Rev. Debbie Cato
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 and Luke 13;31-35
Fairfield Community
Church
March 13, 2022
Let us Pray: Holy God, this life of ours is
full to the brim. Our days are overflowing with emails and to-do lists,
schedules and notifications, assignments and deadlines. We wake up feeling
behind, we go to sleep worrying about tomorrow, and we know—there has to be
more than this.
So we pray: bend down and show us the way. Leave
breadcrumbs in the street. Point us toward awe and wonder. Guide us to intimacy
and trust. Gift us with laughter that will make us cry and hope that will make
us feel alive. We want a new kind of full to the brim. Show us the way. We are
listening for your cues. Gratefully we pray, amen. ( Rev. Sara Speed santifiedart.org)
Lamenting
Today is
the second Sunday of Lent, the 12th day of our 40 days of journeying
with Jesus to the cross. If you were
here for Ash Wednesday, you received the imposition of ashes, a symbol that you
belong to God in recognition that you are dust and you will return to
dust. You were reminded that you are
invited to come fully as you are.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Last Sunday, we talked about temptation, and I challenged you to look for the things that tempt you and get in the way of your relationship with God. A fuller life awaits us if we have the courage to get rid of the things that keep us trapped and separate from God.
Today, Luke gives us this rather strange passage. What are we to do with it? My Bible has the heading, “The Lament over Jerusalem.” To lament is to feel or express sorry or regret for; or to mourn over. In today’s passage, Jesus is lamenting over 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, but you were not willing.”
I can’t remember if I’ve told you, but I grew up in a small town in Minnesota. Springfield – I guess it was bigger than Fairfield because it had 2,000 people! We lived in town but I had a friend who lived on a farm. I loved to spend the night with Dawn because I got to ride the school bus with her. The one thing I didn’t like was before school in the morning, we had to go get the eggs for breakfast.
I was afraid of the chickens because they would peck at me, and they were loud. I thought they were mean and frankly, ugly. Dawn always laughed at me because I never got any eggs. She just shooed the hens away and pushed them and grabbed the eggs. But the pecking and cackling stopped me.
I remember one spring, Dawn surprised me with a bunch of chicks in an incubator. The mother hens were fussing about and protecting their chicks, but Dawn reached right in and a grabbed a chick for me to hold. Oh, the hen got loud when that happened! She didn’t like that one bit!
On this second Sunday in Lent, Luke invites us to think of Jesus as a mother hen whose chicks don’t want her. Even though she stands with her wings wide open, offering welcome, belonging, and shelter, her children refuse to come home to her. Her wings — her arms — are empty. This is a mother in mourning. A mother struggling with failure and helplessness.[1] It’s a sad picture, isn’t it?
A group of Pharisees have warned Jesus to leave the area where he’s teaching
and healing because Herod wants to kill him. Jesus knows how
dangerous
Herod is because he ordered the arrest and beheading of John the
Baptist. But Jesus tells the Pharisees
that he’s not afraid of “that fox.” He has work left to do and nothing
will stop him, even Herod.
Jesus has already set his course for Jerusalem, the city that
rejects God’s messengers and kills its prophets. Jesus knows exactly what
his fate is in Jerusalem, but he won’t change direction. Not for Herod, not for
anyone. And yet, even as he stands up to a "fox," Jesus is lamenting
over Jerusalem like a grieving mother hen.[2]
Jerusalem has not always treated Jesus particularly well, and yet
it is clear that he still loves it very deeply. All he wants is to protect it,
like a mother hen protects her brood. Jerusalem’s actions can’t and don’t
change that, for that is what true, unconditional love actually looks like.[3]
What does this stunning image offer to us for our own Lenten
journeys?
Debi Thomas says that at Lent, we are called to embrace our vulnerability. “Yes, Jesus
mocks Herod by calling him a fox,”
she says. “But Jesus never argues that the fox isn’t dangerous. He never
promises his children immunity from harm. I mean, let’s face it — if a
determined fox wants to kill a brood of downy chicks, he will find a way to do
so. What Jesus the mother hen offers is not the absence of danger, but
the fullness of his unguarded, open-hearted, wholly vulnerable self in the face
of all that threatens and scares us. What he gives is his own body, his
own life. Wings spread open, heart exposed, shade and warmth and shelter at the
ready. What he promises — at great risk to himself — is the
making of his very being into a place of refuge and return for his
children. For all of his
children — even the ones who want to stone and kill him.”[4]
Being vulnerable is hard. What would it take for us to embrace Jesus' vulnerability as our strength this Lent? What would it take to trade in our images of a conquering, triumphant God, for the mother hen God of this lectionary passage?
Can you picture a mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings when a predator approaches? Her wings swelling with indignation, fear, and courage. Can you picture her standing her ground? Preparing to die if she has to, her children tucked securely beneath her soft, vulnerable bodies? What a profound, radical picture of our God.
And then, we are called to lament. To feel or express regret; to mourn. All of us — regardless of our circumstances — we know what it’s like to feel rejected. We know what it looks like to fail in our best efforts to protect, to help, to advise, or to save. We know the grief we experience when we watch someone we care about self-destruct before our eyes. All of us who live in this broken world, carry painful memories of love that wasn’t returned, of unmet desires, of unfulfilled dreams. We know what it is to long for something and find no fulfillment for that longing. As a church we can lament over what we used to be, the pews that used to be full, the people we’ve lost, the people we’ve hurt, the people we’ve failed to reach, the opportunities to reach out we’ve missed, the people we’ve failed to love.
In our Gospel passage, Jesus longs, too. In her blog, Debi Thomas says, “Jesus longs and grieves for his lost and wandering children. For the little ones who will not come home. For the city that will not welcome its savior. For the endangered multitudes who refuse to recognize the peril that awaits them. His is the lamentation of long, thwarted, and helpless yearning — “How often have I desired to gather you.” It is a lamentation for all that could have been in this chaotic, clueless world. It is a lamentation for the real limits we live with as human beings. The lasting wounds. The hopes that come to nothing. Sometimes, like Jesus the mother hen, we can’t do what we most desire to do. We can’t give what we deeply long to give. We can’t save the loved ones we ache to save.”[5]
And finally, during Lent, we are called to return. “You were not willing,” Jesus tells his wandering children. You would not come back. You would not relinquish your right to yourself — not even when your life depended on it. The image of chicks snuggling under a mother hen’s wings is an image of gathering, of community, of intentional oneness. It requires a return. A surrender.
What in us is “not willing” to be gathered this Lent? Not willing to surrender to community? To the body which is the Church? To the people God has placed in our lives for our own growth? Where in our lives do we go it alone, rejecting messy human connection because it feels too risky, too time-consuming?[6]
This is our challenge this second Sunday of Lent. To be vulnerable and see it as a strength. To lament what was, what never came to be, what is that has fallen short. And to return to the body. To accept our need for community. To welcome in the people God has placed in our lives.
May the longing of Jesus become our longing too. May the image of the mother hen remind us that Jesus will never stop calling us home.[7]
As Rev. Ashley DeTar Birt puts it, “We can be frustrating, we can be challenging, we can be difficult. We might even, intentionally or unintentionally, try to push God away. Yet God will remain with us, still loving us because God’s love never ends. Know that you are loved, no matter what you do.”[8]
Hear that again. Know that you are loved, no matter what you do. Amen.
[1]
https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3341. Debi Thomas. I Have Longed. March 13, 2022
[2] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3341. Debi Thomas. I Have Longed. March 13, 2022.
[3]
Sanctified art.org. Full to the Brim. Sermon notes by Rev. Ashley DeTar Birt
[4] Ibid.
[5]
https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3341. Debi Thomas. I
Have Longed. March 13, 2022.
[6] Ibid
[7] Ihttps://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=3341. Debi Thomas. I Have Longed. March 13, 2022.
[8]
Sanctified art.org. Full to the Brim. Sermon notes by Rev. Ashley DeTar Birt
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