The Way Around, Luke 13:31-34
Rev. Dr. Rhonda Abbott Blevins
March 8, 2026
At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” 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. 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.’ 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! 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.’ “
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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I love this famous poem by Robert Frost. It elicits at least two questions for me each time I read it:
1. What roads less traveled have I taken in the past that brought me to this moment?
2. What might the road less traveled be for me at this point in my life’s journey?
So let me pose these same two questions to you . . . two questions that you might think about throughout today or even process with a friend or maybe your spouse:
1. What roads less traveled have you taken in the past that brought you to this moment?
2. What might the road less traveled be for you at this point in your life’s journey?
With that, I invite you to consider the idea that Jesus, throughout his three-year ministry, faced several occasions in which “two roads diverged”—we read about one of those instances in our reading from the Gospel of Luke a moment ago.
The context of the story is that Jesus was walking through towns and small villages as he was making his way to Jerusalem. As he was walking, Luke tells us, “At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’”
Think about how you might respond if you were heading into Washington D.C. and some people in the know came up to you and told you, “You need to get out of here . . . the President wants to kill you.” I don’t know about you, but I might think twice before crossing the Potomac and entering into our nation’s capital. I might think about my kids, my loved ones, my church—all the people who need me. I’m guessing that I’d get in my Honda and high-tail it back to Pinellas County.
Jesus must have felt something like that, don’t you think? Real fear. Real stakes. Real people he loved who would grieve him. When the Pharisees delivered that warning, they weren’t being dramatic. Herod was dangerous. The threat was credible. And in that moment, two roads diverged before Jesus:
The safe road — hop in the Honda, head back to Galilee, live to preach another day.
The dangerous road — press on toward Jerusalem, toward the confrontation, toward the cross, toward the fullness of everything he had been called to do and be.
And because we know the rest of the story, we know which road he took.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t negotiate. He looked at the Pharisees and essentially said: tell that fox I’m not done yet. Jesus called Herod exactly what he was — a small, scheming predator — and then announced, with breathtaking calm, “I must keep going.” He, like the poet, took the road less traveled. The terrifying, God-led, world-changing road to Jerusalem.
And here is what I want us to sit with for a moment, because this is not just Jesus’ story — it is the story of every person who has ever stood at the fork in the road and felt the pull of the safer path.
The threat did not define the direction. The obstacle did not determine the outcome. Fear did not have the final say.
Now, I want to be careful here, because I am not standing up here to romanticize danger or suggest that wisdom and caution have no place in a life of faith. Sometimes the road less traveled is not the dramatic, headline-making choice. Sometimes it is far quieter than that — and no less costly.
Sometimes the road less traveled is the decision to finally have the honest conversation you’ve been avoiding for years. Sometimes it’s saying yes to a calling that feels too large, too difficult, too demanding for you. Sometimes it’s staying — staying in a challenging relationship, staying in a difficult job, staying in a place that is stretching you beyond what feels comfortable. And sometimes — maybe for someone in this room today — the road less traveled is simply deciding that this is the year you stop letting other people’s expectations determine the trajectory of your life.
Because here is what I notice about the Pharisees in this story: they may not have been villains. Some scholars believe they were genuinely trying to protect Jesus. Get out. Play it safe. Manage the risk. And there will always be voices like that in our lives — well-meaning voices, even loving voices — that hand us a perfectly reasonable excuse to shrink back from what God is calling us toward.
Jesus heard those voices. And he kept walking anyway.
The question the Frost poem leaves us with — and that has made all the difference — is not about the road itself. It is about the person who chose to walk it. It is about what we become when we stop letting fear be the final word. It is about what is possible when we trust that the One who calls us onto the harder road also walks it with us.
That is the invitation of this Lenten season. That is the invitation of The Way.
And we are just getting started.
But before we get too swept up in the heroism of Jesus’ resolve, Luke stops us cold with one of the most tender moments in all the Gospels.
Just a few verses later, Jesus looks toward Jerusalem — the city he is walking toward, the city that has repeatedly rejected God’s messengers — and he doesn’t rage. He doesn’t condemn. He weeps.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem… how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”
This is not the image of a conquering hero. This is a mother hen, wings spread wide, longing to shelter her chicks — and the chicks keep running into traffic.
God’s desire for us has always been more life, not less. More courage, not less. More flourishing, not less. The grief of this passage is not about failure — it is about the tragic, heartbreaking human tendency to choose the small, safe, predictable life when something so much larger is being offered.
In the film The Way, Tom Avery is a man who had life figured out. Successful career. Predictable routines. A son, Daniel, who drove him a little crazy with all his wandering and searching. When Daniel dies on the first day of the Camino de Santiago, Tom flies to France to retrieve the body — and then does something no one expected, least of all himself. He starts walking.
He didn’t plan to be transformed. He planned to grieve and go home. But the road had other ideas.
There are several moments in the film where Tom scatters his son’s ashes along the Camino. He is not going around his grief. He is walking through it, one painful step at a time. And somewhere along those ancient stones and mountain passes, something cracks open in Tom that all his careful, controlled, expected life had kept sealed shut.
The Camino has a way of doing that. So does following Jesus.
The way around — the safe detour, the managed risk, the life kept carefully within expectations — is often no way at all. The transformation we long for almost always waits for us on the other side of the thing we’ve been avoiding.
So what does any of this have to do with a small church on Clearwater Beach?
Everything.
I want to ask you something directly: what do you think people expect of us? A charming little Chapel on Clearwater Beach. A warm, welcoming community. A lovely place to worship on vacation. A faithful congregation doing good, quiet work in a beautiful corner of Florida.
And those things are true and they are beautiful. But are they the ceiling? Or are they the launching pad?
Margaret Mead once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
The early church started as a handful of frightened people in an upper room. The Camino de Santiago began with a few pilgrims walking a dangerous road toward an uncertain destination. And look what they became — movements that changed the spiritual landscape of the entire world.
Chapel by the Sea is not too small to matter. We are not too beachy, too casual, too seasonal, too anything. We are exactly who God has placed in this particular spot, at this particular moment, for purposes that may exceed anything we have yet imagined.
When Jesus looks at Jerusalem and asks — how often I have longed to gather you? — he’s lamenting the untapped potential of the city. I wonder: is there untapped potential here, at Chapel by the Sea? Is God asking: will you let me do more with you than you thought possible?
And so I want to close with a twofold challenge — one personal, one communal.
First, the personal challenge.
Where in your own life are “two roads diverging” right now? Where is the safer path pulling at you — the path that keeps you within the comfortable boundaries of what others expect, what you expect of yourself? And what is the road less traveled that God might be calling you toward?
Maybe it’s a relationship that needs repair and you keep finding reasons to delay. Maybe it’s a gift you’ve never fully offered because you weren’t sure it was good enough. Maybe it is a calling — to serve, to lead, to create, to go — that you’ve been circling for years without stepping onto.
The Lenten road is an invitation. Come. Walk. Trust that the One who calls you also goes before you.
Second, the communal challenge.
What would it look like for us — together — to exceed every expectation anyone has ever had for a small church on a Florida beach?
What if our hospitality became legendary — not just warm, but transformative, the kind that changes lives? What if our voice for justice and compassion reached far beyond our zip code? What if the kingdom work we do here rippled out into Pinellas County, into our city, into the world, in ways we cannot yet fully see?
Never doubt — Margaret Mead was right — that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world.
We are that small group. We are on The Way. And the road ahead is full of holy possibility.
So let’s keep walking.
Amen.