February 21, 2016
Written by
Kathryn Matthews (Huey)
Sunday, February 21
Second Sunday in Lent
Focus Theme
Strong and Tender
Weekly Prayer
Hope beyond all human hope, you promised descendants as numerous as the stars
to old Abraham and barren Sarah. You promise light and salvation in the midst
of darkness and despair, and promise redemption to a world that will not
listen. Gather us to yourself in tenderness, open our ears to listen to your
word, and teach us to live faithfully as people confident of the fulfillment of
your promises. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Focus Scripture
Luke 13:31-35
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.'"
All Readings For
This Sunday
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Psalm 27
Philippians 3:17–4:1
Luke 13:31-35
Focus Questions
1. What burdens are you
carrying this Lent on your spiritual path?
2. How would Jesus' words be
received in the halls of power today?
3. How can we embody
"neighborliness" in our public life?
4. What are other images of
self-giving, unconditional love?
5. What would it mean to
live as "signs of life" rather than "signs of death"?
Reflection by
Kate Matthews
Our reading from the Gospel
of Luke offers rich material for Lenten reflection: this is the season for
uncomfortable questions and hard truths--just what's needed to open our eyes
and our hearts, and set our feet on the path of faithfulness. If you thought
giving up chocolate for six weeks was difficult, try immersing yourself in this
short but challenging text from Luke, just one moment for Jesus on the road to
Jerusalem, one moment on our own Lenten journey toward the cross. During these
six weeks, we take a hard look at the obstacles between us and God (obstacles
that God didn't put there), not just on our own personal spiritual path, but
also on the road toward a new world of justice, wholeness, and peace. Six
weeks, of course, is never long enough, but the rhythm of the church year
provides time for focused reflection on all that weighs us down on the lifelong
journey of faith.
Luke tells us a short story
about an encounter, a warning on the road to Jerusalem, the road out of
Galilee, where the petty tyrant Herod runs roughshod over the people. Herod
Antipas, successor to the evil Herod of the nativity stories and equally
ineffective as that Herod was at hindering God's plans, is motivated by fear
and a deep hunger for power and security. His vision of how things should be
obviously clashes with the things Jesus is saying and doing as he travels
around, right there, on Herod's own home turf! Leslie Hoppe notes the sharp
contrast between Herod's plans to conform the people to the values of the Roman
Empire, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the mission of Jesus, who
called the people not only to repent but to remember, and be faithful to, the
ancient promises of God.
A closer look at Herod
Herod is curiously human,
too, in his own way, and Luke will offer another glimpse into his psyche (and
maybe ours as well) later in his Gospel. Stephen I. Wright directs our
attention to the scene in Jerusalem, in chapter 23, when Pilate has sent Jesus
to Herod (who was also in the city at the time, for Passover): "When Herod
saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had been wanting to see him for a long
time, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some
sign" (23:8).
Perhaps we can identify just
a little bit with Herod's desire to meet (and test?) Jesus, but he doesn't have
the sense to see that this is no wonder-working celebrity standing before him,
but the Son of the Most High God. It takes him another verse or two to remember
what a threat to his pathetic little power this prophet actually represents.
Here, on the road to Jerusalem, however, Jesus brushes aside the warnings about
Herod's evil scheming as only so many words (which they are, of course), futile
efforts that are not significant in the big picture, the plan of God. God's
word has power; Herod's words are useless.
Still, the powers that be,
whether it's Herod in Galilee, Pilate in Jerusalem, the religious leaders there
and scattered throughout the land, the wealthy and prestigious, or the mighty
Roman Empire itself, can cause havoc in the meantime, and Jesus sets his face
toward Jerusalem fully aware of the awful danger that lies ahead. These are all
powers of one kind of another, some of them admittedly dependent on those more
powerful than themselves, all of whom dislike Jesus' talk about the first being
last, and the last being first. Indeed, that's what Jesus was talking about
right before this scene opens, and none of it sounded like good news to those
who thought they were comfortably (if tenuously) ensconced in the places of prestige
and power.
Standing up to the powers that be
Of course, this is not the
first time a prophet has stood up to the powers that be in Israel. The language
and imagery in this short text recall not only the ancient promises of God's
tender care (our theme, after all, is "strong and tender"), but also
God's holding Israel to a high standard of faithfulness to a covenant carved on
their hearts. When Jesus speaks (and heals and drives out demons and feeds the
masses), he is doing what God has done throughout the Old Testament, and his
words, Wright tells us, illustrate "Jesus' rootedness in Jewish ways of
thought."
Given the tragic
misinterpretation and uses to which passages like this one have been put, it's
important to remember once again that Jesus is a prophet in a long line of
prophets in Israel who proclaimed God's judgment and God's mercy as well.
According to Hoppe, "Both Isaiah (60:4) and Zechariah (10:6-10) use the
image of the scattered children of Jerusalem being gathered together to speak
of God's unwavering love for Israel. Also the image of Israel finding shelter
under God's 'wings' occurs frequently in the Old Testament (see Deut. 32:11;
Ruth 2:12; Pss. 57:1; 61:4; 91:4)." Jesus' cry of anguish in this passage,
then, would have been wrenchingly familiar to the ears of those who could hear
them.
If we turn our attention
from Herod's feeble little threats out in the outlying territory to the
imposing sight of the city of Jerusalem, at the heart of all things religious
and political, we'll focus on what is to come in the story of Jesus as well as
its meaning for us today, gathered in our own centers of all things political,
religious, and economic. What does it mean for Jesus to weep over the city that
is, many scholars remind us, at the center of Luke's story, from Jesus'
childhood visits (which presumably continued throughout his lifetime) to the
great drama that is about to unfold? Jerusalem is of course important in the
Old Testament, for better or worse, but it's also important to Luke, who mentions
it, Fred Craddock writes, "ninety times; in the remainder of the New
Testament, it is mentioned only forty-nine."
A vision of
"neighborliness"
This is no ordinary city but
one that holds the presence of God in its temple, or at least it has long
claimed to do so. However, Jesus echoes other prophets who warn Jerusalem that
the presence of God has left its midst, the prophets who warned of the
consequences of the people's wanderings from God, as well as the prophets who
spoke words of comfort in the worst of the people's suffering. In either case,
God never abandoned the people: judgment, yes, but there was mercy as well.
For example, Walter
Brueggemann writes that the prophet Jeremiah imagines a "big urban
agenda" based on "neighborliness," where the vulnerable are
protected and the weak are cared for, a persistent theme in the prophetic
writings of the Old Testament. With that vision in mind, Brueggemann wonders what
was going through Jesus' heart and mind as he gazed at the city before him and
considered its future. Jesus, he says, "is the lover of a city who grieves
its death wish," a city that "refuses what makes for shalom."
And so, Jesus "warns against the oppressive acquisitiveness of urban style
that we call 'coveting' that in turn produces endless anxiety." Does that
last phrase describe us as well? Aren't acquisitiveness and anxiety marks of
our life today?
Scholars believe that Luke
knew that the city of Jerusalem would be destroyed a few decades after Jesus
was put to death there. Margaret Aymer says that Luke held Jerusalem
responsible for its own destruction, because it rejected Jesus (one wonders,
however, about all those people who did not reject Jesus, as well as those who
were faithful to the covenant with Israel), but she also notes Jesus' deep
compassion and grief for what lies ahead for the city.
How does this matter to
us today?
The word
"neighborliness" has such power, if we remember the second great
commandment about loving our neighbor as ourselves. In the current primary
season for the presidential election in the U.S., we're hearing so much talk
about God and God's will - regardless of the separation of church and state we
also claim to revere so highly. It seems to me that neighborliness is a
beautiful and compelling vision for both our internal and external affairs, and
it would fulfill both religious aspirations and secular ones, finding common
ground for all of us to stand on, whether we are "religious" or not.
In other words, it's a
vision we could all embrace. We don't need to impose our religious beliefs on
one another, or punish one another for infractions of religious laws. But we
can all hold up an ideal of neighborliness that would inspire us to share, to be
just, to include rather than exclude, to heal and repair and strengthen, to
protect the vulnerable, to care about one another and show respect for every
person. What do you think of "neighborliness" as a vision for every
city, every community, every nation?
Doing whatever it takes
Jesus' lament over Jerusalem
employs a powerful and heart-breaking image that scholars explore and expand
upon: the mother hen who tenderly protects her chicks. Obviously there is that
fierce, unselfish love that is willing to do whatever it takes to care for the
chicks, even if it means losing one's life, and Jesus will soon prove that.
N.T. Wright draws on the image of a "farmyard fire" as the threat to
the hen's babies, when "those cleaning up have found a dead hen, scorched and
blackened, and live chicks sheltering under her wings." Jesus' firm
resolve to face what lies ahead in Jerusalem is the same kind of fierce
devotion that any mother feels in the face of a threat to her children, no
matter what they have done or failed to do. Timothy Shapiro says Jesus is
"the mother hen who folds the covers down on the bed and puffs up the
pillow, at the same time saying, 'Don't let me ever catch you doing that
again.'" What a beautiful way to describe both accountability and mercy!
Grieving the ones who
turn away
Ironically, Rodney Clapp
believes that these "surprising words" of Jesus suggest a different
way to see the powers that be, those would-be "masters of the universe,
invulnerable and imperial behind their relentless, foxy maneuvering."
(It's not lost on us that Jesus calls Herod a fox just before he speaks of
gathering chicks under his wings.) We might see those powers that be as Jesus
does, "as barnyard chicks lost in a storm, too afraid and too stubborn to
find shelter under the shadow of mother hen's wings. What these overlords want
to be heard as a fearsome canine growl emerges as an almost comic
cheeping." So the words are not surprising just because they present a
feminine image for God but because of the poignancy of maternal tenderness that
enables us, perhaps, to see that God loves all of us, and grieves even (or
perhaps especially) for those who most stubbornly turn away.
Margaret Aymer pushes us
even further, if we consider how "remarkable" it is that Jesus
laments the very ones who will reject him. How, she asks, would it affect our
Lent if we took the opportunity to lament the most unlikely people, "the
unjust....U.S.-based and global terrorists....those who deny resources to the
poor and who oppress those with no advocate?" Aymer's use of the word
"terrorists" for oppressors of the poor certainly expands its current
meaning in the world and adjusts our perspective, perhaps uncomfortably so.
What about us – where would we put ourselves in this picture, Aymer asks, and
what about "our own silence and collusion with international crimes of
poverty, hunger, and disease?" Wouldn't Jesus cry over our cities, and our
institutions, as well?
How do we live as signs
of life?
Lent presents such
uncomfortable questions and hard truths. What fate are our "city,"
our culture, our values and our rejection of what shalom requires, bringing
down upon us? Richard Swanson observes that "Herod (in any century) has
always found allies among people of faith." We remember, for example, that
"good" Christians used the Bible to justify slavery not so long ago,
and today make decisions for the sake of things like "national
security" (remember the fear of insecurity in Herod?) that would make
Jesus weep over us in anguished lament. Swanson reminds us, then, that
"Lent is a time to take seriously the ways we live as signs of death
rather than of life, the ways we steal from the earth rather than sprout from
it," a beautiful image in a church season named after "spring."
In this story about Jesus'
firm determination to face what lies ahead in Jerusalem--for our sake, not only
for the sake of his people, in his own time--we hear a call to stand firm
ourselves, no matter what, when faced with risk for the sake of the gospel.
Jesus' firm resolve reminds us of great heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr.,
but also of the "Freedom Riders" who were not deterred by ugly
threats and violence when they integrated buses in the South during the Civil
Rights era. Some were killed, many were beaten, and even more lost their homes,
but they did not back down. Jesus doesn't back down or run away, either, not
because he knows that he is "safe" from the cross (quite the
opposite), but because he knows who God is, and what "the plan" is.
This is the Jesus who accompanies us on our Lenten journey, and on every path
of risk and faithfulness, no matter what we encounter along the way.
During Black History month,
we recall not only Dr. King and the Freedom Riders but also the slaves of
antebellum America (their names are often lost to us) who, Michael Curry
writes, had "to extend their vision beyond things as they were, to a
deeper, broader, higher vision, and dream of things as they could be."
This, Curry writes, is what Jesus did so well: "For Jesus, God's passionate
dream, compassionate desire, and bold determination is to gather God's human
children closer and closer in God's embrace and love." The good news, the
gospel, is that even the most unlikely people, on the margins of society, are
gathered in under this mother hen's care, into "a new humanity, a new
human community, born not of social custom but of the Spirit of God."
Mother Church as a
brooding hen
Barbara Brown Taylor
reflects on the way Jesus gathers us together rather than letting us be
scattered like vulnerable chicks. We are the body of Christ together, she
writes, not all alone, each of us in our own private spiritual life. She notes
the tenderness of Jesus' efforts and the tragedy of his rejection by this city,
and she poignantly describes the meager resources of a little mother hen, the
image Jesus chose to identify with, attempting to protect her brood against a
vicious and well-armed predator (what a tenderly vulnerable image that hen
makes). As a mother and grandmother, I found her suggestion heartbreaking: "At
the very least, she can hope that she satisfies his appetite so that he leaves
her babies alone."
Do these words give us a
sense, even in a small way, of the tragedy of Jesus' impending death? But
Taylor then goes on to resurrection, and describes the triumph of love in the
long run. Her description of the battle between the hen and the fox is
elegantly matched by her remembrance of the victory, and her image of the
"church of Christ as a big fluffed up brooding hen, offering warmth and
shelter to all kinds of chicks…., planting herself between the foxes of this
world and the fragile-boned chicks." A big, fluffed up brooding hen—an apt
image for "Mother Church"!
Jerusalem as a spiritual
home
James Burns suggests that
everyone in a congregation has a spiritual home, "the space where they
work out their ambivalences and the contradictions of living....the place they
learned to love and learned to fear....where they are grounded, their
destiny." It may be a special place from childhood that they return to in
search of their spiritual roots and renewal, or a place in their journey where
they have experienced closeness to God and growth in their relationship with
God, even if it involved struggle and pain. In any case, we can imagine that
Jesus had that kind of feeling about the city of Jerusalem, for better or
worse. Clearly, Jesus loved Jerusalem, and yet today we read of his struggle
with it as well.
I'm not sure I agree
completely with Burns' statement that "every person in your congregation
has a spiritual home" - not today, not in our society. We've reached a
point in our secularization, I think, where many people don't necessarily feel
that they can claim a place or a community as their spiritual home. Perhaps
that's why they've come to church - they are seeking to fill that empty place,
that need, and they bring their "ambivalences and the contradictions of
living" as well as their gifts and their joys and their wisdom. Will such
seekers find a spiritual home in your congregation?
Reading with a broken
heart
In writing this reflection,
I struggled my way through interpretations that might suggest a special guilt
on the part of the Jewish people for "rejecting Jesus." I was not
alone in this concern over words and the suffering they have justified over the
centuries, from pogroms and Inquisitions to Nazi horrors and anti-Semitic
slurs. As Mary Gordon reminds us, "We must always read these words with a
broken heart."
I found Fredrick C.
Holmgren's writing most helpful in this regard, for he reminds us of the profound
ethical concern of the people of Israel from earliest times (compared to the
cultures around them), their sense of responsibility for their sins, and their
willingness to receive God's judgment. How could the prophets have preached,
how could their words have been preserved and passed down, without that
community of faith that received them, and took them to heart? Holmgren urges
us, rather than judging the people of Israel, to examine our own consciences
about the same sins those prophets decried.
"I am Joseph, your
brother"
Rather than heaping judgment
on our ancestors in faith, we might look into our own hearts and history, and
repent, as Jesus calls us to, in this season of Lenten discipline. When we
think of Jerusalem that day, under the strong and tender gaze of Jesus, we
might picture ourselves, in our own way, as its children, too. Wallace M.
Alston, Jr., tells the moving story of Pope John XXIII, the humble spiritual
leader (whose memory the present pope often evokes), welcoming a delegation of Jewish
visitors early in his pontificate, when "he walked over to them with open
arms and said: 'I am Joseph, your brother' (Ex 45:4)."
Alston, having wrestled with
the way the New Testament has been interpreted to justify the persecution of
the Jewish people, concludes that John XXIII provided an illustration of
"where we need to be, it seems to me, if it is not where we are today in
the relationship between Christians and Jews. Perhaps God will find some new
way to use these two members of God's one covenant family to serve the human
good and to bring glory to God's great name." Amen: so let it be.
For further
reflection
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
19th century
"Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win
them."
Jane Austen, Pride and
Prejudice, 19th century
"There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at
the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate
me."
Mark Twain, 19th century
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and
moral courage so rare."
Yehuda Amichai, 20th
century
"Jerusalem is a port city on the shore of eternity."
Brenda Sutton Rose,
Dogwood Blues, 21st century
"Although I wasn't there to bear witness, I imagine Lot's wife scanned the
masses for her children. Perhaps she sought out the curves of their mouths and
the shapes of their faces, trying to memorize her children, grown now. She
looked back as I and any strong, loving mother would have done."
Debra Ginsburg, 21st
century
"Through the blur, I wondered if I was alone or if other parents felt the
same way I did--that everything involving our children was painful in some
way."
Cheryl Strayed, 21st
century
"But she would never get there, no matter how wide she stretched her arms.
The amount that she loved us was beyond her reach. It could not be quantified
or contained."
J.K. Rowling, 21st
century
"To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is
gone, will give us some protection forever."
Betty Smith, A Tree
Grows in Brooklyn, 20th century
"'It's come at last,' she thought, 'the time when you can no longer stand
between your children and heartache.'
