Sunday 16th March – My City of Ruins – Pastor Adrian Kitson

16-03-2025, luke 13:31-35, My City of Ruins, pastor adrian kitson

Luke 13: 31-35

At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, ‘Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.’

He replied, ‘Go and tell that fox, “I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.” In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day – for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!

‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”’

So many people I know have let faith in Jesus they once had go. All those kids in the youth group and at camps; all those friends in the church and at Uni, so many people in the places the Lord put us for a time now live apart from a living faith relationship with Jesus that they actually had.

Yes, God is always at work and the story is not finished as far as I know, but by their words and deeds it certainly looks like they are not wanting much to do with Jesus of Nazareth and his hope and promise.

What makes you weep? I know there was so much potential for all them to bear the gospel so well in families and communities that really need gospel hope and truth, should they have kept the faith; trusting Jesus in their troubles and went to his word with their many questions borne from doubt or fear or anger or hurt in whatever place and way. I still hope in Jesus’ grace for them.

Do you weep for your sibling or your parent or your friends from younger days or your friends from today who continue to live their life on their own terms without reference to what they could have in Jesus? In a way, I am hoping you do.

Like we who weep for our friends and family not here, not with Jesus, or kicking against faith and church and the existence of God in this world, we get close to God’s heart in this earthy faith of Jesus on show in the real world.

Like a Prime Minister in tears bearing his soul because of the tragedy that has occurred, weeping in full view of the cameras and questioners, God’s heart for his city is on full open-cut display here.

Like a parent or grand-parent weeping over the marriage over a son or daughter in tatters, or a faith-less upbringing now occurring for a loved grand-child or the tender kindness of a teacher regretting the circumstances of a student that have rendered the young man unable to achieve what the teacher knows he could of things were different, Jesus weeps for what could have been, but for the short-sighted, faith-less, self-focussed life of this city.

With adrenaline rushing through his veins in a moment deep trouble, and the memory of ashes floating through the air as this city that once lay in ruins the last time it was smashed to ground back in 587BC, Jesus now weeps over this ancient city that should of and could have been so much more for the world.

This city was meant to be the light, but it has turned out to be a shadow of itself.

The shadow has been building for generations.

‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you.

God has been constantly active, but the city has mostly de-activated God.

Why did God persist so long?

Because he made this people and gave them this city and this place in the world for a purpose.; a holy life-giving purpose.

Israel was called to represent the rest of the world before God. Israel, said God to Moses at Sinai, was to be a nation of priests (Exodus 19.5–6), God’s special people out of all the nations. But this was not for its own sake. Israel was to be God’s special people in order to be the light of the nations (Isaiah 42.6; 49.6).

‘It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.’ (Isaiah 49.6)

God’s people had a job; a job fulfilled in God’s power and grace. They ailed miserably.

God sent those wily prophets to tell the truth at great costs to themselves and to God.

… how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.

God, the parent so wanting to protect and be with the ones he loves tries again….

Listening to the prophet Isaiah, NT Wright says;

Isaiah, once again, came to the stunning prophetic vision that Israel, in the person of the Servant of the Lord, would bear in his own person the guilt and sin of everyone else. The darkness of the whole world would descend upon Israel itself, so that it might be dealt with and the world might after all have light (Isaiah 52.13—53.12).

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)

That is Jesus. This is what those first witness and gospel writers saw in him.

As they heard him weeping those tears and speaking those prophetic words of truth over this holy city, they saw Jesus drawing all the darkness of the world into himself for the life of this rebellious city; this city of ruins.

But now we know this was not just for a chosen few. Jesus does not only weep for the dark heart of God’s people, but for all those to whom they could have been light – the Gentiles – all human beings.

In weeping for the Jewish city he is weeping for any city; our city.

This Jesus not only calls his own offspring back to himself, but invites in all the thieves, robbers, imposters, posers, unholy, unclean as well.

Jesus can see the potential in us all. The old Israel has been expanded. An old nation has been expanded and reborn to be what they were always meant to be for everyone – light in a dark world.

So here we are – pagans reborn; a city reborn, not made of stones and mortar but human flesh and blood living out an earthy faith under this gracious Father of love who will not let us go, no matter how rebellious, unaware, self-centred or even violent like Herod we may become.

We rest in these wings today. The church’s problems, and yours, which are always many, are never dealt with by Herod’s impatient desires to get rid of the problem.

Our problems as church and Christians are only dealt with fully and changed really, in the flesh and blood of Jesus on that cross and ruling us now in grace as our resurrected king.

He is opening up his heart to you today to take your darkness and turn it to light, take your impatience and turn it into long-suffering with hope; take your self-focus and turn us all outward to embrace the sinners and saints as the Spirit draws them closer to this weeping man weeping for them – through us – his weeping church but hopeful church who live in this city of ruins.

There’s a blood red circle on the cold dark ground
And the rain is falling down
The church door’s thrown open, I can hear the organ’s song
But the congregation’s gone

My city of ruins

Now the sweet bells of mercy drift through the evening trees
Young men on the corner, like scattered leaves
The boarded up windows, the empty streets
While my brother’s down on his knees

My city of ruins… (Bruce Springsteen, My City of Ruins)

Yes, we look at the world and we weep.

Weep for your family and your lost friends.
Weep for those lost community and its pretence that it is saving itself by many and various means.
Weep for a wounded church hanging on to this weeping Saviour and the faith that he is always hanging on to us like that hen gathering us in the danger.

But then, Christian, pray, and also do.

Now, with these hands, with these hands,
I pray, Lord with these hands.
I pray for the strength, Lord
I pray for the faith, Lord

I pray for your love, Lord, with these hands.

Without your sweet kiss my soul is lost,
Tell me, how do I begin again? (Bruce Springsteen, My City of Ruins)

How do we begin another day? When we hear what he said we would hear;

He came and it was pure blessing.

They heard it and so have we. This was what this city ruins heard the day he would enter their city of ruins, Jerusalem, for the final time.

And for all its rebellion and delusion and violence it would receive undeserved life, healing, hope and future.

Amazing even at this final entering there is hope delivering!

Jesus enters this city of ruins not to put it out of its misery or leave it to the fire or the foxes, he enters it to raise it up to a whole new heavenly light – to be what it was always meant to be – God’s city of light, God’s garden of light; God’s place of grace for all the sinners an the saints.

Friend, whatever your ‘city of ruins’ today, Luther suggests in his comment on this moment

He came and it was pure blessing.

They heard it and so have we. This was what this city ruins heard the day he would enter their city of ruins, Jerusalem, for the final time.

And for all its rebellion and delusion and violence it would receive undeserved life, healing, hope and future.

Amazing even at this final entering there is hope delivering!

Friend, whatever your ‘city of ruins’ today, Luther suggests in his comment on this moment

… Christian faith, which believes without wavering that Christ is the Saviour not only to Peter and to the saints but also to you. Your salvation does not depend on the fact that you believe Christ to be the Saviour of the godly, but that he is a Saviour to you and has become your own.

(Martin Luther Sermon, Advent 1, (Matthew 21:1-9) https://sermons.martinluther.us/sermons1.html)