The theme of today’s scriptures is: I Would Die for You. It’s just like the Prince song, “I Would Die 4 U”! You may think its just a pop song, but listen closely and just maybe you’ll hear how he’s singing about Jesus. Or he’s just being oddly intense, which Prince often was. However you interpret it, the song is about a love that is defined by his willingness to give everything, including life itself.

When we talk about great love, we often reach for this statement. It’s not uncommon to hear people say they would die for their kids. Some of us are bold enough to say we are willing to die for the love of our country. Nonprofit workers around the world are exposed to danger in their acts of service, like Doctors Without Borders or World Central Kitchen. Our first responders put their lives on the line when answering the call to protect communities. It means something to say that you’d die for someone. And sometimes it might seem like a bit much, like in Prince’s song. Just imagine someone saying this to you on perhaps the third or fourth date. You’d be looking for the door. It’s an intense statement. It means something profound about the nature of the relationship. And this is the theme in our scriptures, God declaring his willingness to die for us.

In our gospel text, Jesus is lamenting for the fallen nature of his beloved city Jerusalem. Not only was it corrupted by religious hypocrisy, but also politically with the Roman empire controlling people through the puppet king, Herod. David’s city and the home of God’s temple was not the bastion of hope, love, and faith it should have been.

In our text, Jerusalem also means something larger than just a geographical location. Afterall, prophets have been killed outside of the physical location, but they haven’t been killed outside the corrupted and intersecting power structures of religious and political institutions. The corrupted power structure of Jerusalem was what killed the prophets, including Jesus.

And yet, Jesus wants to gather in the children, the underlings and perhaps even the people of this corrupted system under his wings to protect them from evil embodied in the fox, Herod. Now, when hens protect their chicks from danger, like foxes, they do so to the point of death.

Jesus has not even met most of these people he is offering to lay his life down for, all of whom in one way or another wouldn’t deserve such loyalty. Which of us would say that we deserve Jesus’ sacrifice of himself. It’s not about deserving, because we can’t deserve it. It’s not even really about us, but about the one who loves us enough to make such a commitment.

Likewise, in the Old Testament, we hear the story of God’s creation of a covenant with Abram before he is renamed Abraham by God. Notice Abram responds to God, even after believing and trusting and leaning into this relationship of commitment and righteousness, with a challenge. “How can I really trust what you say?” Instead of rebuking this challenge, God responds by participating in an ancient ritual that the people of the time would have known. This ritual of cutting these animals in half and walking between them essentially meant that if I don’t live up to my end of the bargain, may what happened to these animals happen to me. God was communicating to Abram that he is all in with Abram and willing to die if God broke that covenant. It’s like a pinky swear with death on the line.

And again, it’s not about deserving. It’s about God’s gift to us. Each of us, individually. And all of us, collectively. It is not dependent on us in any way. I don’t think it’s even up to us to really understand it. I doubt Abram really understood how God’s promises and commitment could be true or how it would play out, but he would have understood that ritual that God went through. That might just have been enough to quiet his fears and worries.

But notice, it is God who is willing to die, instead of holding the specter of our death over our heads if we mess up. There is no part of this covenant ritual that suggests we need to die for God if we don’t keep the covenant. It’s God’s promise to Abram, with all of the goodness flowing in one direction.

In the Philippians letter, Paul is encouraging his folks in Philippi to follow in his path in Christianity, the path that is the way of the cross. Paul is encouraging his readers to not seek God by striving or working in any way to be deserving. He’s asking them to not seek glory in the world or to satisfy their appetites, but to follow Jesus in his path of self-emptying love, to allow our egos, our small selves, our limited worldviews to die in order to come into a glory like Jesus’. A glory that journeys through death and ultimately changes the world for the better.

Paul isn’t saying here that he’d die for us, though he is believed to have died a martyr for our faith. In this text, however, he’s saying that he walks with us in the path laid out by Jesus. The path of the cross, that path of self-emptying love like Jesus’ and like God’s with Abram. This is the call of taking up our cross. This text begs the question, how are we to “die” for the sake of love?

I saw a meme a while ago that made me chuckle, though I’m guessing there were some offended folks out there. Hopefully you’ll chuckle, too. There was this majestic looking drawing of Jesus with the quote on top reading, “Jesus died for your sins.” You can hear the preaching tone leap off the screen. And then underneath that, it says something like, “OK, well, that was painful, but he didn’t stay dead, right? So what exactly did he give up? A couple days? So, Jesus gave up his weekend for your sins.”

As theologically dubious as this is, whoever wrote this clever little meme has a point. I’m not saying it accurately represents the story of Jesus. However, here’s the nugget I find interesting. God’s willingness to die, to suffer, to come into the lowliness of our torturous experiences may be grounded in God’s knowing about the abundance of life. God, being God, would know best that death is not an ending, but a moment of transition from one stage to the next. Jesus, being one with the Father in the mystery of the Trinity, knew that his death would be a catalyst and would bear much fruit well beyond his life. When you know death isn’t death, it is easier to be willing to walk that path for another.

So, what do we do with this? First of all, I think we can thank God for our unearned place in God’s love and concern. We can give thanks for God’s personal pinky swear with each of us that God is in our corner. We may not always get our way in life, but that doesn’t mean God isn’t always working through the abundance of life and love to always care for us and bring us back into the folds of love. This is an abundant world that we each are held in.

I also believe that we are called to risk loving others with ourselves on the line. That doesn’t mean we go around singing Prince’s anthem, I Would Die 4 U, to everyone. That might be weird and backfire a bit. We might scare people. Plus, we may not be ready to totally empty ourselves for the sake of others. We may not even be called to do so.

But what are you called to do? Is there a greater risk you are feeling called to lean into for the sake of love, even if it is scary? What might that be? Is there someone or something, like a cause or belief, that you are so in love with that you are ready to give them a pinky swear of fidelity? That you will give of yourself in great love to them? To give of yourself in ways that are profound enough to scare you, even as you know that you can lean on the abundance of God and the abundance of life to back you up?

The truth is we can rely on the abundance of God, just like Jesus relied on the abundance of God. He knew his death would not be the end, but the beginning in some profound ways. And he was willing to walk that path. It’s bigger than a weekend, of course! But there is something to this idea of having the confidence to give in ways that stretch us because we know we are not fed by bread alone, but by God’s abundance. God has made a pinky swear with each of us. What might we do with such a promise?

Grounded in God, grounded in prayer, grounded in the abundance of Life allows us to lean into this sort of holy risk. Friends, God has made a pinky swear with you. Some days, it’s all we can do to remember this fact, breath, pray, and get through the day. We all know those days. But there are other days, when the Spirit is nudging us forward to give, to promise, and be in solidarity with those who need the love of God that flows through us to them. When it is one of those days, God is with you in your self-emptying love and in how you follow this holy and loving way of the cross, the giving of yourself for others.

AMEN