Scott, at the height of his powers, discovered suddenly that his publishing firm was insolvent and that he faced a mountain of debt. He could have avoided any “trip to Jerusalem.” Quite legally, he could have declared himself bankrupt. He would have lost all his property. But at least he might have had his future earnings. A friend offered to put up the money to help him out. Servants offered to work for nothing until he could pay the debt. He rejected all easy ways out. “My own right hand shall pay the debt,” was the way he put it. His race with time failed, for he died before the earnings of his writings were sufficient to pay off all the debt. Sometimes it happens that way.
It was so with John Brown whose attempt to free the Negro slaves miscarried and ended in his own execution. It was so in one of the greatest attempts to scale Mt. Everest. George Leigh Mallory, whose “marvelous climbing accomplishments and his flaming spirit made him the outstanding figure of every expedition. ‘Why do you try to climb this mountain?’ a friend asked. Mallory’s answer consisted of four words: ‘Because it is there.’”
In Mallory’s last and greatest effort to reach to top of Mt. Everest together with his companion Andrew Irvine, he was for a clearing moment seen to be within 800 feet of the summit - far higher than any other mortal had climbed before or since except in air flight. Then the mists closed in again and they were lost to sight. They never returned. Those who had glimpsed them from thousands of feet below observed them as “two tiny specks against the sky fighting upward.”
But if anyone ever manages to scale Mt. Everest, it will be on the shoulders of Mallory and Irvine! They lost a battle. So did Sir Walter Scott. But he won a war. John Brown’s body lay amouldering in the grave, but his soul went marching on to free the slaves.
Jesus was crucified but could not be held by death. Two weeks from today, 19 centuries later, we will join millions of others in the triumphant affirmation: “Christ the Lord is risen today.” There is a power at work in this world that makes for righteousness. The God of that righteousness can be no more than temporarily thwarted by evil men or evil forces.
The final end, the reward, of him who goes down to Jerusalem in the right way, for the right purpose, at the right time, defying the risks, is a crown of life and right.
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 3, 1949.