February 28, 2010
Lent 2
Philippians 3:17-4:1
Luke 13:31-35
(prayer)
I mentioned last week that while I was away on Study Leave a couple of weeks ago in the Qu’appelle Valley in Saskatchewan, we were encouraged not to go for walks along in the hills because a wolf had been spotted.
I never heard it, but a couple of the other people said there were some howls at night. I did notice some tracks on a morning walk, but I followed the advice and avoided the potential danger.
Wolves are wolves. There is nothing wrong with that. A wolf will (and should be expected to act) like a wolf. That can be a bit dangerous for a lone hiker, walking into what the wolf would conclude was its territory.
20 years ago, I was walking up on some paths on Carmi Mountain just east of Penticton when I saw a sign you don’t see around here. It warned me to be on the lookout for rattlesnakes.
When I was in my early 20s working at summer camp, we had a mother bear and her cub who had settled way back in the woods that lead away from the cabins. We had fish and wildlife come and set up some bear traps back in the woods. I really remember the one night that one of the campers had gone astray. Turns out he was hiding in the bushes near his cabin enjoying the frantic search. We didn’t know that so ... I and another staff member walked back in the woods just to make sure that the kid hadn’t been caught in the cage: bit of a spooky walk, looking over our shoulders, flashlights can only look in one direction at a time!
Last winter, when my family and I took a California vacation, we went to Universal Studios and saw the billboard that was used in the movie “Jaws” that noted that Amity Beach was closed! Kind of cool to see it in person. It made me want to go and get a bigger boat.
Perhaps the most obvious recent example were the tsunami sirens that warned people in Hawaii and other pacific islands after the large earthquake in Chilli yesterday.
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Life is filled with warning signs: some written, some verbal, some just implied. The goal is to protect ourselves from danger – to keep us safe.
Think about the warnings you may have seen on your way to church today. Most traffic signs are warnings of some kind.
Am I the only one thinking about that 1970 song by the Five Man Electrical Band:
Sign, Sign everywhere a sign:
blocking out the scenery
breaking my mind.
“Do this.” “Don’t do that.”
“Can’t you read the sign?”
(okay I had to look up who sang that one hit wonder, but you get my point: all around us are warnings)
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Both of the scripture passages that were read today are ripe with warnings. Luke 13 begins with some people warning Jesus: Get away from here. King Herod wants to kill you!
In Philippians, the Apostle Paul is warning against a life focused on the spoils of this world: Stand firm is his advice.
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Part of a Lenten experience can be to pay attention to the full path before us. To try and notice the pitfalls, the dangers, the distractions, the complacencies that can inhibit a fuller experience of the Holy.
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Jesus had received the warning about King Herod’ intentions: Herod was the Hebrew ruler of the northern lands which included Galilee, Jesus’ home region. Someone in Herod’s inner circle had let the information slip out and it leaked to Jesus. So Jesus sent a message back: You tell that fox for me ... soon I will be off to Jerusalem.
It was an interesting response. Jesus was, in fact, following the warning – he was leaving Galilee and would soon be on the way to Jerusalem in Judea. And yet, Jesus seems quite certain that the danger will follow him there: Jerusalem, Jerusalem! The city that kills prophets and stones those who are sent to it.
Now, some of the language in this passage is Luke’s foreshadowing of Holy Week and Easter: the language of Palm Sunday is used here (Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord); Jerusalem as the place of death points towards Jesus’ crucifixion; and the reference to the work being done on the third day is a hint towards the time between Good Friday and Easter.
That was all a reminder for the readers of Luke, where the story is ultimately heading and it is a reminder for us in this year’s season of Lent that our path to Easter is not free from struggle.
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The Gospel reading also has a nice reversal of roles in it. Herod is the fox and the holy protector of Jerusalem is the hen. Usually foxes have the advantage over the hens, but Jesus’ message is often about reversals of fortune. In this case, there is shelter in the shadow of God’s wings. The vulnerable are protected, even from the fox – even when there is reluctance to trust in mother hen.
Mother hens use their wings both to shelter and to valiantly try to defend their offspring from predators. It can get dangerous being a chicken: you’re pretty vulnerable; there are foxes out there. Baby chickens are especially unfocused in their curiosity, easily distracted. Yet a mother hen can’t keep her offspring under wing for long. It’s the same with all loving protective parents. The time comes when a child can no longer be kept under wing. I am just moving into that time and it is not easy, because I have been that way before and I would like my kids to learn from my experiences. But not everything can be learned by inherited experiences.
Jesus knew that suffering would be ahead for him and for his followers. And in effect, he says to each and to all: don’t be chicken, don’t be easily deterred from your calling. Stay true: begin your journey with the end in mind, but let go of worry about that end, and be brave. They could hear his words, but the experience will be there for each them in time.
That is also the central message from the Philippians reading: stand firm, despite the short term distractions.
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The instinct might be to scatter and try and survive under the rule, ever chick for him/herself. It’s like the old joke where two explorers come across a lion in the jungle and, before fleeing, the one takes time to put on running shoes. The other says “What are you doing? You’ll never outrun that lion.” “I don’t have to outrun the lion; I just have to outrun you.”
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But that is not what the divine heart pines for: How often I have longed to gather you under my wings!
God longs for us to support each other in times of struggle and worry. To come together rather than to rely on ourselves alone and the harder struggles of others to build up our own sense of security – we are to find our unity in the shelter of God’s love.
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Warnings are almost always a product of experience. Our fast food coffee cups have the words: “contents hot” on them because there have been times that coffee has spilt and burned.
There are guard rails on mountain corners because vehicles have gone over the edge.
When a convicted criminal is released, we are sometimes warned because the experience the person’s incarceration determines that they might re-offend even though this particular sentence was finished.
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We can learn from the experiences of others. We all don’t have to spill coffee down our shirt to learn that it is hot. There is value in sharing in compiled experience.
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An experience we can draw on from the gospel lesson to day is about staying true to our calling. And that involves looking at the priorities in our lives when it comes to our wants and longings.
Lent (by its nature) a time of wanting and of longing. Last week our scriptures reminded us that, in the wilderness, as we fast and pray, we earning how less is more, how having everything all the time making us gluttonous and slothful. There is value in living leanly in uncomfortable territory, to just experience our wants and longings a while.
As I was planning for today’s service, I was reading other sermons I found on the internet based on these passages. Some of the things I want to share in the latter half of this sermon builds on some things that I read.
I am leaning on the experience of others.
I particularly liked how a Rev Dan Stern put it in a 2007 sermon: The reading from Luke speaks of a long list of longings, a whole swirl of wants. We may ponder, for example, what the Pharisees want when they warn Jesus about Herod. Herod, they say, wants to kill Jesus. Jesus wants to continue on his way, healing people, casting out demons, until his time arrives to face the worst that the world can dish out – and, in a way, he wants to face that too – not because he likes suffering or wants to die, but because he wants to show us how to live. Jesus wants to show us both how to live well and how to die well, which in both instances, turns out to be in a way that is amazingly lacking in fear. He also wants to gather all the people of Jerusalem, all the city’s powerful and oppressed, together as a hen gathers her brood. Which is to say, he’d rather protect us all if he could. But then there’s the complicating factor that most of us baby chicks don’t want to be so gathered.
Are you beginning to see how the word ‘want’ can be utilized as a lens through which to view the entire Gospel? God wants to gather God’s people. And so often it seems that God’s people want little or no part of it. We are too busy; we don’t have time to tend our spirits and commune with our God.
In Jesus’ words we hear the longing of the divine. God wants us to want God!
Faithful living is a matter of rewiring our wants; and about deciding well what we want most of all.
Today’s scriptural focus is about living with longings in our hearts. It is about receiving enough of the caring, protective love we each need all the way through.
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May that be our experience as we continue on our way through this Lenten season.
>>> PRAYER >>>
God, be with us, shelter us and lead us.
AMEN
#112VU “O God How We Have Wandered”
