The Second Sunday of Lent, February 28th, 2010

The Rev. Dr. Katharine C. Black
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35

This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. AMEN.

Thank you for your kind invitation and your warm welcome back to this much loved church. The bell tower’s repair is splendid, and I love hearing the bell toll out its warm welcome to the island. I am so glad to be back here, and thank you for inviting me back.

This Luke text was one of the first I ever preached on here—but of course, I neither remember what I said nor saved that 6 year ago, or was it 9 year ago, homily. I do remember that chickens being gathered up meant a lot more to me having been here, than they did in the city and frigid winter weather where I come from, but I read about them with a further thought this year, but that in a bit.

The most salient phrase from all of the readings this morning for me is: “O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy.” That phrase like the prayer we used to say at Communion in the Prayer for Humble Access— remember it? It started: “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in out own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies, We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table, but thou art the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy,” and then we ask to share in the Communion “evermore to dwell in him and he is us.” I fear that not saying that phrase about God’s essential property has caused us to think of it less, and perhaps not remember that that is the property, the glory that is the essence, the salient, the one true reality of God, so in Lent, when we are most aware of our short comings, limitations, and genuine sins, it is the time to be reminded of God’s persistent mercy.

Every Lent I consider how to think about sin, that hamartia, that “missing the mark” we are each invited to think about each day of Lent. You know the biblical word here, hamartia, means missing the mark, in archery. It’s an outdoor healthy word, and the concept of missing the mark, is to aim and try again and again, getting closer to the mark, even when an occasional attempt makes the arrow sputter and be whiffed, or go totally awry. In yoga one practices an archer pose, and even in that it’s hard to aim perfectly straight and true, but at least in yoga, we are told to give up our own self-expectation, judgment, and competition. With sin we are rarely reminded as often to suspend those three self-awarenesses: competition, judgment, and expectation, and be assured that it is surely God’s glory always to have mercy.

I read an image this week about considering our sins. We speak of Jesus taking them all on at the cross, but how do we get them out? They come from our actions, our inactions, our thoughts, our denials, and those things done on our behalf, which we’d as soon have no part of. This image suggested, in as outdoors a way as missing the mark, that we hang our sins along a clothes line. Hang them out; shake them out; air them out. “What if I had not believed that I should see the goodness of the Lord?” the psalmist asks. Paul assures him and us that “Our citizenship is in heaven.”  The laundry is washed, folded, and put away fresh and clean with us in heaven. The gospel leads us to that faith.

Jesus is urged to get away, away from his path to Jerusalem. The Pharisees tell him that Herod (whom Jesus refers to as a fox) is out to kill him. The strident word kill is used three times in this small passage: that Herod wants to kill Jesus, that it’s impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem, and that it, Jerusalem, is a city that does kill prophets. Kill; kill; kill. Jesus understands that risk or even certainty, and says he’ll be working today, tomorrow, “and on the third day I finish my work.” We know this is not about his travel plans for his sojourn in Jerusalem. We know this reference is to the work of the cross, that three day finishing of his work of salvation for all. We do not know whether Luke writes this for Jesus to foreshadow the events to come for his hearer/readers, or whether Jesus really did have foreknowledge of the glory to come. People of faith, as well as scholars, guess that this is Luke’s aim, Luke’s prediction. Somehow if Jesus knew all he had to do was endure the cross and it would all turn out happily ever after, then that lessens both the risk to him of not doing it, and makes the self-offer somehow easier. How much easier to take any exam, stick to anything hard, if we knew it would come out better than alright. Humans don’t get such guarantees. All illnesses don’t get to cure, though they make get to healing. All harsh words aren’t necessarily heard again right. All lies don’t get said and unsaid as easily. Jesus as a human would have guessed things were going to get tough, even awful, for him in Jerusalem, but he trusted in God— not he knew how it would happen and turn out.

He knew something else. He knew “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” At Fischer’s Cove there used to be several chickens running around loose, and attendant crowing roosters. When storm clouds would gather—and I remember those grey times as more rare than in the last few years—the hens would indeed gather up the chicks and scurry them towards some shelter. I read another image, though this week of a chicken sensing the presence of a real enemy, whether fox or wild dog or snake. The hen gathers up the chicks way up physically under her wings, so that they’re safe and not visible to any sly fox. Even when the hen is attacked and killed, the fox gets only her, and the chicks scatter and race around, probably safe for the moment, because the fox is sated, and they run off in many directions too  many directions for the satisfied fox to bother with.

If Herod is the fox, then Jesus is the hen. Jesus diverts and satisfies the fox. We have a chance to be safe, as safe as those chicks. “See your house is left to you.” This sentence from this morning’s Gospel puzzles me a bit. In a passage of such symbolism, prediction, narrative, this is such an ordinary sentence. Is “See your house is left to you.” meant to be ironic? — See you get to stay the way you’ve been, with whatever you used to believe or now believe—your house— and you’ll never get to my house, the House of the Lord. Perhaps tough, rather than being so threatening, he is simply saying, "Your house,” the one, where you go, is where you go, where you feel safe, where he goes to prepare for us. You’ll always have that place, that choice, and he goes to prepare s safe house for each of us. I’m inclined to that invitation to join him, rather than the threat of our always choosing our own place of respite, even one without him. The choice is ours, but “your house”  is left for us to choose and his work, finished on the third day, will be ours to see. We’ll see him and recognize him as the blessed One, who comes in the name of the Lord.

What is new in this small part of Luke’s Gospel is Jesus’ vision of the way to protect the chicks. He sees himself as one who comes to put himself into the path of the worst that can come to the hen and chicks, a predatory death. He does not come as the warrior to slay death, or the Roman Empire that way. Israel expected a warrior-prophet who would defeat the armies and forces of evil. Put aside expectation, judgment, and competition. Jesus does not present himself as better than other healers, magicians, or warlords. Last week in the three temptations, he made that clear. He put aside competition with any of those traditional forces of power over evils. By offering those with him their own house left to them, he also puts aside the path of judgment. Maybe they will find him through their own house.

Most astonishingly he makes us put aside our expectations of the One who comes in the name of the Lord, to bring about God’s realm of love, security, forgiveness, and everlasting welcome.

No muscle person, no bloodlord, no schemer— just a fat, lazy hen who gathers up her—note HER— chicks and gets killed by the fox. The chicks scatter, each offered their own house. It’s a striking image of the scratching hen as the savior of the chicks. Like the image of the Lord as shepherd, it is one everyone would see clearly and be familiar with. However, there are few feminine images of saviors, and so it was new for them to hear, and still unusual for us. It is all the more striking since he compares Herod to a fox a more usual predator for chickens than for sheep, when one might expect a wolf.  Luke makes this image clear. God’s savior comes like an a mother hen.

Jesus is to come with love, urgency, and willingness to protect his own at any cost, and the chicks may scatter and choose where to go. This savior would be more than willing to help us with the brightening of our dirty linens and see them safely put away clean and safe. Jesus knew, trusted, believed, and acted on God’s glory as always being to have mercy. Jesus trusted that reality, and took on the role of our saving hen. It’s not a grand as the King of Glory, Prince of Peace, but I would wonder whether those grand men would care about scritching chicks looking for tiny grain bits in the face of a marauding fox. The hen would always care. Jesus always cares, acts, promises, and guarantees us each a place with him in Paradise.

That’s Good News.

© Katharine C. Black, 28 February 2010, delivered at St. Mary the Virgin, Virgin Gorda, BVI