LENT II , Reminiscere, March 7, 2004
Sermon on Luke 13: 31-35 (RCL Series C) by David Zersen
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At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.” He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.' In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem! Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her checks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'”

THE FOX AND THE HEN IN YOUR OWN BACK YARD

Introduction

The stories we often reserve for children save their most profound meanings for adults. We tend to forget that Aesop wrote his fables for adults, not children, and that Lord of the Rings , hugely popular with children, has depths of meaning only adults can fathom. The same may be true of Luke's telling of this snippet of his Gospel which is today's Lenten text. In the first place, if you take Luke's Gospel as a whole, you can't miss the fact that everything is moving, inevitably, toward a destiny. This is a goal-oriented mission. There may be circuitous routes taken along the way, and we may be allowed to learn more of what's going on behind the scenes than we need to know, but Jerusalem is where we're heading. That's clear in today's text as well. In the second place, the text reveals more than a mere warning about a potential trap from Herod and Jesus' response and lament over the Jewish people. This is a reversal story about leadership and power in which those whom we might think have control, surely don't, and the way in which control is exercised will surprise all who pay attention. It's the old story about the fox and the hen, told with a twist which only Luke could have mastered.

The fox is not destined to have his way

There are many fables about foxes. Just check a search engine on the internet. In almost all of them, the fox is wily, deceitful, seeking to be in charge. His method of control involves strategies and power plays. He's in it for himself. He wants to get something in his chops. In one version, he runs in circles around the hen house until the hen gets dizzy watching him and falls to the ground, only to be thrown in a sack by the fox. However, when the hen revives, she replaces her weight in the sack with a rock, and the fox goes home with unsuspected booty. Foxes are often devious, yet dumb.

In Jesus' world and in ours as well, there were/are wily types who want to control people, to secure their personal advantage. The Pharisees tell Jesus, for example, that Herod is out to get him. One wonders, however, which is playing with the greater ploy. The Pharisees are not known for their love for Jesus who often challenges their self-centered religiosity. Some of them might be only too happy to send Jesus into Herod's clutches. On the other hand, Herod, known for his cruelty and devious mind, has long awaited an audience with this upstart Galilean. Both had their strategies, both their hope to acquire control by pulling the right strings. Both were foxy in their own way.

We have such people in our own time, people who seek their own advantage and use others only to secure that interest. Some of them occupy visible seats of power. Perhaps their names come too easily to our lips. We have been told that they have names like Hussein, Bin Laden, Kim, and Kdafy. We have to be careful, however, because sometimes the very people who want us to brand them the axis of evil, themselves have their own agenda for personal power. Additionally, some of these people are not among the rich and famous. They work in our offices, teach in our schools, worship in our churches, and live in our homes. They may rightly claim that they seek the best interests of others, the advantages of those nearest and dearest to them, but, in reality, they are controlled by self-interest, that base motive which has something to say about all our actions, leaving none of us without condemnation. We are all about power, so it is best not to point the finger. It is better to beat one's breast in confession and repentance.

Jesus minces no words. He knows exactly what's going on in the self-serving, conniving of those who seek to control, so he calls Herod the fox he really is! “Herod may want me to do this or that,” he says, “but I have my own agenda. I have various ministries to take care of and then I'm heading for Jerusalem, the holy city, where they kill the prophets!” Jesus knows where he's going and why—and it has something to do with us as well. He goes to Jerusalem because the foxes of this world want to have their way. He goes there because of us.

The holy cities of this world may give the pretense of leadership. Leaders who work in their self-interest, for that matter, sometimes give the impression of righteousness. However, Jesus knows that these are hollow claims and that such definitions of power ultimately lead to self-destruction. Herod who ruled as a deceitful oppressor was finally exiled to Lyon in 39 A.D. by Caesar. The Pharisees who claimed inherited privilege lost their control with the destruction of their sanctuary in 70 A.D. Those in our own world, ourselves included, who insist on idiosyncratic values and alien priorities may be oppressors for a time, but ultimately control is lost. The reign of the fox is sometimes brilliant and flashy, but inevitably short. Here and there prophetic voices may be raised to challenge control takers and self-seekers, and at times they are silenced. In the long, run, however, Jesus says that if the voices of reason and justice are silenced, the very stones will cry out (Lk. 19:40), especially if the prophets are killed. The fox is not destined to have his way.

The hen gathers where others scatter

It should be noted that Luke chooses to combine some sayings of Jesus in this text that Matthew places in other contexts. In so doing, he gives the reader a delightful comparison between the old fox and the hen stories, although the much-loved reference to the hen and her chicks is originally from Jesus himself. When you think of all the animals with which he could have compared himself, it is quite interesting that Jesus chooses the hen. Not only is there a lovely feminine allusion to a mother hen gathering her chicks in these words. There is also something bold and brave here which other animals could not represent for us. When the hen attacks, there are no fangs, no claws, no tearing of flesh. If the fox wants her chicks, he will have to kill her first—wings spread, breast exposed. And this is exactly what happens. She is there, in a new form of power and leadership, as the one for others, the servant leader, the one whose extravagant love considers the welfare of the lost foremost. Thus the means of survival over against the attack of the wily foxes of this world is provided not by retaliation or brute force, but by gathering the innocent, the victims, into a community where the love of the mother hen lives on even after her death.

I wonder whether you can think of settings in which such love works for you in your own back yards. Often our children, our friends, our colleagues do things to others or to one another which are wrong and hurtful, yet we cannot stop them. We cannot prevent their power plays and control strategies because it may not be our role to do so. Wings spread, breast exposed, we stand visibly on the sidelines or in the backgrounds of their lives, calling them to remembrance of our love for them, of the gathered community in the church where a different kind of power is celebrated. We are not the lion, the eagle, the panther, nor was Jesus. And sometimes we can be surprised and touched as they back off or apologize or make amends when they remember having once experienced at our touch a love which was bolder than force, a compassion which was greater than might.

Four-hundred and eighty-two years ago this week, throughout the first eight days in Lent, 1522, Martin Luther returned from the Wartburg to his parish at St. Mary's in Wittenberg and gave us an example of this very compassion. He had heard that in his absence foxes had gotten into the henhouse and stirred up the flock. They had begun to use violence to initiate the reformation and, following false leaders, began to destroy property and lives. For eight days in a row, Luther preached to a packed house, encouraging, pleading, challenging, and gathering. At the end of those eight days, the revolution came to an end and the reformation of which all of us are heirs moved in quite different directions. The proper leadership is crucial. Calling and gathering one another into servant communities in which Christ's love changes lives is the most important task of the church. In the families, neighborhoods, cities and nations in which foxes seek to divide and conquer, to operate unilaterally and arrogantly, there has never been a greater need for the spirit of the gathering mother hen, the consolidating and compassionate Christ, who points us away from ourselves and to the needs of all humankind.

Conclusion

Of course, we know that not everyone comes when the invitation to such loving communities is given. Today's Old Testament and Epistle lesson remind of times when Abram and Sarah were suspiscious of God's love, and the Philippians had their doubts as well. For that matter, contrary to the politically-correct movie reviews of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ , many in authority in Jesus' day, including Herod's court and many of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, did not in fact heed Jesus' invitation to enter a community in which love held sway over privilege and law. Luke tells us that Jesus had dim hope for the future of these men and their style of leadership and power. (And it does not make us anti-Semitic for holding this perspective since we know that all people are capable of such inauthentic living, including the Jew's of Jesus' day.) “Your house is left desolate,” he cries out to them. And this is true for many in our own work and social settings as well, and perhaps for some of us too. If your style of relating to people serves your needs rather than theirs, your leadership will not last.

Jesus is calling us today to make some choices, knowing that many may reject his invitation. He calls because there are still money changers in the temple, widows and orphans without support and a Lazarus at the gate of rich men and women. He calls because there are wars and rumors of wars, religious leaders straining at superfluities and young people lost in the vast innocuous promises of virtual reality TV and the promiscuity of virtual reality lives. As long as the foxes roam unchallenged in our own backyards, Jesus calls to a new possibility. As long as Jesus sees us building lifestyles that use the fox's strategies of self-serving power, he will stand before us with wings outstretched and breast bared, gathering us and showing us his wounds. He will call us to the only life-style which builds lasting relationships. He will encourage us to consider the caring and loving practices on which wholistic marriages, ethical companies and just nations are established. And when we are weary from battle, and questioning our success in going it our own way, he may hear us plaintively and longingly shout, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Prof. Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus
Concordia University at Austin
Austin, Texas
dzersen@aol.com