One of my favorite philosophers, Bilbo Baggins, once said “ 'It's a dangerous business…going out of your door. You step onto the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

We, on the other hand, know exactly where the road we are traveling during Lent is going to. The Way of Jesus- is going to the cross. The surprise is not where we will end up, but the things we have encountered as we have stopped at various points (stations) along the way.

This morning we stop at a place where Jesus stopped, or at least paused. He is quite literally on the road, his body tired and beaten, the cross he will die on right with him. As Jesus painfully makes his way forward, gawked at by a large crowd of people, he pauses to speak to just a handful of them.

Reading: Luke 23:27-31

The art piece on the bulletin is rather striking, isn’t it? (larger version over on the wall, Vancouver BC artist Chris Woods). A modern city and modern cement sidewalk. The Romans and pharisees represented by two modern, angry looking businessmen. A small group of modern women gathered, several generations represented, with looks of shock and concern on their faces. Jesus, however, is dressed in first century clothing, carrying a cross not unlike those here on the walls, and making the sign of blessing.

I like these art pieces. The mix of modern and 1st century not only makes room, but virtually demands that we look at them not like a piece of ancient history, but as a scene we could easily find ourselves in today.

When the gospel writer Luke tells this story (the only writer to do so), he mentions a large crowd gathered, which was not unusual when someone walked death row. But Luke invites us to hone in on a group of women, loudly grieving for Jesus. As far as we know, these are not the same women the gospels mentioned previously as accompanying Jesus, nor the ones who will witness his death nor the ones who will testify to his resurrection. We don’t know for sure.

But the gospel writers are pretty careful to name all of those, either with specific names or as acquaintances or followers. But not here. Perhaps they have been part of the large crowds intrigued by Jesus. At any rate, they mourn, grieving and crying for what is now a finality...Jesus will die. Their hearts are sad. For Jesus. Maybe for themselves? And I suspect their sadness said “It didn’t have to be this way.”

Back in the mid-1980’s when I was in business, we invited young people to live in our home with us. Some were exchange students, a couple were young people who were trying to get off the streets and turn their lives around.

One young woman, Shana, lived with us for about 6 months. She had been selling drugs, and had been in and out of prostitution and seemed to make some real steps forward. But she couldn’t quite do it. She eventually had to leave our house, but we would continue to hear from her for a number of years, especially at holidays. But it wasn’t too long after she moved out that we received a phone call. Shana was in jail. Apparently she had gotten into a fight with another women downtown, a knife was pulled and she was in the King County Jail.

We went down to visit her. Signed in. Sat in the loud little waiting room until it was our turn to stare at each other through the thick plexiglass window and talk on tinny phones for 10-15 minutes. I still remember leaving that oppressive place with this deep sadness, and a few tears.

And I thought about all that had led up to Shana being in jail. Parental neglect, abuse, economic poverty, drug addictions, her own bad choices. And I remember feeling this same sense: “it didn’t have to be this way.”

These women of Jerusalem wept and mourned over Jesus. Jesus paused to speak with them. Which simply reminds me, first of all- Jesus was all about relationship. And this is worth remembering.

We have to deal with this at ever turn. God did not chose to come to earth as an idea or a philosophy or a code of conduct. He came as a person, and there are people on the Jesus Way at every turn. We see it again today.

Notice- one thing this artist (Chris Woods) did well was Jesus’ posture. The scripture said “But Jesus turned to them,” or towards them and spoke to them. Jesus does have a few other things to think about, you know. Abject pain and agony, death imminent accompanied by a great deal more pain, a sense of abandonment by God, the apparent ending of the kingdom movement. He walks, exhausted from what has gone on throughout the night. Yet as he hears the women mourning, Jesus turns toward them.

The Way of Jesus…includes God turning toward us. And that is worth remembering. Sometimes, many times if we are honest, the questions come up. Does God care about me, and about my life? With all the huge things, difficult things going on in the world, does God really care about me and my life? Surely, I sometimes think, God has more important things to be occupied with. Surely no time to bother with little pittances. But Jesus turns toward us. He turns towards us with his presence- but also in his experience.

Because God knows. Some of you, a number of you have lost loved ones recently. God turned toward us, and lost His only Son. God knows. Some of you are experiencing physical suffering. Of all the things in this Jesus story, this is clear- God knows about physical suffering. Some of us have been intensely disappointed by friends who let us down? So has God. In Jesus, God took it on. Turned towards us.

I can’t help but notice that the Jesus whose Way we are walking on, who turns towards us, has an amazing ability to focus on other people. That is worth remembering. I talked to a friend this week who is in a really, really tough place in life right now, in a number of ways. And after we talked about those tough places for quite awhile, before we hung up, they said “Wait a minute. Tell me how YOU are.” I was amazed, actually, that my friend could think of anything in the moment besides his own painful circumstances.

Jesus turns the tables just like that. These women weep over him. But Jesus’ compassion and concern is for them. “Don’t’ worry about me…YOU have very difficult things ahead of you, daughters of Jerusalem.” At a time when Jesus would be fully within his rights to self-focus, he instead focuses on others.

And what comes out of Jesus, even in these terrible circumstances? Compassion pours out, on the daughters of Jerusalem. Remember, that in the scriptures Jerusalem often represents the people of God. And what is the heart of Jesus for God’s people? Compassion. That is worth remembering. It’s not the first time in this gospel. Let me remind you of two earlier times.

- (Luke 13:34) Jesus is walking slowly towards Jerusalem, knowing what he is headed for. As he walks, he calls out “O 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, but you were not willing!”

- (Luke 19:41ff) And again, when Jesus drew near Jerusalem, came up over the rise and saw the city, he wept over it and said “If only you had recognized the things that make for peace…but now…the days will come when your enemies will surround you and hem you in on every side, and crush you to the ground, and will not leave within you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” Weeping as he says it.

Jesus perhaps weeps because he knows, he sees so clearly that people are turning away from what is good. He sees a difficult future. Thirty-some years after Jesus’ death, Jewish zealots would wrestle a few years of freedom from Roman rule. But only a few years. In 70AD, the Romans turned their face to the city, laid siege and eventually destroyed it. Killed many of the residents, burned the buildings, carried things off from the temple and then quite literally tore one stone from another. Jesus weeps. Not only for the hardship that lay ahead for people, but that they had missed Him.

Only one other time does Jesus weep in scripture- outside the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. What kind of a God weeps? A God who cares. Remember the Isaiah 54 reading, “…with everlasting love I will have compassion on you.”

Jesus weeps over the city of Jerusalem. Would he do the same today, in 2010? It’s hard to imagine he would not. A wall runs through part of Jerusalem, part of 450 miles of walls and concrete and barbed wire in Israel. Israeli tanks and bulldozers destroy Palestinian communities nearby. Palestinian terrorist bombings kill Israelis nearby, complexity and hatred run deep. Oh, Jesus would weep over the actual city of Jerusalem today, I have no doubt.

But not only for the literal city, but for God’s people. “I LONGED for you to come to me but you would not. I came for you, but you would not recognize it.” Jesus weeps over people. We don’t hear anger or revenge in his words, but compassion. Does Jesus weep over us? I have no doubt. He longs to be with us.

Bethany’s Kurt Dyrhsen wrote a song that he has sung several times at Bethany called Doubtless. In it a person looks towards Jesus, and the chorus tells what he finds:

I couldn’t believe my eyes;
to see beauty in a face so torn/
find mercy in one so scorned
but doubtless I saw love there/

I couldn’t believe my eyes;
to see beauty in a body so worn/
find mercy in one so harmed;
but doubtless I saw love there.

Let’s follow this one more step. Jesus turns towards the women, turns towards us, filled with compassion, and most likely in this case, compassion for people outside his circle. That is worth remembering.

Jesus didn’t know everyone in Jerusalem. His tears encompassed a city. Jesus was always reaching outside his sphere and pulling someone in. Jesus was always bringing people inside, making outcasts into indwellers and making outlaws into citizens of the kingdom.

Sometimes people ask me about the things that shape our congregation here at Bethany. Often I tell them that over the last 10 years the thing I think has shaped us the most is the Wednesday Night Dinner. Because on good nights, for a moment here and there, the lines all blur. The lines between economic classes, races, a lot of education or no education blur together and it’s just a bunch of people sitting down at big long tables and eating or talking or comparing notes on movies or what they heard on the news or what’s hard or the latest joke they heard. No outcasts.

Reaching outside our normal circles . At the start of this year I wrote an article for the Briefs called The Power of One, and I encouraged all of us to think of someone to simply pray for and invest in a friendship with over the course of this one year, 2010. Not as a project, but an intentional relationship. And I wondered what might happen if all of us did that. Wondered what would have happened by the end of the year.

So I have to confess my hypocrisy. Though I’ve thought about it many times and even prayed a bit, until yesterday I still hadn’t actually committed to praying and investing in one specific person. I finally did. I wonder if you have? I wonder if this might help us “turn towards” those on the outside of our lives a bit.

“Daughters of Jerusalem,” Jesus says. I weep for you because days of evil are ahead of you. “For (and I paraphrase here) if people’s hearts are so hard when the wood is green and alive, when I am here living in your midst- if hearts are so hard that they are killing me…then what will happen when I am not here? When the wood is dry and dead?”

I wonder if any of those in the crowd had heard or remembered Jesus’ words from several earlier occasions- that he was going away, but wouldn’t leave them alone. That he would send the Holy Spirit to be with them forever. Because here on the Jesus Way we have this amazing picture:

• people who long to be with God.
• and a God who longs to be with his people.

And in fact will stop at nothing in order to make that possible.

And THAT…is worth remembering. Amen.