Save Us*

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