Of Hot Dogs and Mahogany Trees

Luke 13:31-35
13:31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you."
13:32 He said to them, "Go and tell that fox for me, 'Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work.
13:33 Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.'
13:34 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!
13:35 See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.'"

About ten years ago when I was living in Florida my next door neighbor's tree was struck by lightning.  He cut the dead wood up into little twelve inch pieces and put it out on the curb for the city "yard clipping" cleanup day. I found myself looking at the oddly dark brownish-red wood and wondering what sort of tree produced wood that looked like that.  So, I did what everyone does.  I Googled it (or if you really must, you can Bing it).  I looked at the wood, the tree, the leaves, the bark and finally was able to make a determination of exactly what sort of tree my neighbor had out in his trash pile.  He had about a thousand pounds of mahogany on the curb to be chipped up into mulch.  MAHOGANY: one of the worlds most valuable and sought after woods was sitting on the curb in little twelve inch logs.  

I did the only logical thing.  I walked next door.  Knocked on his door and pointed out to him that he had thousands of dollars worth of mahogany sitting on the curb, to which he shrugged and told me if I wanted it I could have it. Now, I'm no hoarder but I sure was not about to let all that mahogany go to waste so I gathered as much of it up as I could store along side my house and piled it up to use it for some awesome project.  



In my mind I was going to use this incredible wood to make something great! Just two small problems: first the logs were cut to one foot lengths and that sounds like pretty small furniture, and second...I don't know anything about making furniture.  So, the wood sat there, and sat there, and sat there.  For a couple of years the wood sat there.  

One day, on a lovely January evening in Florida, I bought a fire pit for my back yard.  I had visions of the family and I sitting around toasting marshmallows and hot dogs on chilly winter's evenings.  Mind you, chilly in Cape Coral where I lived was anything under sixty degrees, but still it was a great idea.  So I bought the hot dogs, I bought the fire pit, I bought the hot dog roasting forks.  And then I realized that I had no idea where to get firewood.  No one had fireplaces, so you couldn't just buy a cord of wood from a roadsides stand, or even a little bundle of wood from the grocery store.  I had three trees on my property: a palm tree, an orange tree, and a grapefruit tree.  None of those were going to become firewood.  So where was I going to get firewood?  

Then my wife reminded me that I had a big stack of firewood around the side of the house.  I was mortified. Not the mahogany!  At the same time I had no idea what to do with it.  I had to admit that I was really never going to build anything with it. The logs were too short to sell.  Truth be told, all I could do was burn it at this point. 

So, we grilled hot dogs over a couple of hundred dollars worth of mahogany.



Crazy right? 

If my neighbor had only known the value of the tree in his back yard he could have left it un-cut and made a pretty good amount of money selling it.  Instead of wood ash mixed with hotdog grease  it would be a beautiful piece of furniture in some rich person's house.  What a shame. 

If only he had known how amazingly valuable the resources were he would have had a treasure on his hands. In the Gospel passage for this week the leadership of the Jewish people have a massive log of mahogany on their hands, and they can't wait to make hot dogs with it.  Jesus wants more than anything to gather the people of Jerusalem together and produce the Kingdom of God just like a mother hen gathers in her chicks.  Somehow all the leaders can think to do is to try to to kill him.   

Crazy right?



"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!"  Those folks were nuts.  Only how different are we exactly?  

We are given the Word of God in visible, readable form in the scriptures, we are given the very Body of Christ manifested as the living Church on Earth, we are given the forgiveness of sins enacted through the sacraments of the church...All provided by the power of the Holy Spirit of God which lives right here in our midst and what have we done with it? Changed the world?  Righted the Great-Wrongs?  Spread the Love of Christ in a transformative way that swept away the effects of sin and evil?

No...but we had some awesome potluck dinners.



Hot dogs cooked on mahogany.

Don't get me wrong I like a good potluck as well as the next guy, but our vision is so limited,  The problem is, just like back in Jesus day we think too small and we have too little faith in the ministry that we are called to perform.  We look at ourselves and see only the human raw material of Christ's ministry.  We see our limitations.  We see our shortages of resources.  Just like I saw my lack of woodworking skills and decent pieces of wood we too see our own shortcomings instead of the potential outcome.  The people of Jerusalem could not see the grand and amazing vision that Jesus had for them.  They could not see themselves as anything more than an occupied nation that needed a revolution against the Romans.  Jesus saw the foundation for a heavenly kingdom that would wage war on sin and death itself...and win. No matter though, they would not let him gather them in.   

Jesus has a ministry to do with you and me.  If we focus on our shortcomings and human nature we lose track of the astounding thing that Jesus wants to do WITH us.  If I had been in the presence of a skilled cabinet maker or wood carver and allowed him/her to guide me with my mahogany what could I have produced?



It would have been a lot better than hot dogs!  So see the gifts of God that have been laid at your feet, know that the hand of God is near you, and ask what great work of art God might be calling you to create.  Maybe it is well beyond your meager means to create, but remember, you are not laboring alone.  

You know, Jesus was a carpenter...