Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Lent: 21 February 2016
Sermon for Sunday 21 February 2016
2nd Sunday in Lent
The Rev. Carrie Ballenger Smith
A sermon of hope:
for when a beautiful Friday in Jerusalem will be reason enough to live.
To listen to the sermon, CLICK HERE
Grace and peace to you from God our
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
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| A peaceful Jerusalem morning in the Old City |
On Friday
morning I woke up to the sun shining and a weather report that looked
positively spring-like, even approaching summer. And as I stood on my balcony,
overlooking the city with my coffee in hand, I thought “Maybe it will be a
quiet day. After all, it would be a tragedy to die on a day like this.”
That thought
lasted until about 9 am, when once again Damascus Gate erupted in gunfire and
sirens.
O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem.
A few hours
later I arrived at the home of a Palestinian friend, who greeted me at the door
with freshly squeezed orange juice and a hug. She had not yet heard the news. When
I told her what had happened, she was silent for a moment, and then she simply
said, “How long, O Lord?”
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| Palestinian boys walking through the Christian quarter, hand in hand |
How long,
indeed?
How long
will the people of this holy place be locked in an unholy system of inequality,
and this awful cycle of violence and counter-violence?
How long
will it be before young people have enough hope to see a day as beautiful as
this past Friday as reason enough to live?
“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!”
These verses
can be added to the growing list of Scripture texts that take on new meaning
when you live in Jerusalem. Nearly every day I find myself shaking my head and echoing
Jesus’ lament—“Jerusalem, Jerusalem”—even as I marvel at the opportunity to
live in such a beautiful (and beautifully complex) city.
What makes this
Scripture text even more powerful, aside from the fact that it is a lament over
the city where we find ourselves today, is the image of Jesus as a mother hen. This is the only feminine image of Jesus we
find in the Bible. The Holy Spirit is often referred to in the feminine, and
the church uses both masculine and feminine terms for God the Creator, but here
we encounter the provocative idea of Jesus
the Son as a mother bird, who
desires only to spread her wings and gather all the people of Jerusalem under
their feathery protection.
I like this feminine
image of Jesus so much that I even own an embroidered clergy stole featuring a
chicken embracing her little chicks. It was purchased from a workshop in
Bethlehem and sent to me when I lived in Chicago, and I remember being very
excited and proud to wear it on a Sunday morning. That is, I was proud until
after worship, when an older member of the church came to me and said, “Um,
Pastor, I’ve been meaning to ask: Where in the Bible does it say anything about
ducks? I’ve been looking at those ducks on your scarf all morning trying to
figure it out.”
The idea of
Jesus as a mother stretches our imagination a bit, and yet there are also others
who have spoken of the feminine attributes of Jesus and his love. The most
famous is Julian of Norwich, a 14th century mystic who once wrote:
“It is a
characteristic of God to overcome evil with good. Jesus Christ therefore, who
himself overcame evil with good, is our true Mother. We received our ‘Being’
from Him -- and this is where His Maternity starts -- And with it comes the
gentle Protection and Guard of Love which will never cease to surround us.”
Jesus our
mother hen, Jesus our gentle protector and maternal guardian, Jesus who overcomes
evil with good: this is a powerful and very welcome image of Our Lord for our
time and our context. When injustice has become embodied as a cement wall, when
extremist ideologies on all sides hold residents of this city hostage, and when
even our most beautiful days are scarred by violence and fear, we need to know
the great and motherly love of Jesus.
At the same
time, while this image may provide us comfort in these difficult times, we must
remember that it is not merely a comforting word. It cannot only be a soothing
image to help us endure occupation and violence. It comes to us in the form of a
lament, and we must hear it as such.
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| Jerusalem: Boys coming home after school, being questioned by soldiers on the Via Dolorosa. Just after this they were required to empty their book bags on the ground. |
When we read this text, we hear Jesus expressing
both how much he loves us and at the same time expressing sorrow for how we
humans have again and again rejected that love.
“O
Jerusalem,” he sighs. “How often have I desired to gather your children
together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
This is a
lament not only over the situation in Jerusalem, but in every city.
This is a
lament over the human condition and the sorrows of the world:
How long has
God, our loving parent, been nurturing us and loving us?
How long has
God been sending us prophets, only for us to reject them?
How often
has God taught us through the Holy Scriptures to love one another, to share the
abundant resources of creation, to welcome the stranger, and to choose life
over death, only for us to throw stones at those who dare to hold a mirror to
our sinful ways?
How often
has God tried to gather all of God’s children together as one brood, as one
family, as one beloved creation, but we have again and again divided ourselves
– by race, by religion, by class, by gender, by sexuality, by nationality, by
ability?
As the Son
of God prepared to enter Jerusalem, he knew the city—and the world—which had
rejected the prophets of former times would also reject him.
And for this
reason, he described his love for us as like that of a mother hen.
After all, what
does a mother hen do?
With her very own body, a mother hen loves, protects,
nurtures, and provides the necessary conditions for new life.
In the same
way, it was Jesus’ own body which
would soon give new life to all the world.
So great, so
extravagant, so motherly is his love for
us, that he would go all the way to Jerusalem and to the cross for his
beloved children.
In his book
“Tattoos of the Heart”, Father Gregory Boyle tells a powerful story which
invokes this extravagant and motherly love of Jesus Christ. Father Boyle works
with ex-gang members in Los Angeles, where his organization “Homeboy
Industries” teaches job skills and helps men and women find new life outside of
gang culture.
One day, Fr.
Boyle is meeting with a fifteen-year-old boy, Rigo, at a county detention
facility. Trying to get to know him, he asked some basic stuff about his family
and his life. First, he asked about his father.
“Oh,” Rigo
says, “he’s a heroin addict and never really been in my life. Used to always
beat (me). Fact, he’s in prison right now. Barely ever lived with us.”
“And your
mom?” asks Father Boyle.
“That’s her
over there.” He pauses for a beat. “There’s no one like her.”
“I’ve been
locked up for more than a year and half. She comes to see me very Sunday. You
know how many buses she takes every Sunday—to see my sorry (self)?”
Then quite
unexpectedly he sobs….it takes him some time to reclaim breath and an ability
to speak. Then he does, gasping through his tears.
“Seven buses. She
takes…seven…buses. Imagine.
How, then,
to imagine, the expansive heart of this God—greater than God—who takes seven
buses just to arrive at us.
(Gregory Boyle, “Tattoos on the
Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion”, pp. 26-27)
Dear sisters
and brothers, this is the love of God we have through Jesus Christ.
It’s the
love of a mother who takes seven buses every Sunday to reach her teenage son in
a county detention facility.
It’s the
love of a mother hen who sits and sits, and sits and sits, selflessly giving of
her own body so others can have life.
It’s also the
love of a refugee father who puts his family on a boat to another country, risking
everything for the sake of their future.
In these
days there’s a lot of talk about the hopelessness of our situation.
There’s
talk of the violence increasing. There’s talk of emigration, of annexation, of
intifada, of troops in the West Bank.
But
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, do not give up hope.
Do not think
that Jesus, our brother, will walk away from Jerusalem now.
Do not think
that Jesus, our mother, will forget God’s children now.
Do not think
that the One who went all the way to the cross, will abandon us in our time of
need.
This love never
gives up. This love will not let us go. Nothing will stop Jesus from giving the
world new life. Nothing will stop Jesus from reaching Jerusalem, from reaching
the cross, from pouring out his love on all sinners.
Not his
doubting and nervous disciples.
Not the
length of the journey.
Not the
difficulty of the path.
Not systemic
abuses of power.
Not a sixty-year
occupation.
Not a cement
wall.
Not our
habit of solving problems with guns.
Not the crushing despair of a young man, despair that would compel him to choose death over life on a beautiful Friday morning.
Not even
Herod.
For as Jesus
said to 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.”
Thanks be to
God, Jesus has finished his work. He has come to Jerusalem. He has gone to the
cross. With his own body, he has provided salvation for Jerusalem, and for the
world.
And on the
third day, he finished his motherly work when he walked out of the tomb, giving
us new life.
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| Jerusalem, from the rooftop of the Austrian Hospice |
Empowered by
this saving work, let us pray for the strength and the courage to be witnesses
to the extravagant love of Jesus Christ. He has not given up on us. And we will
not give up on peace, justice, and equality for all the people of Jerusalem –
for the whole brood, for all of us children who are gathered under Jesus’
motherly protection. Amen.
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