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The Third Sunday of Lent
February 28,
2010 The Rev. William Van Oss, Rector
Readings
Today’s Gospel story could be entitled “The Fox and The Hen.” Almost sounds like a children’s story, but this is far from kid’s stuff. We get a peek at the depth of Jesus’ humanity today, don’t we? We see Jesus in deep lament. Jesus is grieved over Jerusalem. He mourns over her brokenness, the injustice, the inequality, the violence of the city “that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it.” Jesus stands in a long line of prophets and sages sent to reform the heavenly city.
Jesus came to usher in God’s Kingdom, and in order to do so, He needed to turn the world upside down, and Jesus was good at that – turning the world upside down. The line that immediately precedes today’s Gospel is a famous line of Jesus’. He says, “Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” He turned the world upside down. He called members of the religious establishment “whitened sepulchers who strain out gnats and miss camels and who point out the speck in another person’s eye while missing the log in their own.” Jesus said that tax collectors and prostitutes were entering the kingdom of God ahead of the “chosen” people. Turning the world upside down, smashing the old order in order to usher in the new, and in doing so Jesus was a threat, a threat to the old order, a threat to the “Herods” of the world.
Jesus came to extend humanity’s vision beyond things as they were, to a deeper, broader, higher vision, a dream of things as they could be - a dream of God’s kingdom here on earth, a mother hen gathering her brood under her wings. In today’s Gospel, we can picture Jesus standing on a high hill, looking across the valley at the shining city, Jerusalem, the beloved city of God, the place where heaven had reached down and touched earth. Jesus holds in His heart God’s dream for beloved Jerusalem, a vision of what it could be. Barbara Brown Taylor says: “Jesus knows that he has brought the precious kingdom of God within the reach of the beloved city of God, but the city is not interested.” The city will treat him the way it has treated the prophets who came before him. And so Jesus weeps. Jesus knows that God’s beloved city has embraced the way of the fox, cunning and stealthy. It gets what it wants through fear and force and threat and intimidation, and violence. That’s the way of the world, isn’t it?
For Jerusalem at the time of Jesus and for us today, we suffer the power of fear and force and threat and intimidation and violence. The strong survive, the weak are consumed. Witness the widening gap between rich and poor in our country and in the world; witness the growing gulf between those who have and those who have not, whether it be food and shelter, or health care, or education, or safety. Jesus weeps; His heart breaks over our world today. Jesus has brought the precious kingdom of God within our reach, but we, like Jerusalem before, are not interested.
Jesus longs to be mother hen. It’s interesting to note he doesn’t long to be the wolf that kills the fox or the bear that chases the fox away. Jesus longs to be mother hen in the face of the fox. And we all know what happens to the hen in the face of the fox. Jesus’ impending death is, Barbara Brown Taylor tells us, “the cosmic battle of all time, in which the power of tooth and fang was put up against the power of a mother’s love for her chicks. And God bet the farm on the hen.”
She describes the meager resources of a mother hen attempting to protect her brood against a vicious and well-armed predator, with “nothing much in the way of a beak and nothing at all in the way of talons.” The hen is overmatched, and yet, she wins the victory. Taylor says: “Having loved her own who were in the world, she loved them to the end. She died a mother hen, and afterwards she came back to them with teeth marks on her body to make sure they got the point: that the power of foxes could not kill her love for them, nor could it steal them away from her. They might have to go through what she went through in order to get past the foxes, but she would be waiting for them on the other side, with love stronger that death.” The world turned upside down, the hen wins in the end, because she sacrifices her life. Taylor then suggests a wonderful image of the “church of Christ as a big fluffed up brooding hen, offering warmth and shelter to all kinds of chicks, including orphans, runts, and maybe even a couple of ducks. The church of Christ planting herself between the foxes of this world and the fragile-boned chicks, offering herself up to be eaten before she will sacrifice one of her brood.” We often refer to “Mother Church,” and perhaps that is apt: “It is where we come to be fed and sheltered, but it is also where we come to stand firm with those who need the same things from us.”
What a wonderful image of the church, a big, fluffed up brooding hen, standing firm. Welcoming all who come to her for protection, warmth and shelter, willing to give it all for the sake of even one fragile chick, working sided by side to eliminate the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots.” Standing firm with the vulnerable, who need protection in a world filled with foxes. Jesus turned the world upside down, today he is the hen staring straight at the fox, reminding us that God’s passionate dream is to gather all God’s children closer and closer in God’s embrace and God’s love, and also reminding us that God is willing to give it all to make this happen.