March 4, 2007
(Second Sunday in Lent)
Jerusalem, Jerusalem!
by The Rev. Carol Sanford, Curate
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 • Psalm
27 • Philippians 3:17-4:1
• Luke 13:31-35
(From
The Lectionary Page)
Good morning. I want to alert our animal lovers that a number of creatures will show up in this homily. Most of them spring from the biblical text, but don’t be surprised when a gorilla and some penguins wander through.
Let’s start with a quick glance at that strange business in our reading from Genesis that features slaughtered animals and a smoking fire pot. This is believed to be a reference to an ancient method of sealing a covenant, and we are meant to understand that God is confirming his promise to Abram in an accepted legal format. The heifer, goat, ram and pigeon meet an unfortunate end, but they are serving a sacred function. As with other sacrificial animals, they will probably become dinner for human participants, and thereby enhance the celebration of God’s amazing act of binding himself to humankind.
As Jesus makes his way toward sealing a new covenant, he runs into a fox. In Luke’s gospel, some Pharisees warn Jesus to flee Jerusalem, saying that Herod wants to kill him. In his response to this surprising show of friendliness on the part of his usual antagonists, Jesus calls Herod a fox. Even in those days a fox represented a crafty creature. Jesus may have been pointing to yet another trap being laid for him: if he leaves Jerusalem, he is declaring himself not to be a prophet. If he stays, he risks a prophet’s death. Herod has given him a sly choice, indeed.
I saw a fox once, out on a country lane. I was thrilled to spot one of these beautiful, elusive creatures. But then, I am not a chicken. I can’t imagine that it is accidental that Jesus in Luke calls Herod a fox and then, in what we know as the lament over Jerusalem, uses the imagery of a fox’s favorite meal.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.”
The fox has gotten into the henhouse, and the chickens, it seems, have declined the protection offered them. Jesus’ lament is surely the observation of a sorrowful heart, but it may carry a bit more of an edge than we sometimes imagine.
In a translation I saw the other day on a lectionary website, “Jerusalem” was followed by exclamation points. This changed the reading, for me, from Jerusalem, Jerusalem, to Jerusalem! Jerusalem! I began to wonder if Jesus might be well, rather angry. I no longer heard a mournful lament, but an impatient, frustrated exhortation.
Jerusalem! You kill the prophets! You stone those sent to you! What are you thinking! I want to gather and protect you and you won’t let me. I’ve had it! Enough!
Is this a lament or a venting of frustration? Perhaps it’s a bit of both.
The possibilities in this passage remind me of a common human experience that we might call the I- love-you- and- I –want- to –wring- your- neck syndrome. I have felt it for individuals, groups, institutions and even for myself. Most recently I have felt it for some of the representatives of the Anglican Communion and some Episcopal leaders in our own country. I have wanted to say “Enough! You won’t listen to the voice of reason; you won’t hear the love of God! We will not exclude our sisters and brothers from sharing with us the gifts God gave them, and we will honor their love for one another. Jerusalem! Jerusalem!”
And yet, I can identify with those who do not think as I do. I, too, have experienced confusion and irritation when others have tried to push me past my limits to embrace their understandings. I have wished that they would extend to me the dignity and courtesy of respecting my beliefs by taking them, and me, seriously. When my thoughts run this way, I feel saddened at our divisions because I believe that in our intention to follow Christ we are one. Jerusalem, Jerusalem.
I have felt this same combination of compassion and frustration as I’ve watched friends killing themselves with alcohol or using dangerous drugs or smoking cigarettes despite having lung ailments. I want to shake them for risking their lives and hurting their families, and yet I understand addiction and know that it is a disease.
I sometimes feel enraged at the advertising and entertainment industries that promote behaviors that kill and demean us, and yet I read the magazines, patronize the movies, listen to the music and eat the junk food that harms us. I sorrow for our environment, yet I want to keep my car.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem. We are new chickens with new foxes. What are we to do?
Here’s where the gorilla comes in. I first heard a gorilla story from my friend Tom. Our version for a Lenten homily goes like this:
We are trapped in a cage dancing with a gorilla. We’ve ended up in the cage because someone has ushered us in, or because it is an accepted or interesting or easy place to enter. Or perhaps some nice music was playing and the gorilla was looking pretty cute and a quick dance seemed like a good idea at the time. What happens is, we get tired, but we can’t stop dancing unless the gorilla decides to let go. Unfortunately, the gorilla just loves to dance.
Rather like a fox in the henhouse, the gorilla is having a high old time while we are getting battered and our feathers are flying all over the place. We must get out of the cage, but how?
Now here’s the wonderful thing: the gorilla is more powerful than we are, but God is more powerful than the gorilla. God has destroyed the gorilla’s grip and opened the door. It is usually neither easy nor comfortable to leave the cage; that is often the ‘cross’ part of following Jesus through the door to life.
We may risk going against the norm, or perhaps we have to be open to new attitudes and unfamiliar behaviors. We may need a great deal of help from one another in acting on God’s Grace, but it is vital that we remember that Grace is always present and is always stronger than that which works against it. Sometimes we are watching others in the cage and we are so eager to point out to them the error of their ways that we get in the cage to tell them and, boom, now we’re dancing with the gorilla again.
Our job is to stay outside of the cage whenever possible, to demonstrate that life in the free air of God is preferable, and to point toward the open door. We don’t do any of this perfectly, but we must never give up our desire and decision to respond to God’s desire for us.
We are beset by sin, yet we are always and already forgiven and redeemed in Christ. We must remember who we are. We are vulnerable chicks with foxes lurking around us and we are called and empowered to be the hen who offers shelter. We are sheep who stray and we are baptized into the life of the shepherd. We are sinners in need of forgiveness and we are the redeemed who demonstrate hope.
We acknowledge that we are in trouble and yet we insist that illumination is present in the darkest night and that peace breathes over the chaos and that we are never, ever in that cage alone. The door, once and for all, has been opened. Our challenge is to choose our redemption over enslavement. As Tom puts it, don’t get back in the cage, even if the gorilla is playing your song.
What this might mean to us this Lent is to do a quick survey: how am I free in Christ and what still cages me? How am I demonstrating the way of freedom, and how am I inviting others into a lethal dance? How do we stand at the heart of this city as a hen offering shelter and as fellow cheeks in need, and how do we behave like the fox? We can ask ourselves many such questions, and out of the answers, turn more fully toward Easter morning.
We are Jerusalem, besieged and sinning, and we are the body of Christ, risen and whole.
Now about those penguins: they are waddling thorough just for a moment to remind us that God’s Grace comes in surprising forms and is full of unexpected delight. Take some time this Lenten season to relax and enjoy life, and to observe the wonders around you. Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Rejoice and sing God’s praise. Amen.
Taking the Weird Faith Walk
by the Rev. Dr. Michael Johnston, Scholar-in-Residence
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your
kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show
you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless
you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I
will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you, I will
curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless
themselves.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.
–Genesis 12:1-4
Consider also a parallel text:
And passing along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he saw
Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the
sea; for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me
and we’ll catch some really big fish.” And immediately they left
their nets and followed him.
–Mark 1:16-20
It’s an odd story, this second one. A firm, blunt command without content. An immediate acceptance without question. No prayerful discernment; no parish process. No bishop; no Commission on Ministry. No pause, no panic; no looking back. No tying up loose ends. He calls; they follow. It’s as simple as that. Drop your nets, get out of the boat and go.
It’s actually an odd pair of stories, these two. Abram and Sarai, and Simon Peter and Andrew. All setting out on what one of my former parishioners called “that weird faith walk.” And all they’ve got to go on is that equally weird promise.
The promise to Abraham, of course, has always been the land. But occupying the land requires an heir. Land is never for one generation, and the capacity to transmit the land in perpetuity requires a son for the father. Indeed, especially for the Father of All Nations! So the real promise here, the larger promise, depends on the quite concrete matter of Abraham’s lack of issue. The slave Eliezer will just not do! And, worse yet, Sarah continues barren.
The original promise was issued, of course, back in that piece of Genesis 12 we just read. It will take us until chapter 17 before Sarah, under the Oaks of Mamre, is promised a son (Gen 17:19) and not until chapter 21 (Gen 21:2) that she’ll actually bear one. And almost immediately it looks as if the boy will be taken away by some infanticidal deity in that text of terror benignly called –- in the Jewish Bible –- The Binding of Isaac (Gen 22:1ff).
So it is perhaps not surprising that in the middle of all this, in that piece of next appointed for tonight, Abraham’s patience has worn out. It seems he has even lost faith in the promise. And so we get that protest “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless.” Abraham has concluded by now –- as well he might, and as well might we –- that there will be no change. The call from barrenness was a false alarm. And if barrenness prevails, then the promise is null. This God is a scandal!
But then the promise is renewed: “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir. Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. So shall your descendants be.” And then follows a little pyrotechnics with some sacrificial animals and a covenant made by God with Abram: “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.”
Make no mistake about it. This covenant is not an economic settlement, nor a legal writ. It is a revelation, a vision, a disclosure that surprises the old reality. Like Abraham, the quotidian arrangements would make sense to us, especially when we undertake those Promethean efforts designed to order our familiar present or to reshape our future. But this business about the covenant of promise –- together, in Genesis, with the sacrifice that God actually offers to himself –- is not about human reason or normal reasonability; it’s about the primal awareness of God being God.
This God works some very strange sides of the street. To use an old proverb, “He writes straight with a crocked hand.” And in today’s text, he seems to have taken his pen in hand. To recognize that, my friends, is what’s called Faith. It was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness because he had it.
He is aware now, in this text tonight –- as so must we be –- that we are called to live into barrenness, to hope into hopelessness, and to trust the promise even when the evidence against it is all around us. Eventually the cosmos will bend towards justice, which is the promise of God. And to live in that conviction is what we call faith.
Having faith is not about knowledge gained through persuasion, or about moral decisions made, or right actions chosen. Salvation through faith is simply trusting that God will reveal God’s self as such. Or to use a metaphor from the New Testament: to attain salvation through faith, all you need to be is least, lost, last, little and dead. God does all the rest.
The Synoptic Gospels are well aware of the Abrahamic struggle in the battle we all make for faith. In the pages of the New Testament, the amazing gift of faith wells up at odd moments and is commented on favorably when it does. Thus, there is the powerful faith of the centurion (Mt 8:10-13); of the friends of the paralytic(9:2); of the woman with the issue of blood (9:22; Lk 8:38); the man born blind (Lk 18:42); and the score of lepers (17:19). Each of them had a closed future of sickness and misery. But each of them willingly abandoned that closed situation, not reluctant to receive the “reward” given them in the gospel. Indeed, Jesus affirms that it is their faith which lets the gift be given: “Your faith has made you well” (Mt 9:22; Lk 8:48; 17:19; 7:50). It is the barren and the hopeless who become the practitioners of faith. They are the ones who do not doubt the promise and so allow the new age to surge upon them.
On the other hand, faith is a problem for the church when it clings to the problematic present and so shuts out the kingdom. Thus, the disciples are “men of little faith” because they believe the storm is stronger than Jesus (Mt 8:26). Peter is a “man of little faith” because he doubts his own ability and the power of the Christ (Mt 14:31). And the whole lot of them are “men of little faith” because the understand nothing of Jesus’ capacity to feed the five thousand and are preoccupied with the present availability bread, which seems in short supply.
In short, there are three things, for Abraham, for the church, and for us: (1) God is the promise-maker; (2) we are the promise-bearers; (3) and keeping covenant with this odd God we’ve got is how the promise gets lived out.
I am an enthusiastic advocate of historical Jesus Research. In fact, I am an associate member of the Westar Institute, which is the home of the Jesus Seminar in San Jose, California. And my enthusiasm for historical Jesus scholarship has been rekindled –- the truth is, the fire never really went out –- rekindled during the last several days as Chris Morgan and I have prepared our class for the Lenten Academy, called something like “The Rise of Christianity” Our preparation has reminded me that I continue to be convinced that the historical Jesus –- insofar as we are able to recover him –- is some sort of criterion for the Church. And I have “faith” in that conviction.
But the truth is, He just doesn’t jibe –- nor does the God of the Bible -- with the lesson from Genesis we’ve read tonight. And that also reminds me of the text from Isaiah we read last week at the Mass for Tuesday in the first week of Lent:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts higher than yours
thoughts.
One of the legitimate criticisms leveled at those of us who are members of the Historical Jesus Community is that we tend to look into the well of the Jesus of history –- or the well of the God of Abraham and Sarah –- and see there or own reflection: in my case, the reflection of a post-modern, politically liberal, liberationist ideology. And to some extent I think that is probably true. I am more comfortable, as we all are, with the God I would like to know, who might seem congruent with my time and space, than I am with the God who is beyond my ken. And I am also impatient with the PROMISE. But the trouble with that posture –- or any singular posture for approaching the Divine –- is it tends to box-in God, foreclosing options, shutting down the future, and bending the mysterious breadth and depth of godly reality.
Albert Schweitzer is often credited with having begun modern scholarship on the historical Jesus. The truth is that he simply reviewed the field in his 1906 book The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Schweitzer himself actually abandoned the quest, and suggested that we do likewise. Schweitzer concludes in the Epilogue of his book:
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside. He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” And sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.
Despite Schweitzer, I continue to believe that the historical Jesus is some sort of criterion for the Church. But along with Schweitzer, I also endorse Isaiah: “Your ways are not my ways, nor your thoughts my thoughts.” And I also endorse Genesis. Trust that ambiguous promise, as Abraham ultimately did. Take that weird faith walk.