I hope all of you are having a wonderful week. First of all, I want to thank those of you who helped out with this past Saturday’s Lenten prayer retreat. It was a socially distanced outdoor gathering where those who gathered joined in walking meditation and centering prayer, as a way of reconnecting with what matters most. One of those things that mattered most was just being connected with each other, but I think all of us also appreciated connecting with God.
Early on in pastoring here at Life’s Journey, I mentioned hoping we could start a tradition of a Spring Lenten retreat like this one, with another a fall retreat each year focused on our vision for the year each year as a church. I had no idea our first Spring Lenten retreat would also be one of our first socially distanced gatherings as we begin our process of returning to regular worship again as a global pandemic slowly starts to abate.
So I hope not only that it was a high point for this Spring, but even after we are beyond this pandemic we can continue to plan events like this each year to pause as we approach Easter to renew ourselves spiritually.
I shared with the folks who made it to the retreat a metaphor for our spiritual lives provided by one of my favorite authors, Henri Nouwen. Nouewn explains prayer by talking about the sort of large wagon wheels that are used in his home country for decoration – with wide rims, strong wooden spoke, and big hubs in the center. “These wheels help me to understand the importance of a life lived from the center,” he said. “When I move along the rim, I can reach one spoke after the other, but when I stay at the hub, I am in touch with all the spokes at once. To pray is to move to the center of all life and all love. The closer I come to the hub of life, the closer I come to all that receives its strength and energy from there. My tendency is to get so distracted by the diversity of the many spokes of life, that I am busy but not truly life-giving, all over the place but not focused. By directing my attention to the heart of life, I am connected with its rich variety while remaining centered. What does the hub represent? I think of it as my own heart, the heart of God, and the heart of the world. When I pray, I enter into the depth of my own heart and find there the heart of God, who speaks to me of love. And I recognize, right there, the place where all of my sisters and brothers are in communion with one another. The great paradox of the spiritual life is, indeed, that the most personal is most universal, that the most intimate, is most communal, and that the most contemplative is most active. The wagon wheel shows that the hub is the center of all energy and movement, even when it often seems not to be moving at all. In God all action and all rest are one. So too prayer!”
Last week we looked at the beginning of James 3 and Nouwen’s words are a good context for the end of Jame 3, where we read “13 Are any of you wise and understanding? Show that your actions are good with a humble lifestyle that comes from wisdom. 14 However, if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, then stop bragging and living in ways that deny the truth. 15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above. Instead, it is from the earth, natural and demonic. 16 Wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there is disorder and everything that is evil. 17 What of the wisdom from above? First, it is pure, and then peaceful, gentle, obedient, filled with mercy and good actions, fair, and genuine. 18 Those who make peace sow the seeds of justice by their peaceful acts.”
James calls us to lifestyles that flow from wisdom. The Biblical idea of wisdom is not just having a head full of facts, like some nutty professor. It is instead seeing our lives from the very same center that Nouwen says prayer and the spiritual life invites us to see them from.
When we engage in practices like we did Saturday together and hopefully will engage in during future Lenten retreats as a church, we can see our lives and world more holistically, noticing better how they all fit together.
When I see how my life is connected with yours and yours with mine, I learn to see all of life as interconnected, with my fate and yours intertwined. The things we typically divide and fight over — race, class, gender, sexuality, political party — no longer are worth spewing out hatred and violence. Instead I see you and you see me as each bearing some unique gifts you bring not despite but in part because of our differences.
As Gospel singer Hezekiah Walker puts in one of his songs —
“I need you, you need me
We’re all a part of God’s body
Stand with me, agree with me
We’re all a part of God’s body
It is his will, that every need be supplied
You are important to me, I need you to survive
I pray for you, you pray for me
I love you, I need you to survive
I won’t harm you with words from my mouth
I love you, I need you to survive”
And it is not just about you and me. But, to borrow a phrase that one of my favorite theologians, Jurgen Moltmann, often has used, we are also one with a “community of creation”. So, we also have to care for all kinds of life on earth, seeing ourselves as connected with other animals, plants, and all of nature, so that we walk lightly on this earth, doing what we can to care for the environment in which we live. As Pope Francis wrote, “A Christian who doesn’t safeguard creation, who doesn’t make it flourish, is a Christian who isn’t concerned with God’s work, that work born of God’s love for us.”
Living from that place where we value our connections with others, value our connections with nature, is living a life of wisdom. And if we live that way every day, we will embrace others rather than tear them down and we will promote what makes life thrive for the least of our neighbors, even for other living things.
I conclude with a prayer of that theologian I like, Jurgen Moltmann’s, which I think beautifully pictures a life lived from the center. May each of us join in this prayer, asking it to be true for us.
“When I love God I love the beauty of bodies, the rhythm of movements, the shining of eyes, the embraces, the feelings, the scents, the sounds of all this ../ creation. When I love you, my God, I want to embrace it all, for I love you with all my senses in the creations of your love. In all the things that encounter me, you are waiting for me.
“For a long time I looked for you within myself and crept into the shell of my soul, shielding myself with an armour of inapproachability. But you were outside – outside myself – and enticed me out of the narrowness of my heart into the broad place of love for life. So I came out of myself and found my soul in my senses, and my own self in others.”
This is my sermon from Life’s Journey United Church of Christ, Burlington, NC. For more information on the church, check out http://www.lifesjourneyucc.org/
Video of the sermon is available at:
Prayer for the Week
Rejoicing Father, Embracing Mother, You celebrate when one of your lost children is found because no one is worthless to you. We stand humbled and in awe that you would count us among your most prized possessions. Give us eyes to see the priceless value of every living soul, for the sake of the one who became human for the sake of our souls, Jesus Christ our seeker. Amen.
Scripture Luke 15:1-32
All the tax collectors and sinners were gathering around Jesus to listen to him. 2 The Pharisees and legal experts were grumbling, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
3 Jesus told them this parable: 4 “Suppose someone among you had one hundred sheep and lost one of them. Wouldn’t he leave the other ninety-nine in the pasture and search for the lost one until he finds it? 5 And when he finds it, he is thrilled and places it on his shoulders. 6 When he arrives home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Celebrate with me because I’ve found my lost sheep.’ 7 In the same way, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who changes both heart and life than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to change their hearts and lives.
8 “Or what woman, if she owns ten silver coins and loses one of them, won’t light a lamp and sweep the house, searching her home carefully until she finds it? 9 When she finds it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Celebrate with me because I’ve found my lost coin.’ 10 In the same way, I tell you, joy breaks out in the presence of God’s angels over one sinner who changes both heart and life.”
11 Jesus said, “A certain man had two sons. 12 The younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the inheritance.’ Then the father divided his estate between them. 13 Soon afterward, the younger son gathered everything together and took a trip to a land far away. There, he wasted his wealth through extravagant living.
14 “When he had used up his resources, a severe food shortage arose in that country and he began to be in need. 15 He hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. 16 He longed to eat his fill from what the pigs ate, but no one gave him anything. 17 When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have more than enough food, but I’m starving to death! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I no longer deserve to be called your son. Take me on as one of your hired hands.” ’ 20 So he got up and went to his father.
“While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with compassion. His father ran to him, hugged him, and kissed him. 21 Then his son said, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his servants, ‘Quickly, bring out the best robe and put it on him! Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet! 23 Fetch the fattened calf and slaughter it. We must celebrate with feasting 24 because this son of mine was dead and has come back to life! He was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
25 “Now his older son was in the field. Coming in from the field, he approached the house and heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the servants and asked what was going on. 27 The servant replied, ‘Your brother has arrived, and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he received his son back safe and sound.’ 28 Then the older son was furious and didn’t want to enter in, but his father came out and begged him. 29 He answered his father, ‘Look, I’ve served you all these years, and I never disobeyed your instruction. Yet you’ve never given me as much as a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours returned, after gobbling up your estate on prostitutes, you slaughtered the fattened calf for him.’ 31 Then his father said, ‘Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found.’”
Sermon Lost and Found
With this Sunday being our first Sunday in women’s history month, I am struck by how much today’s reading reminds me of the message of a woman in church history, the woman who inspired Martin Luther King to grow into the preacher and civil rights activist he became, a man who helped fight down racism, and open the doors of equality to so many.
Speaking of his mother, Alberta Williams King, he said of her that, when he was growing up, “[My mother] taught me that I should feel a sense of “somebodiness,’ but at the same time I had to go out and face a system that stared me in the face every day saying you are ‘less than,’ you are ‘not equal to.’
“She tried to explain the divided system of the South — the segregated schools, restaurants, theaters, housing; the white and colored signs on drinking fountains, waiting rooms, lavatories — as a social condition rather than a natural order… She made it clear that … I should never allow [that system] to make me feel inferior”
Throughout his ministry, Martin Luther King applied his mother’s message. He called people to this sense of somebodyness, regularly telling people ““Whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent”.
Wailin’ Jennys
A little over a year ago Paula and I went to our last live concert before the pandemic hit, hearing the Wailing Jennys perform in Raleigh. One of their songs, “Love Me Like A Rock” has stayed with me, giving me comfort through this long, long year. They beautifully picture in this song the call to somebodyness Alberta King taught young Martin. Painting different scenes in which a young woman might face trial and temptation, they echo this refrain in answer to such belittling and beguiling voices,
“Who do, who Who do you think you’re fooling?”
I’m a consecrated girl..
“Oh, my mama loves me, she loves me
She gets down on her knees and hugs me
Yeah, she loves me like a rock
She rocks me like the rock of ages
She loves me”
These words recognize, in the words of Fred Rogers how “When we hear the word that we are not loveable, we are not hearing the word of God. No matter how unlovely, how impure or weak we may feel ourselves to be, all through the ages God has still called us loveable”.
Each of us are a somebody. You and I are loved and precious in God’s eyes. To God, we are of infinite and unending worth, deserving not to let our heads hang low, backs bent, but instead, as King said, to stand up tall, knowing we are God’s very own children, not letting anyone ride our backs.
This theme of our worth to God is central to Jesus’ parables. Notice that when the shepherd has but one of his one hundred sheep wander off, he or she immediately notices. And, when they notice, the shepherd does not shrug it off as just the kind of loss that happens in this kind of job, but drops it all to search out for that one lost sheep. It has value and worth. Similarly, if I had a jar of ten coins like the woman in Jesus’ story, I don’t know if I would even notice if one of the coins fell missing to the floor, let alone turn the house upside down, unless somehow that one coin was precious to me. If you don’t believe me, clean out my couch cushions. I’m almost certain you can find not just one coin but likely as many as ten lost there, hidden in the couch, without me even noticing they are up and gone as she notices that this just one coin is missing.
The actions of this shepherd and this woman are meant to represent God’s actions toward us. Such attentiveness to the loss of one, just one, coin or sheep are possible because the shepherd and the woman are each honed in on, noticing carefully what is happening with all their sheep and all their coins. If even a one of them is impacted, they see and they care. This is because these sheep or coins aren’t just animals or money to them, aren’t just property and income sources, but for whatever reason they are personally valued by these two deep in their hearts. They are precious to them.
Jesus is reminding us in this story what he said a few chapters earlier in Luke 12:6-7, “Aren’t five sparrows sold for two small coins? Yet not one of them is overlooked by God. Even the hairs on your head are all counted. Don’t be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.”
Jesus is letting us know that not a one of us is dispensable to God. Not a one of us is overlooked or ignored. We are each and everyone precious to God, seen, known, and loved, no matter what the world tells us or how much we tell ourselves otherwise. God is deeply aware of every aspect of our lives, deeply moved by all that touches us. God is the one whispering in our ears that we are somebody, and we ought to hold our heads up high.
This is a part of why Jesus does not end with stories of lost coins and sheep but concludes with the story of a father and his two lost boys. Jesus is wanting us to know that God looks at us and says something similar to each of us to what my late mother used to tell me. Right up unto the day she died, momma would say to me “Micah, I don’t care how old you are, whether you get married or not, whether you get yourself armloads of kids, what titles you get in front of or behind your name, or how far you move away. You will always be my baby boy. And I will always look out for you”. This is the message Jesus wants his listeners and us to know God says to each of us.
This is important as we come to the Lord’s Table in a few minutes, and as we prepare ourselves to celebrate Easter together as a church in a few weeks.
It’s like a saying I saw years ago on a poster that said, “I asked Jesus, “How much do You love me?” “This much,” He answered. Then He stretched out His arms and died.” Easter, which we prepare to celebrate each Lent, is all about God showing us the lengths to which God will go to seek us out, to find us, to welcome us home, and to let us know we are loved, precious, and of worth to God, just as we are.
If any of you have heard and believed the lie that you aren’t worth it — that you are disposable, that you aren’t good enough for God — hear the good news: God loves you, just as you are. God welcomes you, regardless of what others say or how others treat you. God seeks you out, even when you look down on yourself. You are precious, worth enough for God to come in Jesus to stretch out his arms in death to welcome you back home. That is how far God is willing to go for you.
Far too often, though, the church is not a place that sends this message. Far too often, whatever our words are, our actions as Christians do not communicate that, whoever they are and wherever they are on their life’s journey, each and every person in our communities are welcome by us and God, regardless. Too often we churches send the message that only people who look or act, dress or love, like we do — whoever we is — are really welcome. Too often we churches become closed circles, holy huddles, where we hold so close to the folks we have known for years that we don’t leave any room for new folks to really get to know us and us get to know them. It’s important to check ourselves and ask how much we are living out that welcome, being willing to join God in turning upside down the house or going over the hill and valley, to let others who are not part of the 99 we have with us already in the sheepfold of the church doors or the 9 that are already gathered together in the coin-purse of our circle. We need to be a place where y’all really means all, where all kinds of people are welcomed, learning by how we treat them not only what we say that we and God view them as precious. This is especially important as we begin to pray and consider how to pick up the pieces as a church following this pandemic having caused us to put on pause what we normally do. It would be easy to return to church as usual on the other side of this. But I’d challenge all of you to not do that. The way of Christ calls us to look for who is not at the table with us now and consider how to welcome them in. This includes folks who have been dropping off throughout the various struggles we have faced a church. One of those struggles is this difficult pandemic year. But we need to think of not just those who left our table this year but also years before, even years before I was with you as pastor. Are we welcoming them back, turning the house upside down to let them know there is still place for them here? It’s not just those who’ve dropped off we need to think of. We also need to consider the many people in our community who may have believed the lie that they were not worth something in God’s eyes or had no place at God’s family table, so have never darkened the door of our church or even any church. Like Jesus, we need to be willing to go where they are, to reach out arms of welcome to them, and to call them back home, with us, around God’s table.
I want to challenge you, Life’s Journey, not just to hear in this Gospel message that you and I are loved, but , while hearing and embracing that message, also to hear those others, whatever that means to you, are also precious and deserve a place at our table. And to hear the challenge to figure out how to widen our welcome even more, knowing that will get messy, but knowing it will be worth it to make space for even more people around this family table, especially as we open up more as the pandemic begins to abate. May we hear that call and answer. Amen and Amen.
We continue to look at James this week by looking at James 3, verse 1-12.
Here James says,
“My brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers, because we know that we teachers will be judged more strictly. 2 We all make mistakes often, but those who don’t make mistakes with their words have reached full maturity. Like a bridled horse, they can control themselves entirely. 3 When we bridle horses and put bits in their mouths to lead them wherever we want, we can control their whole bodies.
“4 Consider ships: They are so large that strong winds are needed to drive them. But pilots direct their ships wherever they want with a little rudder. 5 In the same way, even though the tongue is a small part of the body, it boasts wildly.
“Think about this: A small flame can set a whole forest on fire. 6 The tongue is a small flame of fire, a world of evil at work in us. It contaminates our entire lives. Because of it, the circle of life is set on fire. The tongue itself is set on fire by the flames of hell.
“7 People can tame and already have tamed every kind of animal, bird, reptile, and fish. 8 No one can tame the tongue, though. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9 With it we both bless the Lord and Father and curse human beings made in God’s likeness. 10 Blessing and cursing come from the same mouth. My brothers and sisters, it just shouldn’t be this way!
“11 Both fresh water and salt water don’t come from the same spring, do they? 12 My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree produce olives? Can a grapevine produce figs? Of course not, and fresh water doesn’t flow from a saltwater spring either.”
James calls us to think about what we put out into the world by what we say. His challenge and warning reminds me of a poem my mother taught me called“Children Learn What they Live. The poem says “If a child lives with criticism, they learn to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility, they learn to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule, they learn to be shy.
If a child lives with shame, they learn to feel guilty.
If a child lives with tolerance, they learn to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement, they learn confidence.
If a child lives with praise, they learn to appreciate.
If a child lives with fairness, they learn justice.
If a child lives with security, they learn to have faith.
If a child lives with approval, they learn to like themself.
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship, they learn to find love in the world.”
Momma was a teacher and this poem expressed the way she tried to live and work as an educator. It also described how she tried to raise us children. She was not perfect by any means but she tried to recognize that our words help create an atmosphere around us, that shapes us and others. Her desire was for me to grow up to have these qualities of confidence, appreciation, love for justice, faith in myself and in God, compassion, and patience.
Though we may grow up saying “sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me”, James wants us to know our words have power. They influence the atmosphere we are creating for God and others.
We see this writ large in our world right now, not just in classrooms, but across the country.
We were all heartbroken to see our Capitol under siege on January 6th, and to have also seen violence break out in our streets this past year at other times. Just a few weeks ago, we remembered over half a million people who have died from COVID-19, a number that is higher than it should have been due to people who refused to follow public health protocols by masking, social distancing, and other practices to protect their neighbors.
In both examples, a part of why this happened was due to words. People tearing down others in hateful speech, building up people’s anxieties and fear about people in power, about those they disagree with, in ways that were like pouring gasoline while at the same time lighting matches.
This hateful way of tearing down those you disagree with and demonizing people with other points of view is not all of it. It is also the spreading of what the news has deemed “misinformation”, but which growing up we just called gossip, rumors, and lies. Some have been lies and rumors about the pandemic. You’ve heard it. “It’s a hoax”. “It’s a plandemic”. Long drawn out theories about microchips and rich elite. Q-Anon. Rumors and lies about politicians, people in power.
Some of why people have refused to help fight COVID were rumors, lies, and gossip they bought into and spread. And such dishonest talk also inspired some of the violence that occured on January 6th and at other points.
We need to be a part of pushing back against the hateful rhetoric and also the rumors and lies.
James is challenging us, as the poem my momma taught me did, to think about what we put out there in the world. As one popular saying says it, we should look at the letters of the word think and ask ourselves before we speak, “is what you are going to say true, is it helpful, is it necessary, is it kind? If the answer is no, maybe what you are about to say should be left unsaid.”
And it is not just about avoiding saying such things, but actively planting uplifting, positive, thoughtful seeds into other’s lives and world, the kind of things St. Paul mentions when he says “ From now on, brothers and sisters, if anything is excellent and if anything is admirable, focus your thoughts on these things: all that is true, all that is holy, all that is just, all that is pure, all that is lovely, and all that is worthy of praise.” (Philippians 4:8)
We will get back what we plant into the world — words and actions that are positive, inspiring, kind, conscious of others’ feelings, words and acts that call us to fairness and compassion. These produce the harvest we want in our lives and world
This Lent we need to commit to try to be ones building up in just that way, helping create that positive beautiful atmosphere we all need to thrive.
Most merciful God, who wishes to gather us under your wings like a mother her chicks, we know that far too often we have erred and strayed from your ways. Thank you for continuing to seek us out and welcome us home in Christ.
Scripture: Luke 13:1-9, 31- 35
Luke 13:1-9; 31-35
Some who were present on that occasion told Jesus about the Galileans whom Pilate had killed while they were offering sacrifices. 2 He replied, “Do you think the suffering of these Galileans proves that they were more sinful than all the other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you, but unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did. 4 What about those eighteen people who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them? Do you think that they were more guilty of wrongdoing than everyone else who lives in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you, but unless you change your hearts and lives, you will die just as they did.”
6 Jesus told this parable: “A man owned a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7 He said to his gardener, ‘Look, I’ve come looking for fruit on this fig tree for the past three years, and I’ve never found any. Cut it down! Why should it continue depleting the soil’s nutrients?’ 8 The gardener responded, ‘Lord, give it one more year, and I will dig around it and give it fertilizer. 9 Maybe it will produce fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.’”
. . .
31 At that time, some Pharisees approached Jesus and said, “Go! Get away from here, because Herod wants to kill you.”
32 Jesus said to them, “Go, tell that fox, ‘Look, I’m throwing out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will complete my work. 33 However, it’s necessary for me to travel today, tomorrow, and the next day because it’s impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’
34 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who were sent to you! How often I have wanted to gather your people just as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you didn’t want that. 35 Look, your house is abandoned. I tell you, you won’t see me until the time comes when you say, Blessings on the one who comes in the Lord’s name.”
Sermon: Repairing our World, Repairing our Lives
Several years ago, I lived and worked in Robeson County, one of the poorest counties in our state. Finances were tight for us too so my late wife, ever the person to make lemonade out of lemons, decided to turn her love of animals into something that produced food. Katharine, whom most folks called “Kat”, was a pet person, loving animals so much one of our neighbors called her “Elly May” after the daughter on the Beverly Hillbillies who was always taking in and raising stray animals. So she went down to the farm supply store, bought some pullets and began raising some baby chickens by hand until they were big enough to lay eggs.
I learned a lot of things about chickens from Kat’s experiment – learned about the different kinds of feed for them, the different breeds of chickens one could grow, which ones grew up big fast and which remained small. I learned that hand raised ones might cuddle up to you just like a puppy, and that roosters are mean as sin. And mainly I learned caring for chickens was a lot of work, and I’m probably not farmer material.
One thing I learned is that baby chickens from a hatchery – the kind of pullets we hand-raised – are incredibly stupid and incredibly fragile, on their own. They would crawl under things in the yard and get stuck, needing to be rescued. They would refuse to be put safe in the barn with bad weather. One day I found one that had actually walked into its own water dish, not realizing it could not swim or was too small to stand up in it, and drowned. And of course, chickens are almost helpless against all chicken hawks, snakes, foxes, and weasels. We had to be vigilant. If there was any hole, even the tiniest spot for them to crawl into, our chickens turned into a fast food buffet for those predators.
It was some time into Kat’s experiment with raising hens that I discovered a situation in which baby chicks were not so helpless. Late one summer, one hen hid under the shed we used as a barn, refusing to come out, for days. Nothing we did – calling her, putting out feed, sticking my head beneath the barn to prod her — would coax her out. This was alright with routine summer weather, until of course a hurricane came through. I did all I could to get all the hens and rooster into the barn. Everybody but that one hen came in. Nothing I could do could get her into the barn and it gave Kat and me no small worry.
We eventually battened down the hatches for ourselves and what animals we could to wait out the storm, unable to keep coaxing that hen with the way the winds were picking up. When the sky cleared, I went out to let the hens out of the shed to a big surprise. Before I could open the barn door, I heard a barrage of cheeps. Out popped the missing hen from under the shed, with a fierce look on her face and puffball sized pullets, baby birds, all engulfed in her wings.
With some exceptions, these chicks were not as helpless and hapless as the ones we raised by hand, at least while they stayed under their mother’s wings. She did not take them places they would not survive – like into a bucket of water to try their hand at swimming, or places they might encounter a hungry cat or become stuck under a shed. And if a predator came nearby – like a snake, weasel, or fox — she would go into fierce attack, beak and claws flailing. Even if I, who had helped Kat feed this hen by hand when she was a pullet, grabbed the chicks to check them out, she did not hold back. I risked coming back with fingers scratched and bloody. If she could have caused me to pull back a nub instead of a finger, that hen would have. Momma hens don’t play.
I saw firsthand in my late wife’s experiment with raising chickens what one commentator on today’s text described: , “I’ve heard farmers say that usually (though not always) when a fox invades a hen house, it avoids the hen with her chicks. It will take down a horse, or a cow or a pig or a goat, or a sheep, but not a hen protecting her chicks. One of the most powerful forces in the universe is a mother protecting her children. And if you’ve ever tried to take a woman’s kids away from her, you’d know that the image is just about right. The fox may be powerful enough to get away with it, but he’d also have a real nasty limp for the rest of his life.”
The commentator finishes fleshing out this image by adding that “fire fighters in forests often will come across a dead bird covering her chicks. The female bird could easily have flown away, but she preferred to stay there and die and protect her young. They just do that.” What a beautiful picture of the self-sacrificial love of Jesus we remember in Lent, these days leading toward Easter!
In our reading Jesus contrasts this image of himself and God as like a mother hen self-sacrificially shielding and protecting her baby chicks with the opposite image of a fox sneaking around the hen house, ready to pounce and devour that mother hen’s babies. Jesus applies this fox image to the powers that be, which afflict and oppress the least of these in Jerusalem. Just as God’s motherly love is embodied in Jesus’ work and ministry, these predatory powers that oppress are in Jesus’ day centered in the person of Herod Antipas, Rome’s appointed governor of the region.
Since, like most preachers, I sometimes get challenged on whether we should talk about politics in the pulpit, I think it’s important to note that Jesus’ words are deeply political here. He preaches politics, calling out the political leader under whose jurisdiction he lives and works, not mincing words but calling him a predator, saying he moves among his people like a fox moves among the hens in the henhouse, rather than as Jesus, who serves as the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep or the mother hen who risks her own life to fiercely protect her pullets.
Jesus isn’t worried about that accusation of being too political and shows us we sometimes must make a stand too as Christians, if we want to walk in His steps. He knows he must call out corrupt powers, and so must we. He draws this contrast between himself and God as mother hen and Herod and the powers that be as acting like foxes in search of slaughter in answer to those calling him to tone down his challenging of political figures, of the powers that be,those warning him he is being too political. He answers those warning him such preaching makes him face a potential threat by Rome, whom Herod Antipas represents.
Herod and Rome’s brutal approach of treating people as a means, not an ends, as dispensable, can be seen in what the Bible tells us about how both Herod Antipas and his family treated the poor and downtrodden of their day. Matthew’s Gospel tells us that, as a child, Jesus had to flee with his parents as immigrants and refugees because Herod Antipas’s father, Herod the Great, chose to kill all the male children born below a certain age because he felt threatened by rumors of a child that might, maybe, possibly, one day, threaten his wealth and power. Likewise, Herod Antipas, the Herod Jesus calls out, was also the man who executed Jesus’ cousin and mentor, John the Baptizer, at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, when John spoke up against corruption in his court. This heartlessness for the least of these by those Rome put in power is further seen in the events at the beginning of our reading: when Pilate, the Roman to whom Herod owes his power, slaughtered a group of Jews in their act of worshipping at the temple. This is like the church or synagogue shootings we have had the last few years, with the difference that their equivalent of a president or governor,was the one who sent in the gun-men, who caused the bloodshed and mayhem.
Jesus’ words are hard, challenging, coming first in response to people warning him that the way in which he keeps being such an outspoken advocate for those poor are putting him on a collision course with the powers that be, putting his life at risk. He also is responding to how some are refusing to consider their own complicity with such systems of injustice and, instead of considering how to change their lives, are engaging in a kind of what-aboutism — saying let’s forget about me; what about them?
Jesus is making it clear to us that this is the easy path, the wrong way. It’s easy for us to try to find a way out when we hear about injustices faced by others, unfair systems that benefit us but crush those our world discounts as disposable, those who are different than us in our eyes.
For instance, it is easy for me, as a man, to shrug off how our society objectifies and silences women in business, in education, in politics, and sadly far too often even in churches, by saying it doesn’t affect me since I’m a man. Or through saying “ I don’t have a problem. I’m not sexist!” Or “What about all those people more hateful than me — why don’t you talk to them instead?”
It is easy for you or me, when we are white folks, to deflect from calls for us to reconsider the impact racism has on our neighbors of color and instead try to shrug it off by saying things like“but I’ve got black friends” or “ I’m one of the least racist people you’ve met”.
Like those gathered around Jesus looking to be let off easy, we can too engage in our own what-aboutism by saying “ok, but what about the good cops” or “what about white people who also have a tough time”, trying to excuse ourselves from the hard work of confronting the racism within our own hearts and within society.
We see this kind of what-aboutism when people pit black lives versus cop’s lives, immigrant lives versus long-term citizens’ lives, as if being for respecting the dignity of the oppressed necessarily means being against folks who are not facing as hard a time.
One way to interpret Jesus’ words is as an earlier form of the often repeated challenges of Dr. King and Desmond Tutu who say first “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” and also ““If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
Jesus lets them know — lets us know — that, though his way of facing into injustice and seeking to unmask this injustice that is not only outside of us, but is also within us, through the ways of our society bombards us with messages devaluing the worth of those different than us, in ways that infect our minds and hearts if we are not careful — that though Jesus’ way of facing into this head on is not an easy path, it is a necessary one. Confronting prejudice and how we are letting it benefit us, or shape our attitudes, can feel dangerous. Let alone facing into how such prejudice is flattening others around us in ways that benefit us at their expense. Jesus is letting us know facing that head-on, confronting it, seeking to dethrone it, is always the way forward. That is one way we take shelter under Jesus’s wings, walking in his steps, rather than opening the gate for the foxes, snakes, and weasels of this world to come in. To not take such shelter under the wings of Jesus and God our heavenly parent is to do this, to invite the fox into the hen-house of our souls — a recipe for destruction.
Jesus invites us to embrace the costly grace Jesus gives, gathering under his wings, by engaging in such challenging self-reflection. This is welcoming the grace James Baldwin spoke of by saying : “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense,” he writes, “ but as a state of being, or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” This is the costly grace this season of Lent calls us toward.
Learning to get outside of ourselves and see out world through other’s eyes, to stand in solidarity with those facing more discrimination and oppression, struggle and risk, than you, is hard work. And it’s why it is important to remember Jesus’ promise that he goes with us, promising his presence on this journey, his grace to lift us up – through the Spirit, we do have God about us as a mother bird, sheltering us under wing. We are not alone. This is the point of the story of the fig tree. God knows it takes time to bear fruit, and so does not give up on a one of us. God is ready and willing to give us the water, fertilizer, grace and help we need to bear such fruit of changed lives and a changed community, if we let God. We are not alone in this difficult endeavor. God is with us. And we have each other. Hand in hand, sheltered under God’s loving wings, we can make it there, together, no matter what obstacles lay ahead of us, or how strong the hurricane force winds blow. May we hear and answer this call this Lent and always. Amen and Amen.
progressiveredneckpreacher 