Second Sunday of Lent
Eastminster Presbyterian Church, Evansville IN
Year C (Revised Common Lectionary)
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Luke 13:31-35
Cindy Bernardin, DMin
We can thank the lectionary for offering us plenty of trouble today
On this 2nd Sunday of Lent
We have complaining patriarchs
animals sliced in two
and Smoking fire pots
Added to that we have
An almost desperately lamenting Jesus
An aggressive Herod
And foxes and hens…
Remember the saying:
“There is a fox guarding the henhouse”
This is not a good thing
But in the end…
I think today…especially today
The lectionary offers us a Word
a Gospel Word that speaks into our “Now”
Our Genesis text narrates the enactment of a covenant ritual
Bloody and completely foreign to our sensibilities
But funny thing…
There is a linguistic remnant…even today
You know how we say…“to cut a deal”
nothing actually gets cut…it’s a remnant;)
3 chapters ago…in Genesis 12
God makes his covenant with Abram
And there are a lot of big promises made
God says “GO”
And Abram picks up everything and leaves the security of his home and tribe
10 years pass and lots of stuff happens
But…not everything God promised
Now it is Chapter 15
And Abram at the age of 85
is getting…well a bit whiney
This is an honest lament to God…
by a tired, but up to this point, faithful, old man
“I’m trying to hold on Lord
But you haven’t kept your promise
about an heir
Eliezer just won’t do!”
It seems to Abram that time is darn near up.
There’s trouble.
We have trouble in the Gospel too
Again, we need to zoom out to see some context
The first thing to notice, as we zoom out, is that we are in Luke
In this liturgical year…elegantly called Year C
We are reading from the Gospel of Luke
And seeing Jesus from Luke’s vantage point
We are seeing him from the lens of that community’s needs and concerns.
This means that certain Lucan themes and characteristics
are woven throughout the unfolding gospel story
Two of these are at work in today’s short passage.
The first is Jerusalem
Jerusalem is mentioned in Luke’s gospel 23 times
About as many times as all of the other Gospels combined
The Gospel starts in Jerusalem and ends in Jerusalem
For Luke, Jerusalem is both a place and a character…
He gets angry at Jerusalem and weeps over Jerusalem.
Midway through Luke’s narrative Jesus “sets his face toward Jerusalem”
And from then on it is like a constant drumbeat…toward Jerusalem
And that drumbeat is foretelling the cross
The -salem part is SHALOM…peace
Jerusalem…The city of Peace
Which, then as now,
Can seem like a bad joke
Jerusalem
The center, the heartbeat, of Jesus’ world
Full of fickle crowds
Fox-like kings
Corrupt leaders
Fomenting revolutionaries
and occupying soldiers
It is a combustible hotbed
The 2nd theme is found in the consistent use of a gathering and scattering motif.
It is an emphasis unique to Luke…a few examples:
-He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud… (1:51)
-His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat…3:17
-Whoever does not gather with me, scatters. (11:23)
And while not the exact same word,but with the same root…
this motif is echoed in the “Lost and Found” parables of Luke 15,
the coin, the sheep, the prodigal son… scattering and gathering, lost and found.
Scattering is what foxes do
This is Herod’s style of wielding power.
So…the trouble in the Gospel is kinda plain to see
But there is Grace too
In fact
To borrow some words from St Paul
Where sin abounds
Grace abounds all the more
The grace in our Genesis text
Is revealed in a quiet little detail
A deep sleep fell upon Abram…well, he was 85
He can be excused for a couple daily naps
(And he did just spend 10 years walking 1000 miles!)
He is in a deep sleep
When the ritual is actualized
When the covenant is sealed…Abram is asleep
It is God alone who enacts it
It’s not like us “cutting” a deal with a handshake between equals
This is not that kind of partnership
God takes on all the heavy lifting!
If God doesn’t fulfill God’s promises
Well…He will be like those animals…cut in half…smoking fire pot!!!!
God is quite confident though
We will fall asleep
God won’t
We will forget
God won’t
I want this God as a covenant partner;)
The grace in our Gospel text is a bit harder to discern
Jesus may be frustrated with Jerusalem
…angry even
But there is no denying
The palpable tenderness…The love and the concern
that Jesus communicates
Through the image of the mother hen
My guess is that there are many here
…maybe even most of us
Who, at one time or another,
have loved someone that they couldn’t protect
Try calling that to mind
Calling that to mind
Can help us feel the anguish in Jesus’ lament
The fox scatters…by stealth and trickery
The hen gathers in love and protection
gathering and scattering
The hen gathers her brood
She shelters them in her out-stretched wings
Just doing it physically…try it…
…arms back, chest open and vulnerable
This is not a very subtle allusion to the cross!
This IS the cross!
The mother hen would rather die than
Let the fox get at her chicks
The fox’s hunger WILL be satisfied
by the hen…
The chicks have a chance
If we have been baptized into Christ
Into his likeness
And called to live a life of discipleship
In imitation of Jesus
Then…well…
It’s a hen-likeness that we are after
Not a lion, a tiger or a bear;)
All this week
Like most everyone around the world
I have been pre-occupied by the Russian invasion of Ukraine
I am no expert on foreign affairs
But I see in the President of Ukraine
An example of Hen-likeness
He didn’t scatter for his own safety
He stayed
And gathered the brood
And spread his wings
And it may very well cost him his life
And Putin…that fox
Whose true character is unfolding daily
in the trauma and tragedy and brutality of this war
I catch myself daydreaming about what I would do if I lived in Ukraine.
And then I think…
The better question is…
How am I doing here
In my own community? In my own family?
What does my hen-likeness look like?
What kind of gathering do I promote?
With my life?
With the way I walk, and talk and act in the world
And in the spirit of Lent
Can I name how I contribute to scattering?
Can I name it and ask for healing?
Here we are today
Gathered together in this space…sacred space
Gathered from our scattered households
To remember who we are
And whose we are
This physical gathering isn’t just important
It is vital
We human beings need to tell our story together
So that we can help each other find our place in it
…just like the patriarchs,
the prophets of old,
and the ever-growing communion of saints
This unfolding love story of God and God’s people
That we call the Bible
Is our story…
it belongs to each of us individually
and all of us comunally
We call on the power of the Holy Spirit
Present as promised
And alive in this gathering
to change us, heal us, and re-new us
toward whatever hen-likeness might look like for each of us,
and for this congregation as a community
And, my friends,
I believe
it is no exaggeration
to say that we do this
for the very life of the world!
Thanks be to God!
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