Lent 2 Readings - Revised Common Lectionary
(Homily shared with the community of St. Stephen's, New Harmony, IN)
Have you ever had someone
approach you and ask
“Are you saved?”
I come across people in the
hospital…
usually anxious family
members of patients…
Who have a concern about
their loved one’s salvation
I admit that this concern
comes
out of a different religious
tradition than my own.
And it is couched in language
that isn’t at home in me
What does Salvation mean to
you?
I asked a concerned son…
He replied:
Its not like I’m one of those Catholics
who believe that you can just pray yourself to heaven.
But just as he had a wonky interpretation
of my religious tradition…
So too me…I had a wonky…a
caricature even…
of his religious tradition
But...
I did admire the firmness of his witness
about salvation
and the quest for it
I also admit that SALVATION
is a kind of loaded word for me
It conjures up threat and
judgment and
Preoccupations with “who’s in
and who’s out”
For us and for anyone whose
tradition includes Lent
It is fairly clear that
Salvation isn’t ever a done deal
We are always going astray
And Lent is our public cry
Bring Us Back
Bring Us Back
The Opening Prayer…The
Collect for today
What we would have prayed
were we celebrating Eucharist
Asks:
O God, whose glory it is
always to have mercy
Be gracious to all who have
gone astray from your ways
And bring us again with
penitent hearts
and steadfast faith to
embrace and hold fast
the unchangeable truth of
your Word
I think it is saying:
Save us! Save us!
This prayer is a guide
for how we might engage the
scriptures today
(except the covenant ritual
in Genesis…
that’s another homily;)
But Psalm 27, and Paul to the
Phillipians,
and Herod the Fox and Jesus
the Hen
There is something there to
Save Us
The prayer indicates that it
is Mercy,
God’s bottom line attribute...
Mercy
that draws us back to GOD
Back to that which saves
The Hebrew word for
“Salvation”
Means literally
“to make wide” or “to make
sufficient”
It was non-religious
originally
coming from a military
context
…victory over evil
…or rescue from danger
It is…physical
think about the healing
stories
and how Jesus spoke about the
healings…
”your faith has saved you”
There is something HERE and NOW
about what Jesus is doing
when he heals and saves
My guess is that everyone
here
has had a HERE and NOW experience of being SAVED
The first thing that comes to
my mind
is when I’m driving and my
eyelids become so heavy…
and I drop them for a second
and as soon as I do can’t
lift them again
they are too heavy
and just in the nick they
lift
Saved!
Or when I was so so close to
making a
Seriously wrong-headed decision…
And I didn't
Saved again!
When we read Psalm 27
Did you get the feeling
That the Psalmist is engaging
in some pretty serious
Wayne Dyer-Like exercises in
positive thinking?
In the first couple lines:
Whom then shall I fear
Followed quickly by
Of whom shall I be afraid
Followed quickly by
Yet my heart shall not be afraid
…it sounds to me like this
Psalmist is really, really, afraid!
But it is the next part that sells
it
It is so tender
-Keep me safe
-Hide me
-Set me high upon a rock and
show me that all is safe
-Speak right here
…In my heart
I can picture the tenderness
of a Mother or Father
Lifting a frightened child
And pointing to wherever the
child saw that Boogie Man
I’ll keep you safe
See…there is nothing there to be afraid of
I’ve got you
I’ve got your heart
Tender, tender language
Saved from fear
Fear leads us down ever narrower
paths
Where it keeps getting darker
And more and more confining
You know that song
“There is a wideness in God’s Mercy”?
Wideness is freeing
But it is frightening in its
own way too
Think of the Israelites…newly
freed from Egypt
It was less than a week and
they wanted to go back!
We get comfortable in
the way things are
The way we are
And God’s wide and liberating
Mercy…
Accepting it is going to
involve change
In Paul’s letter to the Philippians
We see one of Paul’s major
themes…Imitating Christ
“Join me in imitating Christ…
and elsewhere in Paul:
“Put on the mind of Christ…
“It is no longer I who live,
but Christ who lives in me…
We are imitative creatures
From the beginning
There is science behind this
That’s how marketing works
That’s why my son wants the
next iphone
That’s why I want a cute Fiat
500
We are hard-wired for
imitation
So either we will be moving
from one model to the next
in endless chasing
or we can follow Paul’s
example
and choose Christ to imitate
Save me
Save me from being sucked in
to what is contrary to God’s
loving plan for my life
Save me from imitating the wrong model
But it is in the Gospel that I hear
Saving Grace
Pretty loud and clear
It offers both the tender and
intimate language of the psalm
And the hard warning of Paul
The tale of two barnyard
animals
a Fox and a Hen
I’d want to be the fox in a
barnyard brawl!
There are no songs proclaiming
“The Lord is my Hen and my salvation”
But maybe there should be
Jesus is not in this for the
short term boxing ring win
It is the Hen’s response to
fear, power and death
That will save us
Who is this Fox?
Who is Herod in Lukes’s
Gospel
Other non-biblical writings
of the times
Paint a unified picture of
Herod
He is a straight-up VILLAIN
No redeeming qualities
No shades of grey
In Mark he is wimpy and
perhaps even conflicted
But not here…Not for Luke
His list of priors in long
arrest, beheading, seeking to
kill
mocking, Humiliating,
and parading Jesus before
Pilate as one big joke.
Jesus responds to the
Pharisees with a bit of flare
You tell that fox!
Listen! I’m busy!
He’s not going to let some moral
reprobate
like Herod Antipas mess with
his timetable!
And then Jesus looks at
Jerusalem with deep sorrow
It is as if he has heat-censored
vision gear
like firefighters wear to see
through thick smoke
He can see through the fog or
the smog that covers
a Jerusalem and a Temple
Ordered by the likes of
Herod.
Most people see the
magnificence of the Temple
But Jesus sees a system that
kills prophets
And gathers around their
corpses
Jesus will be one of them
But this time will be
different
The gathering won’t happen
It will be a scattering of
those beating their breasts.
The game is up…It is a
long-term, once for all, victory
It is a hen’s victory
Because a hen
At the threat of a fox
Opens up her wings
To provide safety for her
chicks
The fox will eat her first
Maybe he’ll get full
And maybe e'll need to take a nap
And maybe the chicks will have a fighting chance
How does this save us?
If you have ever loved
someone that you couldn’t protect
you know about a hen’s
love
All the lover can do is open
the arms wide
Walking into them is a free
choice
There is no love in coercion
But it is hard to stay open…and
waiting
It is the most vulnerable
posture of all
But imitating Jesus’ stance
Is the beginning of all true
god-like love
A love that gathers
Jesus says earlier in the
gospel:
“Whoever does not gather with
me scatters…”
We are saved over and over
again
as we participate in that
gathering move
We gather here
And what gathers us
Is that public Lenten call to God
Bring us Back
Gather us in
Show us your Mercy
Save Us
Save Us
