Lent 2:  The Journey’s Work

Sermon preached by the Reverend Patricia Farris

March 7, 2004

Scripture:  Philippians 3:17-4:1 and Luke 13:31-35

A cartoon in last Sunday’s New York Times depicted a pleasant couple leaving worship, shaking the priest’s hand at the door, and saying to him:  “Nice sermon, Father, but we enjoyed the movie more.”

That sums up with wry humor what all my preacher and religious teacher colleagues are experiencing this Lent:  the challenge of preaching and leading worship in the shadow of Mel Gibson’s block buster movie, “The Passion of Christ.”  Whether or not you have seen it, you’ve most likely been part of a variety of conversations debating its merits and even perhaps its message.

The passage we hear from Luke’s Gospel this morning and our Sacrament of Holy Communion offer us some very helpful perspective in evaluating certain aspects of the movie, namely, the role of the Jews in the death of Jesus and the meaning of his suffering for our life of faith.  Obviously, in a short communion homily, I do not have time to fully explore either of those topics, but let me offer a few observations for you ponder when the topic comes up again during the week.

As I said last Sunday, this movie is a contemporary version of what is called a “passion play,” depicting the suffering and death of Jesus.  It is important for us to know that the earliest depictions of Jesus’ suffering, his passion, were in circulation at the time of the writing of our gospels.  However, they were rejected for inclusion by the early church, who preferred to emphasize his life and the life of the church after the resurrection.   Nevertheless, passion plays have retained a certain popularity, appeal to a certain aspect of faith, and have been especially prominent in the Middle Ages and in the 17c and 18c. 

A very sad fact of Christian history is that these passion plays frequently distorted and exaggerated the role of the Jews in the death of Jesus, vilifying them, and branding the whole Jewish people with guilt for his death.   Recognizing that this misrepresentation of Scripture has resulted in persecution of Jewish people, the Roman Catholic Church and other denominations, including our own United Methodist church, are now very clear to condemn anti-Semitism in every form. 

One Catholic document states: “True, Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in his passion cannot be charged against all Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.”

To underscore this point, I want you to hear in today’s Gospel, Jesus’ very interesting exchange with the Pharisees.  It is the Pharisees who warn Jesus to get away from Herod.  For Luke, the Pharisees were not Jesus’ enemies.   Oh, he had arguments with them all right, and on occasion he denounced their excesses, but that was because his religious viewpoint and training were very close to theirs.  This is clearly one occasion when some of them express concern for him, one of their own.

No, for Luke, it is clearly Herod the King who is the fox, as Jesus says.  Herod the King who tried to kill Jesus when he was a small child, we remember, who tried to use the Magi to get to Jesus.  It was Herod the King who imprisoned John.  And it is Herod the King who most wants to block Jesus’ mission.  In response to his threat, Jesus is fearless.  He insults Herod-- fox, weasel--just as we might say today, and then goes forward with his work as the prophet God has sent him to be.  He is determined to go forward—today, tomorrow and the day following—he says, that the Kingdom of God might be made manifest.     

In this passage, Jesus anguishes, not out of fear of Herod, not from his own self-doubt, but out of despair for the world that will not turn to the ways of God that he proclaims and for which he is willing to die.  “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!”

Then Jesus says a rather astonishing thing, a mind-boggling thing.  Who is it that will take on the wily fox?   Whose power will be greater than his?  A lion?  A hunter?  An eagle?  A snake?  No.  Did you hear what he said to the Pharisees to express the longing of his heart?  He said:  “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”  A mother hen will take on the fox.  Among the many biblical images for God in Scripture, few are so remarkable, undignified and unsettling as a mother bird scuttling and squawking in her awkward efforts to nurture and protect an unruly brood of scrawny, awkward little chicks.

It was the Psalmist, we remember, who longed to be sheltered in the shadow of God’s wings.  “In the shadow of thy wings I will make my refuge,” the Psalmist sang.  “In the shadow of thy wings, I will rejoice.”  But to the Psalmist, these wings were the wings of an eagle.  Jesus is doing something different now, something new.  His is not an image of strength and power, but of fierce, determined love.  Steadfast love.  A mother hen gathers and protects.  If the fox wants her chicks, he will have to kill her first, wings extended, vulnerability exposed.  Jesus is giving us a new image of God’s steadfast, self-giving love.  It is an extravagant, ridiculously generous love, victorious not through brute force, not through attack and counter-attack, not through retaliation and violence.  No rock, shield, castle or warrior here.  But instead, victorious through the strength and tenacity of the community gathered within the sheltering wings of a fiercely determined love. 

The love of a mother hen is our window today into understanding what Jesus wants us to know about how our God loves us, and saves us, and makes us whole.  It is this fierce love that is central to our United Methodist belief about the suffering and death of Jesus.  John and Charles Wesley, in sermon and hymn, were clear that the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ defeat the powers of Satan, of sin and death, and set us free for fullness of life and to love as God loves.  God’s love answers the world’s hatred and injustice.  Through God’s grace, the world is given the gifts of forgiveness, reconciliation, freedom, healing and wholeness. 

Charles Wesley expressed it in a hymn of his that we sing at Christmastime:  “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”  “Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!  Hail the Sun of Righteousness!  Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings.  Mild he lays his glory by, born that we no more may die, born to raise us from the earth, born to give us second birth.  Hark!  The herald angels sing, “Glory to the newborn King!”   

Each month in the communion liturgy, we proclaim what has been called since the seventh century “the mystery of faith.”  We say:  “Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.”  In these ten words, we encapsulate the core of our faith--that the whole plan of God is realized in Christ’s death and resurrection and is to be brought to completion at his return in glory.  The point of his suffering is not suffering.  That’s where the emphasis of the movie gets it wrong.  The point is life made new, now and forever, a life full of grace, forgiveness, compassion and love.

To summarize, I close this morning with the words of John Wesley:  “God loves you; therefore, love and obey him.   Christ died for you; therefore, die to sin.  Christ is risen; therefore, rise in the image of God.  Christ lives for evermore; therefore, live to God, till you live with him in glory.”

Amen.