|
3-4-2007 The Fox and the Mother Hen - The Rev. Elizabeth Roles Lent 2, Year C, 2007
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 In the Gospel reading this morning, we find two divergent animal images. First is the image of Herod as the fox. Luke contrasts the predatory fox with the image of Jesus as the protective mother hen who wants to gather her brood under her wings. The mother hen wants nothing more than to protect the vulnerable chicks from the fox and is even willing to sacrifice her own wellbeing for the sake of her brood. The fox and the mother hen: Herod the fox wants to kill Jesus because Jesus is a threat to his power and to the stability of an oppressive status quo. God is doing something new in Christ Jesus and Herod is afraid. Herod fears the transformation that Jesus represents and seeks to control it through violence. Jesus, the mother hen, mourns because so many in Jerusalem will follow the fox, rather than trusting God and seeking shelter under the wings of Christ. He knows that Prophets in Jerusalem have brief careers. Two summers ago, I served as a chaplain at Grady Hospital, which treats everyone in metro Atlanta who cannot get medical care elsewhere: the uninsured, the working poor, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, among many others. I met people in very vulnerable situations. I remember a young, pregnant woman handcuffed to her hospital bed. The nurse had called me because the woman was crying quietly, afraid to go back to prison. I met another woman in the emergency room who, in the midst of being evicted from her apartment, had a heart attack. In these situations, we shared only moments together. They would leave the hospital soon, and I wouldn’t be able to follow up. Grady was a short reprieve from whatever the world outside held for them. The best I could do was to listen. Sometimes, I asked them “Tell me about a time when you felt really strong” Or, I asked them to tell me about a time when they felt God working in their lives. Everyone remembered something. The answers were mundane, yet the answers always expressed a knowledge that God sustains us in times of trouble. One patient said, “Well, there was that time when we didn’t have the rent, and we didn’t know what we were going to do, and then we got that check in the mail.” Another told me: “When I was young, and my mother was in jail, I sat with my Grandmother on the front porch, where she told me stories.” They told me about God moving in their lives, and then I would say, “That’s your rock! Hold on to that memory. Whenever you begin to fear, remember that time. You know that God worked in your life before. God continues to work in your life. You have God’s strength, and no one can take that from you. Something similar happens in our Old Testament lesson. In Genesis, the Israelites, the Children of Abraham, tell their family story of how God worked in their lives. They don’t speak of an abstract belief about God. They speak concretely about God’s action. They speak of the promise God made to their father Abraham and how the promise was fulfilled. Before God changed his name to Abraham, God appears to Abram in a vision. God has already promised Abram that he will be father of a great nation, but Abram doesn’t understand. His only heir is the son of his slave. Abram questions God, and God promises once again: “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. So shall your descendants be.” Abram responds in trust. He believes. Then God speaks of that land that Abram will possess. Again, Abram asks, “How do I know that I will possess it?” God responds by sealing the promise with a ritual. This next part of the scripture is strange for modern ears. Yet, to its original hearers, this would have been a familiar depiction of the sealing of a covenant. Abram brings animals to be split apart, and then God, symbolized as a smoking fire pot and the flaming torch, passes between the divided animals. Yahweh and Abram have become partners in a covenant. To see this story as a Hebrew family story, remember that much of the Old Testament, and Genesis in particular, is a compilation of ancient stories, passed down orally, about God’s relationship with humanity. These stories weren’t written down until many, many generations later - during the Exile in Babylon and in the post-exilic period. The community that recorded the family stories did so as testimony to God’s faithfulness. God promised Abraham many descendants and land, and God has been faithful to the Covenant. You can imagine them saying to each other in Babylon, “We are in exile from our land and afraid now, but we can hold on to God’s promise. We know from experience that God is faithful to his Covenant, even in difficult times.” Like the Israelites in Babylon, you can remember God’s shelter in your day of trouble. You can hold on to your memory of God working in your life and know that God will be faithful to the promise. Yet remember that the foxes, that fear of the power of the Holy Spirit transforming the world, are prowling. Like Herod’s fear of God doing a new thing in Jesus, the Fox wants to avoid the chaos and confusion of change, and hungers for stability and order at all costs. The alternative to following the Fox is not impulsive action, following whatever whim arises at any moment. The alternative is thoughtful deliberation, which invites us, as the Psalmist sings, to “wait for the Lord; be strong; take heart.” The alternative is to heal the sick and proclaim good news as Jesus sent word to Herod that he would do in his last days. The alternative is to remember that Jesus yearns to gather us together like a mother hen. Jesus does not promise we will avoid the pain of change. His promise is God’s presence in the midst of our transformation. Lenten disciplines – prayer, fasting, almsgiving - help us to look inward and name the foxes in our lives, those forces and feelings that keep us from following Christ. In Lent, we are invited to confront the Fox, as Jesus did, and tell him “enough of your wily ways.” We are invited to rest in the mothering arms of God. In that warm and comforting place, with the psalmist we can proclaim, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear.” |