March 17, 2019: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard.  Amen.

Lordy, if I were not already a vegetarian, that reading from Genesis today would make me want to be one – what is up with all that slicing up the animals and piling them up on a fire – Yuk!  I read one person who commented that this action by Abram was a sign of his commitment to the covenant with God, but what I want to know is who asked the cow, goat, ram, and birds what they thought about it?  I mean, it’s sort of like the old consulting story about the difference between a pig and a hen with regard to a breakfast of bacon and eggs.  The hen, like Abram here, is obviously vested in the process, but the pig, like these poor animals, is far more committed.

Needless to say, I am not preaching on this text today, but speaking of hens, let’s look at the gospel, because given the horrendous news of this past week, we need to take a closer look at what Jesus is saying.

So last week, we heard about Jesus in the wilderness, where Jesus encounters his inner demons, or outer ones, in the desert.  And then he begins his ministry.  Things are going along – okay, maybe not always smooth sailing – remember, they tried to throw him off a cliff early on in this hometown, but he was out there doing what he knew he had to do.  And, you know, just as he really gets going, just as he is finding his preaching and miracle groove, folks try to tell him to stop.  Pharisees, actually, and not for bad reasons.

Now, the Pharisees were not the bad folks some today think when they read the bible.  In fact, St. Paul was a Pharisee, and there is a school of thought (though I am not sure where I stand on it) that Jesus may also have been one given how the Pharisees interacted with him.  But generally, they or their competitors for converts in the post-second temple days of Judaism, the Sadducees, are not usually depicted as good guys in the Jesus story.  Yet here in the gospel passage from Luke we heard today, they are genuinely trying to keep him from harm.  They warn him about the dangerous path he was on, and that Herod (Antipas now – not Herod The Great) wanted to kill him. 

Now, I love what Jesus says here, because in both what he says, and what he does (or really, doesn’t do), he takes the sting out of the fear that this warning was supposed to create in his heart.  He starts with “”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”

Or, put another way, “Herod you rotten explicative, you are nothing to me in the face of who I am and what I have been called to do, now step aside folks, because I have work to do. Why is it that truth is so scary to people that those who speak it are murdered?  Oh how I wish I could protect everyone as a mother does for her children.”

And in this response, Jesus makes a choice – one that would cost him his life…and he knew it.  His choice was to heal, to love, and like a hen, to sacrifice himself so that others might live.  There is a vulnerability in that, isn’t there. Think about the hen – an image, by the way, of God in the feminine (a sermon for another day).  When she covers her chicks with her body, she makes herself vulnerable, the shield of deep love between her charges and the fox that seeks to kill.  She could turn away, she could flee, but she doesn’t.  Love draws her to stay and protect the innocent, to defend those more vulnerable than she by standing with them.  That takes a great amount of courage.

If you think about it, courage and vulnerability are as bound together as light and dark or faith and doubt.  You can’t really have courage if you aren’t in some way or other in a vulnerable state. You can have vulnerability without courage; however, and perhaps that is why we need to hear this gospel today, because we are living in a time when all of us are especially vulnerable. In truth, the definition of being human is being vulnerable, because none of us are really fully alive if we are also not vulnerable to some degree – in as much as it means that we are not taking any risks – life changing risks…for ourselves, and those on our path. 

Vulnerability is also thrust upon us, particularly those who are  victims of oppression, for the marginalized, for the targeted.  And let there be no mistake, there are people in the world who are targeted in no less a way than the chicks in a hen house by a fox, and for as bloody a purpose. 

It has become a part of our lives that we will not go more than a few months, sometimes less, before hearing of another massacre – another attack by a terrorist.  The face of terrorism of late however is not of some foreign government, or of some extremist religious group.  No.  Today the face of terrorism is primarily that of white, angry, xenophobic, bigoted men – young and adult.  They are the fox.  And the ones they target  – Jews, Muslims, Blacks, Gays, fellow students. 

The most recent attack on the people worshipping in the Al Noor and Linwood mosques in New Zealand is particularly heinous.  The killer wore a head camera and live streamed his murderous rampage – live streamed it!  Men, women, and children who were gathered together to worship God, slaughtered as they prayed – this was something he wanted shown across the internet.  And perhaps even worse – as fast as companies like Google and Facebook tried to take the video down, it was posted again by others.  Who would do this?  What kind of sadistic, depraved, evil beings would find this entertaining?  It is the modern day equivalent I suppose of what would happen to those, who like Jesus who were crucified – because they didn’t get cut down and buried, but were left there for all the world to see.  But that wasn’t for entertainment – that was to strike fear into the hearts of others…and there we have our answer, don’t we.  It isn’t about some sick form of entertainment, at least not entirely, but about spreading fear. 

Now why would that be important to terrorists like this one in New Zealand, or for that matter the one in Pittsburgh who murdered the Jewish faithful at the Tree of Life temple, or who cut down the parishioners of Mother Emmanuel church in South Carolina, or who murdered the kids at too many schools to name, or… or…or…  Why is fear a part of this whole horrible nightmare? Because fear begets fear, spreading like wildfire, and leaving devastation and hopelessness in its wake. That is, after all, the very meaning of the word terror-ism, is it not?

This is what these well Pharisees were responding to – the fear bound up in their own oppression.  They were fearful, for themselves if Jesus made too much of a raucous, and for him too.  But Jesus knew that fear comes out of vulnerability, and that he had to show that there was another way to respond to this human condition.  Jesus knew the evil that could result in a human heart that is vulnerable should it be filled with fear.  He knew that if only that heart could be filled with love instead, then there was only one path ahead – courage not anxiety, hope not despair, compassion not anger, love not hate.

We, the body of Christ today, have all around us the voices of fear – and they aren’t warning of us some ruler called Herod Antipas.  No. Today, the Pharisees voices have been replaced by a 24 hour news cycle and social media.  And these voices speak of real horrors in our society – bigotry, hate, oppression, poverty, and violence – of people who show up with torches and shout their evil in the streets, or fire assault weapons in places of worship, in concert and theatre venues, in bars and other gathering places, in schools. 

And they don’t need to warn us about the leader of our country.  His name isn’t Herod, and he is far weaker than any ruler of Galilee, but he has become a mouthpiece for those who hate, spewing his bigotry from his bully pulpit of the oval office.  On the very day of this horrific shooting in New Zealand, even after knowing that the terrorist quoted him in his manifesto, even knowing that the terrorist used the racist lies about a white genocide resulting from an invasion of non-white peoples into countries – this President had the audacity to use that same terminology to lie again about immigration on our Southern border.  He called it an invasion.  On the very day – that day – when this terrorist killed 50 people to stop what he imagined in his depraved mind was an invasion – our President whipped up that fear here in the United States declaring that a wall is needed to stop a supposed invasion on our border – an invasion that exists only in the minds of the weak and fearful who have chosen to hate rather than love – that exists only in the mind of this President and those like him.

This must end.  It must – but it won’t without each of us making a choice – the same choice Jesus made. 

We can play it safe, turn back from our lives in Christ, say nothing in the face of this evil, or huddle with like minds as a form of protection, or perhaps even worse – allow our fear to overtake us and meet hate with hate.  Or, we can choose to continue to do our work in the world – to heal the broken, to unbind the oppressed, to lift up the poor, to give voice to the voiceless – all done with love – all knowing that those who speak truth are like the hen – offering up themselves for others.  But that, my friends, is what Jesus calls us to – that is the cross he asks us to bear.  And it is the only way for us to change what is happening in the world.

Yes, it will make us vulnerable, but here’s the reality for us.  From the moment we are born, one thing is certain, and only one thing – we will eventually die.  What we do between now and our own moment of fate that lay ahead for us depends upon our answer to the fear of others, to the fear of the world, to the fear in our own hearts.  Jesus is showing us how to live within our vulnerability, and not allow it to control us. He is calling us to choose a full life of love, not a half-life of fear, because the latter is just not worth living – if it is living at all. 

So, where do we find the courage?  How can we become the mother hen when we can sometimes feel so much like the small and more vulnerable chicks she is trying to protect? 

Jesus gives us a clue in his answer.  He doesn’t say – first I need to feed the 5000 from two loaves and a few fish, and then I need to walk on water, calm a storm, and for good measure, raise a buddy up from the dead.  No, he talks about his work in small chunks – healing and pushing out evil today, tomorrow, and on the third day.  Yes, of course this is a metaphor for his death and resurrection, but still he spoke of his work as something he does one day at a time – one life at a time.  He is offering us the twelve step version of how to be of courage – one act, one moment, one life at a time.

I am reminded of a story. “One summer morning as Ray Blankenship was preparing his breakfast, he gazed out the window, and saw a small girl being swept along in the rain-flooded drainage ditch beside his Andover, Ohio, home. Blankenship knew that farther downstream, the ditch disappeared with a roar underneath a road and then emptied into the main culvert. Ray dashed out the door and raced along the ditch, trying to get ahead of the foundering child. Then he hurled himself into the deep, churning water. Blankenship surfaced and was able to grab the child’s arm. They tumbled end over end. Within about three feet of the yawning culvert, Ray’s free hand felt something–possibly a rock– protruding from one bank. He clung desperately, but the tremendous force of the water tried to tear him and the child away. “If I can just hang on until help comes,” he thought. He did better than that. By the time fire-department rescuers arrived, Blankenship had pulled the girl to safety. Both were treated for shock. On April 12, 1989, Ray Blankenship was awarded the Coast Guard’s Silver Lifesaving Medal. The award is fitting, for this selfless person was at even greater risk to himself than most people knew. Ray Blankenship can’t swim.”[1]  

That is the way for us to live too, like Ray Blankenship, seeing the one in need and stepping forward to help that one person, on that one day, in that one moment – because when it is the larger picture of world peace, eradication of poverty, the casting out of all bigotry from the hearts of humanity, it can be more than we can imagine possible.  We can seem in adequate to the task.  We might give in to the fear filled voices around us – or in our own heads.  We might not do what we are capable of doing. We might not dive in.

Jesus knew that he had work to do in the world, and he made the courageous choice to live into that vulnerable place his choice would take him because he also knew that there was no other way to really live. He did it one day at a time, one person at a time. The same is true for us.  Those who are baptized into Christ’s life, are baptized also into his death.  That is our covenant – that is our life journey, and it is not an easy life to be sure – but we can live it one day at a time, one person at a time.

Ash Wednesday we were given a sign of things to come for us.  The ashes on our forehead were a mark of vulnerability, but the cross made with it was a sign of courage. One is the reality for us all, the other the call of those who are baptized into him.  May we face the days ahead with the courage given to us by the cross, and rooted in the love of God. 

Amen.

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[1]Los Angeles Times Syndicate.

The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
March 17, 2019
Lent 2 – Year C
1st Reading – Genesis 15:1-12,17-18
Psalm 27
2nd Reading – Philippians 3:17-4:1
Gospel – Luke 13:31-35