Homily for The Second Sunday of Lent
by Rebecca M. Taylor,
Director of Children's, Youth & Family Ministries
All Saints Parish, Brookline, MA
March 4, 2007
Lectionary:
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35
Psalm 27:10-18
Jesus said to them, "I must be on my way ..." (Luke 13:33)
Do you remember the story of the Little Red Hen? Perhaps it was read to you when you were a child, or maybe you have read it to your children or grandchildren.
To refresh your memory, the Little Red Hen was an industrious little bird who accomplished much on her own. Turning again and again to her closest friends, she repeatedly is left to fend for herself when she decides to plant some wheat, and then has to harvest it and grind it into flour. When she bakes a cake with the flour, however, her friends are more than happy to help her eat it. But she is not about to share her cake with these no-count friends, and so she sets off to find a quiet place to enjoy the fruit of her labors.
Along comes a hungry fox. He quickly scoops the Little Red Hen and her cake into a bag and heads home, mouth watering for dinner and dessert. But the Little Red Hen outwits the fox, manages to escape, and the story ends with her having her cake and eating it, too.
Now, this children's story does not, in my mind, make a very good Christian parable, but it does illustrate the clash between two willful individuals: the hen on the one hand and the fox on the other.
Just like this morning's gospel. Did you notice? That story contains a hen and a fox, too. Let's take a look at it.
The passage from Luke is a little more than halfway through the gospel narrative. Jesus has set his sights on Jerusalem (Luke 9:51). The gospel writer tells us just a few verses before today's reading, "Jesus went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem." (Luke 13:22) Jesus knew what awaited him in the Holy City. Apparently, so did a group of Pharisees.
They come to see him. "Don't go to Jerusalem," they tell him. "Herod wants to kill you."
But Jesus will not heed their advice. He's a man with a mission and he knows where it's taking him. He tells the Pharisees, "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 ..." (Luke 13:32-33a)
Now, you probably already realize this, but calling the Roman governor a "fox" was not a smart move. Doing that publicly, in front of witnesses, was very dangerous. Herod represented Caesar in that part of the Roman Empire. Herod had authority to keep the peace in Galilee and beyond, and he accomplished that goal in a variety of ways, including killing anyone who challenged his power. When you get right down to it, Pax Romana was achieved throughout the Empire by silencing all who challenged Caesar and Caesar's ways of operating. That's just the way they did things then.
Jesus knew that, and so did the Jewish holy men - the Pharisees - who came to him. You have to understand that in the first century, peace in the Empire was the ultimate objective, and that peace was obtained not just by violence but by garnering the allegiance of local leaders who had influence over small communities of Roman citizens. The Jewish High Priest and his colleagues in Jerusalem had worked out a very delicate balance of power with Rome. They were allowed to keep their temple in Jerusalem and they were allowed to worship the God of Israel as long as they paid their taxes and kept the rest of the Jews under control.
But the Temple in Jerusalem and the worship life that emanated from it existed within a well-organized and very obvious Roman religious system. There were Roman temples everywhere you traveled in the Empire. And at the top of that religious hierarchy of gods and goddesses was Caesar who claimed the title "God Almighty." Roman citizens not only obeyed Caesar, they worshiped him, too. So insulting an agent of Caesar basically amounted to insulting both the political and the religious source of Roman power itself - and you just don't do that.
The Pharisees knew that. Herod knew that. And Jesus knew that. And that's why he was headed to Jerusalem. He had to bring his message about the Kingdom of God to the very place where it should have been most evident. In the process of submitting to Roman rule, the Temple and its leaders had become corrupted by the values of the Empire. In the Temple there was power in the hands of a few men who colluded with Rome to keep the peace by silencing anyone who challenged them. What's particularly ironic about this passage is that it is a group of Pharisees who come to see Jesus. Pharisees, you may know, were especially observant Jews. They were the keepers and interpreters of the Law and knew the purity regulations inside and out. Their job was to keep the Temple clean from anything or anyone who might contaminate it. That they were aware of Herod's murderous intentions reveals just how contaminated they themselves had become.
This is why Jesus laments over Jerusalem. "Jerusalem, Jerusalem," he wails. You can just see him, can't you? Head down, arms out, shoulders slumped. "The city that kills [those who speak for God,] the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!"
"I must be on my way," Jesus says. He had to go to Jerusalem, for it was there that the ideals of the Kingdom of God would face off against the beliefs and practices of the Kingdom of Caesar.
The Jesus scholar, John Dominic Crossan, has written extensively about the socio-political context within which Jesus engaged his ministry, and I recommend to you his most recent book, co-authored with another well-known Jesus scholar, Marcus Borg. The book is entitled The Last Week: A Day-by-Day Account of Jesus' Final Week in Jerusalem. In it, these two men describe the clash of wills that occurred in Jerusalem in the final week of Jesus' earthly life. Listen to how they describe what happened on Good Friday:
"... the execution of Jesus was virtually inevitable. Not because of divine necessity, but because ... this is what domination systems did to people who publicly and vigorously challenged them ... Jesus was not simply an unfortunate victim of a domination system's brutality. He was also a protagonist filled with passion. His passion, his message, was about the Kingdom of God. He spoke ... as a voice of peasant religious protest against the central economic and political institutions of his day. He attracted a following and took his movement to Jerusalem ... There he challenged the authorities with public acts and public debates. All of this was his passion, what he was passionate about: God and the kingdom of God, God and God's passion for justice.
Jesus' passion got him killed.
Crossan and Borg go on to make this provocative assertion:
"Jesus did not die for the sins of the world ... [H]e was killed because of the sin of the world. It was the injustice of the domination systems that killed him, injustice so routine that it is part of the normalcy of civilization." (p. 161-162)
We who follow Jesus are called to share his passion for justice.
We who follow Jesus accompany him on his way - not the way that Crossan and Borg describe as "the normalcy of civilization."
Lent is the season when we try to perfect the act of following Christ, but this journey we are on with our Lord is a day-in-and-day-out, week-after-week effort. As ones who are "marked as Christ's own forever" (BCP, p. 308) we are called to face into the injustices of the world and to do something about them, believing that our efforts, however small, will make a difference. We do this because we believe that the Kingdom of God is already a present reality and that it overshadows the kingdom of Caesar. Our job, with God's help, is to help others recognize that, too.
And so we make sandwiches to take down to Common Cathedral to feed homeless people. We prepare dinner for the folks who show up at the St. John's soup kitchen.
We collect pennies to give to the Brookline Food Pantry so that it can have enough groceries on hand to feed the 200 people who walk in its doors every month.
We pick up our shovels and rakes and hoes and build a garden in a small rural town in Nicaragua. We travel to Tanzania to minister to those with HIV/AIDS.
We study scripture with men who are incarcerated in a pre-release center. We help homeless women and their children get situated in new housing.
We lay hands on one another for healing.
We show up here each week, trusting that the Holy Spirit will restoke the flames of passion for justice that we share with Jesus and inspire us to carry the good news of the gospel out into the world again.
This one whom we follow - the one we know as the Christ - stands with us against the evil intentions of the fox. He not only stands with us, he holds us close. Look again at today's gospel, if you have any doubt about that. Hear what Jesus tells us this morning:
"How often I have desired to gather [you] together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings ..." (Luke 13:34)
We belong with the hen. We belong to the hen. We are Jesus' brood.
The fox is always lurking nearby, ready to overpower, ready to silence, ready to kill our passion for justice.
But we've got the hen with us - that feisty, passionate, determined hen.
And she is a force to be reckoned with.
So are we.