Luke 13:34-35
St Pauls Glenelg, Pentecost 4, 2025
- “No, I won’t! I don’t want to!”
Those words kept ringing in her mind as she lay there in bed on the night before her operation.
- When she discovered that lump she didn’t want to visit her doctor.
- Then she didn’t want to believe him when he told her that she had cancer.
- She didn’t want to leave home and come to the hospital for the operation
- She didn’t want to be sick and she didn’t want to die.
Why did this have to happen to her? It was so unfair!
- As she lay in her bed, angry and defiant, a row of memories edged their way into her mind one by one as she remembered a series of incidents from her past.
- “No, I won’t! I don’t want to!”
- She remembered that horrible day when she had gone to her doctor for some sleeping pills because she was so depressed and unhappy that she couldn’t get to sleep.
- Because her husband was often away on business, she was finding hard to cope with her three children
After giving her a good look-over, her doctor got her to open up about how she felt.
- She admitted that she felt such a failure as a mother and wife and woman that she wanted to walk out on her family.
- She felt guilty about her strained relationship with her mother, and about her affair with a married man before she met her husband.
- She felt used up and dead inside, empty and worthless, scared of living and afraid of dying.
After hearing her out, the doctor asked if she was religious.
- When she admitted that she had been brought up as a Christian, he suggested that she should see a pastor.
- At that she flared up and stomped out of the surgery saying, “No, I wont! I don’t want to!”
- Then she remembered the first time that she had said that.
- Even though her father was an unbeliever, her mother was very religious.
- She took her to church and Sunday School, which she disliked even though she found the stories of Jesus rather interesting.
- She remembered what happened during a lesson on prayer in Sunday School.
- At the end of the lesson the teacher asked each of the students to take turns in thanking God for something.
- When her turn came round, there was nothing but stony silence.
- When the teacher reminded her that it was her turn to pray,
she gritted her teeth and blurted, “No, I won’t! I don’t want to.”
- Then there was that awkward evening when Mum had asked the pastor around to their place to talk to her about Confirmation.
- As she sat there listening to him she felt increasingly resentful.
- She resented his talk about God and his plan for her.
- She resented his claim that God had made her and reclaimed her for himself in baptism.
- She resented his talk about sin and forgiveness and reliance on Jesus.
- Since she was her own boss, she could manage quite well by herself without God.
- How stunned they both were when she ended the discussion by saying, “No, I wont! I don’t want to be confirmed!”
- Then she remembered her senior years at high school where she had gained a reputation as an outspoken atheist.
- She claimed that the stories of Jesus were fanciful legends that had been invented by hypocrites and killjoys for people who were too weak to manage by themselves and too dumb to think for themselves.
- How surprised she was to discover that most of the Christians at school were not at all like that.
- What really took the wind out of her sails was her discovery that the boy she fancied was a devout Christian.
Because she was so keen on him, she went with him to a youth camp in year 12.
- There for the first time she was confronted by Jesus and his winsome words.
- She learnt that she could not and would gain God’s approval by being good, but by trusting in Jesus for pardon for sin.
- She heard that Jesus loved her so much that he sacrificed his life for her and offered to give her eternal life already now.
- She heard accepted all people who trusted in him,
no matter how bad they were, or what they had done.
- There for the first time she felt Jesus calling her to follow him.
His sheer goodness humbled her and overwhelmed her.
- She felt like falling down on her knees and praying, “Yes Jesus! You are my Lord and my God!”
- But she squashed that feeling.
- She refused to respond because she was scared of what her friends would say.
- So she kept on saying to herself, “No, I wont! I don’t want to be a Christian!”
- The door of her room opened.
- Her thoughts were brought back into the present by a nurse who came in to give her some sleeping tablets and to settle her down for the night.
- After some words of assurance, the nurse said goodnight and switched off the light.
As she lay waiting for sleep to come, it struck her that her whole life had been one constant “No, I wont!”
- She hadn’t just refused to listen to her doctor, her Sunday school teacher, her pastor, and Jesus, but also to her mother, her friends, her husband, and her children.
- She had always tried to get her own way with everyone and had never really given herself to anybody.
Now she felt that she had never really lived because she had said no to life itself.
- No wonder she felt empty and lonely, frustrated and afraid, guilty and doomed.
- It seemed as if the cancer that had recently been discovered had been there all along, eating away in her, taking everything from her and giving her nothing in return.
- Then she fell asleep as the pills began to take effect.
- Early next morning she was woken by a ghastly nightmare.
- She standing in an angry crowd of people in front of an imposing building.
- The people around her were yelling, “Bring him out! Kill him!”
- Then suddenly the person they wanted to kill was brought out for them.
- He stood on the steps before them, with a policeman on one side, and a judge with his wig and robes on the other side.
- His face was battered and bruised; his clothes were bloody and torn.
- Even though he could barely stand, he held himself erect as he faced the crowd.
- Then he looked straight at her with eyes that went right through her.
She felt so uncomfortable that she too started screaming, “Away with him! Get rid of him! Kill him!”
- Then when she looked at him again, his face looked just like her mother’s hurt face, when she told her that she was leaving home to live with Ray, even though they were not yet married.
- She realised that he was looking so hurt because he loved her so much.
- All upset, she closed her eyes to shut him out, and she shouted, “No, I wont! I don’t want to.”
- Then she woke up with jolt, agitated and drenched in sweat.
- Her heart was beating quickly, and her mind was racing wildly.
She reached for the lamp by the bed and switched it on.
- How grateful she was for the light that gradually calmed her down.
- She was about to ring for the nurse when she saw the Gideon’s Bible on the shelf under the lamp and reached for it.
- When she opened it, the Bible fell open at Luke 13:34-35.
- And she began to read it out aloud carefully to herself: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you!
- As she read this she felt the full weight of pain and sorrow in those words.
- She felt even worse when something made her substitute her own name for Jerusalem: O Pauline, Pauline, you kill the prophets and stone those sent to you.
- Yes it was true; in her heart she had tried to kill off those who had tried to reach out to her.
- A lump formed in her throat as she read on: How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.
- Then she remembered the time when her first child was desperately sick as baby.
- She hadn’t really wanted that baby because she got pregnant before she was married.
- Yet, as she rocked and clutched her sick son to herself that long horrible night, she wanted to make his sickness go away.
- She was willing to swap places with her son and be sick herself if only her dear boy would get better.
- That’s just what Jesus wanted to do with her now.
- He wanted to hold her, as her mother did when she was upset, or her husband did after they had quarrelled.
- The warmth and compassion of Jesus overwhelmed her.
- Once again she substituted her own name: O Pauline, Pauline,
how often I have longed to gather you and your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings.
- More than anything else Jesus wanted her, and he had given everything he had, even his life to get her back.
- But you were not willing!
- Those five words struck like hammer blows against the fortress of her heart.
- They went round and round in her head like a crazy tune.
Then she started to cry as her heart began to break.
- Yes, that’s what her trouble was: You were not willing!
- She didn’t want to be gathered in by Jesus.
- Like the people of Jerusalem and all people on earth, she had refused his love; she had spurned her divine Lover.
- And that was what killed him.
- That would be the death of her too, unless she heeded his call.
As she sobbed her heart out she read on: Look, your house is left desolate. Your house is forsaken.
- Yes, that’s what had happened to her and her family.
- Her house, her home, was abandoned and empty, like the old church down the road from her home that was now used as a shop.
- And it was all her fault.
- She had tried to drive Jesus out of her life.
- Pauline, your house is forsaken. That’s what had happened because she kept on refusing to listen to Jesus.
- She had driven him out, leaving it empty, with nothing but an aching, gaping space where he should have been.
- It was even worse than what she had felt when husband had left her for a while after a nasty row.
- Then to ease the pain she read on: I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
- That had her bamboozled for a while.
- As she pondered these words, she recalled that this was the song sung by the people when Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, as well as by the people in her mother’s church to welcome Jesus in Holy Communion.
- At that she broke down completely and she started sobbing as she had never sobbed before.
- Then she got out of bed and knelt down beside it, like a person about to receive the body and blood of Jesus in Holy Communion.
- Between her sobs she prayed: “Yes Jesus, I want to be yours. I want you to gather me up. Come to me and bless me. Forgive me for being so stubborn and do as you please with me. But, please, never ever leave me and my family.”
And it was as if he came to her there and knelt down beside her and put his arms around her.
- He gathered her in and took her to himself, just as he gathers all those who turn to him and put their trust in him.
- It felt as if her tears had softened her heart and washed her clean inside.
- She didn’t feel hard and horrible, worthless and useless, dirty and doomed any longer.
After she crawled back into her bed, she lay there exhausted and yet strangely elated, like after the birth of her first child.
- The cancer didn’t matter much any more.
- It didn’t matter whether she lived or died.
- A sense of peace that passes all understanding came over her as she began to feel alive inside once again, really alive, more alive than ever before.
That night she got rid of the cancer in her soul, just next day she got rid of the cancer in her body.
Yes, blessed is Jesus, who comes to meet with you here and longs to gather you in under his warm wings today and every Sunday.
