Author Archives: Andy Jones

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About Andy Jones

A retired Episcopal Priest living in Madison, Wisconsin.

Into the Wind: A Sermon for The Day of Pentecost 2013

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This sermon draws on the readings for the Day of Pentecost in Year C of the New Revised Common Lectionary. You can find those readings here.

Here is a link to an audio file of the sermon.  The text that follows is a transcription of the recorded sermon with only minor grammatical and syntactical edits.

Jesus said, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, do not let them be afraid.”  He says, “Peace I leave with you.  My peace I give to you. “  I will send to you the Advocate, the…

The Advocate?  The Advocate?  That word has caught me up several time s this week.  Shouldn’t he say “Comforter?”  That’s what we just sang, “O Comforter draw near.”  And In fact, if you go back and look in the King James Version it doesn’t say “Advocate,” it says “Comforter.”

Comforter would make sense.  We are reading form the Farewell Discourse as Jesus is preparing his disciples for his departure, trying to teach them how to live in the world after he is gone, trying to prepare them for life without him.  And so a comforter would be sorely needed.

So why is it that we don’t use that word in our reading today?  In the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible which we are now using the word is “Advocate” and then there is an asterisk that says , “or ‘helper.’”  Comforter, Advocate/Helper…  Those words feel very different.  Sometimes I think I would prefer the comforter, but then the kind of comforter that we seem to have heard about this morning is one that bursts into the room with a sound like the rush of a violent wind and sets our hair on fire!  Well… it wouldn’t burn for very long… but that would be pretty uncomfortable!

So what is it about advocates, helpers, advocacy there is a very different feel there.  Comforters, that’s what you need when you are mourning, when you are grieving, when you are hurting, and troubled and what you really need to do is to sit still and be held.  An advocate or a helper implies that there is some sort of conflict going on, that there is motion, that there is movement.  And so what Jesus says is I will send to you something that will set your hair on fire and send you out into the streets speaking words you never imagined you were capable of and doing things that you could never have dreamed were possible.

The piece from the book of Acts that we read this morning preceded this wonderfully long sermon that Peter gives.  He goes on for hours and hours and hours, and hours and hours and hours… and add more than three thousand people to the church that day.

There is something compelling, something impelling about the coming of the Holy Spirit.  She pushes us to move.  Now arriving with a sound like the rush of a violent wind and with tongues of flame… those may be difficult things for us to envision, difficult for us to grasp… so I have been struggling all week for a metaphor to help us to sort of feel where this is.  And this is what I came up with.

Do you all know who Jim Cantore is?  He’s the hurricane guy on the Weather Channel.  And where do you always see him?  He’s out there on the Outer Banks of North Caroline.  And the wind is blowing the rain so that it is flying sideways and the hood on his windbreaker is whipping back and forth and making so much noise that it almost drowns out his microphone and before you know it he’s leaning into the wind like this and he’s saying, “Bill the wind is really starting to blow now.  We’re up to about a hundred and twenty miles and hour!”  And he’s struggling, leaning, working really hard not to get blown away by that wind.

Part of the problem is that he is trying to stand still.  That wind wants more than anything to make him move and he is trying to keep his feet in the same spot and not let that wind change his position at all.

So another part of the visual here…  We are still on the beach.  The hurricane is coming.   And there up on the flagpole at the marina is a flag that somebody forgot to take down.  The wind is blowing a hundred and a hundred and twenty miles an hour and that flag is trying to stay in place up there on the pole… And what happens to it?  It gets shredded.  It gets torn to pieces.

So here we are with this wind, the Spirit of Truth Jesus calls it, blowing through all of creation, blowing through the church and we are at risk of being shredded by that wind.

The way to avoid being shredded is to move.

So here we are again.  We are still here on the Outer Banks.  Imagine what it would be like if when we felt that wind coming we lifted our anchor, we let go our moorings, we pulled in the sheets and tightened the sails, and we pointed ourselves into that wind.  The wind starts buffeting the front face of the sail.  The sail starts luffing a little bit so we pull the sheets in little tighter, and now there’s a vacuum out in front of that sail because the wind is moving so fast in front of it, and we  start moving, pulled forward into the wind.  Into the wind.

The way to avoid being shredded by the wind, by the violent wind, the spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit, is to be willing to pull up our anchor, to let go of our moorings, and to see where God is calling us.  When we respond in that way, when we risk letting go of what’s familiar, our slip there at the marina where the restaurant is up there on the second floor and the showers are down there around the corner, and we have all the things we need to scrape the hull and keep the boat clean and sparkly, and venture into deep water…  we know that this is the place where we will find God.  That is where God is, at the heart, at the center of that wind.  And when we are willing to point our bow in that direction and be drawn in we will be in a position to help build the kingdom of God wherever that wind takes us.

The wind is blowing.  And you can apply that metaphor to all sorts of arenas in our lives all sorts of settings, all sorts of contexts…  The wind is blowing through the church.  It is also blowing right here in this place.

Think for a moment about where we are.  We are about to welcome a full time Associate Priest.  We are about to celebrate our centennial, a moment when we can look back on our history; to see where we have been, to assess where we are, and choose whether or not to let go of those moorings and move into deep water again.   We do all of this with a gift from a long time committed beloved member of this parish that will help us to go to places that we might not have dreamed.

The wind is blowing.  And God is in the center, in the eye of that storm,  And the wind that is blowing from God has the power to draw us forward, as long as we are willing to move, to pull up our anchor, to let go of our moorings, to shift our feet, and to let God sail the boat.

This is a moment of great excitement… Yea I said that right?  Excitement…  It can be terrifying.  It can be terrifying.   But listen to what Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, do not let them be afraid.  My Peace I give to you.  And I don’t give as the world gives.

It takes much more energy and it is much more difficult, and it is completely unproductive to work so hard to lean into that wind and not move your feet, to cling to that anchor line, to cling that flagpole and try desperately to hang on.

It is life giving, it is energizing, and it is who we are called to be, to let g, to go with God, who fills our sails and draws us forward, calling us to that new reality that is ours if we dare.

Amen.

A Sermon for Ascension Day

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The readings for this day offer us some interesting images….

In the Acts of the Apostles we read:

“When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9).

From the Gospel of Luke we read:

“While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven” (Luke 24:51).

Hmmmm….  Rising up into heaven on a cloud or slowly fading into the mist…  Do either of those images work for you?  How about Albrecht Durer’s wood cut showing the disciples gathered around looking upward, with Jesus’ feet just visible inside the frame at the top of the image?  Does that work any better for you?

There is a real risk that the difficulty that we experience with these images will keep us from exploring the meaning behind them.  That would be very sad because the truth that lies behind the details of today’s readings is incredibly powerful and exciting.

To get to that truth I am going to have to ask your indulgence, maybe even your forgiveness.  It is now the 6th week after Easter, we have had some seventy and even eighty degree days.  We have finally shaken off the snow and things the buds on the trees are beginning to grow.  But to understand the value, the meaning of the Ascension I am going to have to take you back into the dark of winter….  Because we can’t really understand what is happening in the Ascension without also thinking about what happens in the incarnation.  So let’s go back to December and think for a minute about Christmas.

Christmas is filled with images of its won.  Joseph and an expectant Mary traveling to Jerusalem, a young couple bedding down in the straw among the animals, angels singing in the night, and a child wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger.  There are so many truths behind, below, surrounding, buttressing the details of this story that it would take page upon page just to list them and volume upon volume to unpack and explain them.  But there is piece of this complicated event that stands out to us as we look back from our vantage point here at the Ascension.

Jesus, Emmanuel, God Among Us…  God comes into the world in the person of Jesus Christ and our understanding of creation is changed.  God, by definition is holy, set apart, other…  God is light, life, pure.  God is “clean.”  All of those terms serve to set God apart from us.  The world, the place that we inhabit is profane.  It is transient, dark, filled with death, and “unclean.”   There is a chasm that is fixed between us and God that cannot be traversed.

There are religious and philosophical traditions that hold that the world is an illusion; that in order to see the Truth, or to experience enlightenment we have to escape or transcend the veil that is this life and move beyond the profane to the eternal, timeless, the holy.

We have an incarnational faith.  We believe that God is present, manifest in the world.  One of the important truths that swirl around the details of the Christmas story is a clear declaration of the validity, the intrinsic worth, the beauty of this world.  This is the place where God comes to live in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  And whether you believe that the Feast of the Incarnation is a celebration of the moment when the world was redeemed by God’s presence, or that it celebrates the moment when that eternal truth was made evident, manifest through the birth of a child in a manger, the bottom line is the same.  God abides here, with us, in us, in all of creation and somehow, that indwelling, that presence has not sullied God’s nature, has not darkened the light that is God, has not made God unclean.  Instead the world this place, we are sanctified by God’s presence.  Our understanding of creation is shaped and formed by the Incarnation.

 

So why have I taken us back into the cold months of winter just when we are finally breaking free and spring is filling the air with activity, life and growth?   Because the Ascension is the reciprocal movement that mirrors the Incarnation.  In the Incarnation we express the truth that God dwells in and among us.  In the Ascension we are expressing the truth that we dwell within God.

Jesus, in bodily form, ascends into heaven, into the very heart of God.  Our nature, our flesh, becomes a part of God.  And it isn’t some purified, cleaned up, sanitized version of our nature that crosses that great chasm.  Jesus rose from the dead with the wounds, the signs of his crucifixion, still there in his hands and side for Thomas to see and touch.  The truth that this story is trying to help us to grasp?  Our nature and our life, our experiences, our pain and suffering, our brokenness, even our sense of alienation and abandonment are a part of God’s experience!  How do we understand or wrap our minds around that possibility?  God doesn’t just observe our suffering from the sky box, doesn’t just read about it in the book of life, doesn’t listen to dispassionate reports from a host of heavenly angels.  God experiences our lives, our joy and our pain, our successes and our failures, our sense of connection and our loneliness.  That is an astounding proposition.  It would seem to run contrary to those classical definitions of God that I referenced earlier.  So how do we wrap our minds around this?  Perhaps the only way is to explore images like Jesus being lifted up in a cloud, or fading into the mist, or his feet withdrawing from the frame above our heads…  Maybe given our limited language and imagination that is the best that we can do…

Praying in the Face of Tragedy

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Dear Parish Family,

Suzanne, Daniel, Jacob, and I want to thank you all for your prayers of care and support as we have worked through the shock and grief we experienced at the death of Suzanne’s brother Gary.    It has been a difficult week for all of us.  Your prayers have been a great source of comfort.  We are on the road today and expect to arrive in Madison late tonight.

Prayers have been especially important this week as the horrific images of the bombing in Boston have confronted us once again with the consequences of human fear, hate, and alienation.  We have prayed for those hurt and killed by the blast and for the families and friends of those who were injured or killed.  We have uttered prayers of grief for the loss of innocence, for a diminished sense of security and safety, for a senseless act that has turned a day of celebration into an occasion of national mourning.  We have prayed for those who, because they were there, have been there, or know someone who was there, carry invisible scars and wounds that may take years to recognize, address, and treat.  And because we follow a crucified Lord, the God who died at our hands to show us that nothing we can do can ever separate us form the love of God, we have even dared to offer prayers for the perpetrators of this horrific act.

On Monday night, the day of my brother in law’s funeral, as I sat in front of the television in my mother in law’s living room I posted the Prayer for the Human Family from page 851 of the BCP:

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us
through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole
human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which
infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us;
unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and
confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in
your good time, all nations and races may serve you in
harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

I hope that we will all find the grace and courage to offer this prayer in the face of tremendous hurt, anger and frustration.  It is in moments such as this that this prayer is most needed.

Having then stood with Christ, having prayed for the whole human family, we are able to offer our prayers of thanksgiving.  We offer thanks to God for moving in this world though the hearts and hands and feet of the people who, having felt the concussion generated by those blasts, turned towards that horror and ran to the aid of those who had fallen.  We offer prayers of gratitude that God has placed in our hearts a care for one another that enables us to rise above fear for ourselves and to join with God in the work of healing and reconciliation.  We give thanks for the witness born by the first responders that the Light has come into the world and the darkness has not overcome it.

Now we pray for strength and courage; for the ability to see and hear those in our midst who are hurting, afraid, or discouraged and to be present with them as they tell their stories.

We pray for the  strength and courage to stand our ground, to refuse to be drawn into the darkness of fear, retribution, violence and revenge; to take our place with the crucified Christ knowing that it is only through bearing the cross that we experience resurrection.

We pray for the strength and courage to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves as we strive for justice and peace among all people respecting the dignity of every human being.

We pray because we know that we can only fulfill these promises and vows with God’s help.

Our Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Steven Miller, has written a reflection on the tragedy in Boston. You can find it here.

The rev. Dr. Jonathan Grieser, Rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Madison has published a collection of prayers on his blog.  You can find it here.

The Rev Jonathan Melton, Chaplain for the Saint Francis House Episcopal Student Ministry at UW-Madison has written a reflection on his blog.  You can find it here.  

And finally, our Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who is in Okinawa, Japan for the Second Worldwide Anglican Peace Conference, called for prayer following the explosions, and offered the following prayer:

Gracious God, you walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death. We pray that the suffering and terrorized be surrounded by the incarnate presence of the crucified and risen one. May every human being be reminded of the precious gift of life you entered to share with us. May our hearts be pierced with compassion for those who suffer, and for those who have inflicted this violence, for your love is the only healing balm we know. May the dead be received into your enfolding arms, and may your friends show the grieving they are not alone as they walk this vale of tears. All this we pray in the name of the one who walked the road to Calvary. Amen.

 

Amen,
Andy+
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God Talk: Venturing anew into a very old conversation

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God Talk…  Beginning a new blog site…

During the Season of Lent we at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church used the book Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity as a jumping off point for our conversations at the Sunday Forum.  During those weeks  attendance at the Sunday forum more than doubled.

We didn’t work through the book chapter by chapter, instead we allowed the material of two or three chapters shape our conversations each week, honoring the trajectory of the book, and allowing the cumulative weight of our readings and conversation to move us forward.

Our momentum took a real hit when we reached chapter 11, The Myth of Redemptive Violence.  What do we mean when we say that “Jesus died for our sins”?  What do we mean when, as part of our Eucharistic liturgy we say, “By his blood her reconciled us.  By his wounds we are healed” (BCP p. 370).  Are we saying that Jesus payed the price for our sins so that God’s wrath might be assuaged, God’s justice served, and our freedom purchased?

This is the question of “soteriology” or salvation and it is a question in which I am passionately interested.

I am going to spend some time over the next couple of months reading and studying soteriology, salvation, atonement, the cross and I would like to invite you to join me in this journey.  I will post summaries of the materials that I read and my responses to them on my new blog, God Talk, and I hope that you will offer your comments, thoughts and reflections to those who join this forum.

The best way to keep up and to participate will be to subscribe or “follow” the God Talk blog.  There is a button on the sidebar of the God Talk home page that will allow you to follow the blog so that anytime something is posted you will be notified by email.

Comments on God Talk are moderated, I have to approve them before they go public, but I will allow all ideas and perspectives to be heard.  I will only “edit” with an eye for civility and respect for difference of opinion.

My reading list is available on the God Talk blog.  It is listed on the main menu on the banner of the home page.

I do hope that you will join us as we work together to “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you…” (1 Peter 3:15b).

Peace,

Andy+

God’s Resounding Yes: A Sermon for Easter Day 2013

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This sermon, preached at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Madison Wisconsin on Easter Day 2013, is built around the readings for Easter Day in Year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.

You can find those readings here.

I wonder when it happens…  when our response to the world around us becomes fixed… when the way we respond to the world around us begins to gel, to set, to harden…

I am sure that there are folks among us this morning who have studied this, who can tell us how the stress that our mothers endure affects us in the womb, how the birth experience shapes us, how the way that our early needs are met defines how we will trust, or not trust, the people and the world around us.  I know that all of these things impact our responses to the people and events in our lives.  I know that our outlook on the world is impacted and shaped by more variables than we can count and that we are all unique and wonderful individuals in or own right.

But this morning I am concerned with something that seems to be pretty universal, part of the human condition, something that we recognize in ourselves, that we know we would be better off without, and that is so hard to overcome that we will spend our entire lives struggling against it.

I believe that this tragedy begins when we are very young, during that awful period known to parents as the terrible twos.

Yup!  That’s when it happens.  The terrible twos… when we develop our obsession with the word “No!”

“No!”  it feels so powerful.  It startles the people around us, causes them to pause.  It even makes them a little uncomfortable.  And when we say it often enough we can cause quite a stir.  Everyone else seems to be saying it all of the time.  It seems like everywhere we go, every time we reach out to try something new, every time we experiment with the freedom we are beginning to feel, people are shouting it at us… “No!  Don’t touch that!  No! Don’t do that!  No! Don’t go there…”  This must be how the world works.  And if you are going to keep saying “no” to me then I am going to say “no” right back at ya!”

It happens so early.  We don’t yet have the resources or the sophistication to recognize what is happening to us.  And before we know it… It’s too late.  “No” becomes a habituated response.  It becomes familiar, predictable.  It is what we know…

So we are really ill prepared to defend ourselves from the “no” that surrounds us when our circle becomes larger and we fall under the influence and spell of the larger world.

“Can I join you?”

“No!  You don’t look like us!”

 

“Can I try this?”

“No!  You will just fail anyway!”

 

“Can I go there?”

“No!  You’ll just get into trouble!”

 

“Can I have some of that?”

“No!  There isn’t enough to go around, and you haven’t earned it yet!”

 

“But aren’t I important?”

“Are you kidding?  Who are you?  No!”

 

“Am I not then worth loving?”

“No!  Not until you measure up and give me what I want…  No!”

“No” rains down on us from people we trust, people we respect, even people we love.  So we don’t even recognize the fact that “No” is the tool that Madison Avenue uses to sell us their soap, “No you aren’t quite acceptable…  But if you buy what we are selling you will be just fine…”

We don’t recognize what is happening when “No” and the threat of “no” are what the powers that be use to keep us in line.  “No!  But you shouldn’t be complaining…  I am just protecting you from their bigger and even more oppressive ‘no.’  You should count your lucky stars that you only have to endure the ‘no’ that I am offering!”

Two thousand years ago, there was another word spoken.  It was spoken very quietly, by a young girl, who whispered the word in response to and unlikely and seemingly impossible request.

The word grew a little louder when, in a city that was lining up to be counted, cataloged and taxed by a foreign occupying power, a child was born in the lowest of all places.

This word grew in volume as an itinerate preacher began to wander the countryside, speaking primarily to those upon whom the world’s “no” had wreaked the greatest damage

It reached a crescendo as this word began to challenge the “no” in very public and threatening ways…

Jesus, Emmanuel, God among us, is God’s Word; God’s resounding “Yes” uttered, spoken into being, and proclaimed, in the face of the world’s “no.”

“Yes!  You can join us!  You don’t even need to ask.  Because you are already a part of us!”

 

“Yes!  You can try that!  And if it doesn’t work out…  we will find something else… together!

 

“Yes!  You can go there!  And I will go with you on your journey!”

 

“Yes!  You can have some of this!  There is way more than enough to go around!”

 

Yes!  You are important!  You are precious in my sight and there is no other like you!”

 

“Yes!  You are worth loving!  And I have loved you even before you were able to love me in return!”

Can you feel it?  It’s palpable!  God’s “Yes.”  Something like that could change the world!

It could… but the “no” doesn’t give up easily.  In fact, the “no” has such a deep hold on us that, as attractive as the “yes” may be… we find ourselves backing away, distrusting the very thing we long for, yet find so hard to imagine.

God whispers yes to a young girl named Mary.

God says yes in a lowly stable in Bethlehem.

God walks the dusty roads of Palestine saying yes, yes, yes!

But we turn away from the Word of God and cry “No!” as we nail him to a tree.

That “no” is still ringing in Mary’s ears as she approaches the tomb this morning.   It is screaming at the disciple Jesus loved and at Peter as they run to see what has happened.  That “no” is so loud and strong that Mary, weeping at the tomb after Peter and the other disciple have left, doesn’t recognize the voice, the Word, when it begins to speak to her again.

Then something incredible happens.  The Word, God’s “yes” calls to her by name…  Mary…  Yes!

It’s hard.  The “No” has not gone away, has not completely loosed its grip on us.  That voice is still ringing, screaming in our ears.  Sometimes the “no” even finds voice on our own lips.

It is our longing that brings us here: our longing for a different voice, and different word, a yes that might just change us and change the world; a yes that will proclaim that love is more powerful than death.

The “no” will never silence the yearning.  And this morning, as we stand weeping at the tomb… we hear it again.  That still small voice, whispering to us… calling us by name… and saying, “Yes!”

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Remember Who You Are. Remember Whose You Are: A Sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter

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This is an icon depicting Saint Andrew.  It was reproduced for us by a local icon writer and I have a box full of them in my office.

I keep a supply of these on hand because every spring, when members of our congregation graduate from High School and prepare to go off to college, we acknowledge their accomplishments, congratulate them and their parents for the work that they have done, and send them out into the world, to new adventures and experiences, with our blessings and our prayers, and we give them one of these icons.

I don’t know how many of you have been in that place, of sending someone you love off into the world, but as someone who has a son leaving for college this year, I know that I want to send him off with something more than blessings and prayers…

I want to send him off with some very clear instruction to help him navigate the path that lies before him and to keep him out of trouble!

So this year, the words that I always write on the back of these icons when we give them to our graduating seniors seem especially poignant to me and I know that my hands will be shaking when I write them on the icon that Suzanne and I will hand to Jacob this year.

Remember “who” you are.

Remember “whose” you are.”

Remember who you are…  When we send Jacob out into the world we will want him to remember all of the things that we have taught him.  We want him to remember the things that we have learned together, through trial and error, and through common experience.  We want him to remember us and the times that we have laughed, cried, and loved together.  Remember who you are…  We want him to remember the things that have shaped and formed his identity as a part of our family and as a part of the community that defines our common life.

Remember whose you are…  We will want him to remember that he is loved beyond measure.  That no matter how far from home he travels we are still bound to one another by our common history, by our common origin, and by a love which can never be stretched beyond the breaking point.  Remember whose you are…  Remember that you are ours, you are mine.  And always remember that we, that I am yours.

So that’s pretty close, pretty personal isn’t it?  And it is one thing for me to be writing those words, words that carry all of that subtext and meaning, to my own son.  It is another thing for me to be writing them to other people’s kids…   Interesting isn’t it?  That for as long as I have been writing those love notes on the backs of those icons… no one has ever complained.

I, and at this moment I am going to dare to say “we,” write those love notes on the backs of these icons and give them to our children because we hope that these words will become icons in and of themselves.  We hope that they will open a window on a fundamental truth that has the power to help us all navigate our way through life and to keep us in communion with one another and with God.

That truth is that:  We are called to remember…  who we are, and whose we are…  And we are called to remember together, in conversation as families, as communities of faith and hope,  and as the people of God.

We are called to remember together, in conversation…

We have these conversations spontaneously during special moments, at marker events in our lives; we have these conversations when the family has gathered for a holiday, for a birth, a wedding or a funeral.  We have these conversations around the dinner table, sharing a meal, telling stories around the fireplace or around campfires in the dark.

In these moments the stories seem to well up with in us, flowing naturally, coming from a place deep within, from our core sense of what is important and what we love.

In these moments the stories seem remarkably “present,” real, and true.  In these special moments the stories cease to be about people and places, moments and events in our past.  They become the story of who we are here and now.  In a wonderful and powerful way they tell our history, and at the same time define our present, and shape our hopes for the future.  The stories, even if they are about people who came long before us, become our story, our reality, our truth.

We shared a marvelous example of the power of story just this past week.  On Maundy Thursday we gathered for the twelfth time as a parish to experience our spiritual heritage and roots by participating in a Seder meal.  During the course of that powerful ritual we heard the story of the Exodus, the Passover, and the flight from Egypt.  We remembered God’s deliverance of the people at the Red Sea, his giving of the Law at Mount Sinai, and the giving of the Temple as a place where God’s presence would reside in the world.

We rehearsed and gave thanks for a people’s history, their combined experience and shared heritage, and then we prayed this blessing:

In every generation each one ought to regard himself as though he had personally come out of Egypt, as it is written:  “And on that day you will explain to your children, “This is what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.'”  (Exodus 13:8)  It was not only our ancestors whom the Holy One, praised be He, redeemed from slavery, but us also did He redeem.  Therefore it is our duty to thank, praise, laud, extol, bless, exalt and adore Him who did all of these wonders for our ancestors and for ourselves.  He has brought us forth from slavery to freedom, from sorrow to joy, from mourning to festive day, from darkness to a great light, and from bondage to redemption.  Let us then sing before Him a new song.

Regard yourself as though you had personally come out of Egypt.  It was not only our ancestors, but us also…

Remember who you are.  Remember whose you are…  Remembering is integral to our identity, to who we are, and it is an essential part of whose we are.

Every Sunday we gather in his place and we read from our sacred scripture, from our history, from our story.  And every Sunday we claim those stories as our own.  We remember or perhaps more precisely, we recollect them.  They are not stories about people long ago and far, far away.  They are stories about us; about our hopes and dreams; about our successes and failures, about our faithfulness and our infidelities.  And they are above all stories about our relationship, our walk, with the God who continually creates, redeems, and sustains us, who loves us beyond all measure, who never ceases to call us into covenant, and who is faithful even when we are not.  They are stories that are both humbling and uplifting.  Stories that tell the truth about who we are and that give us hope because of whose we are.

This is the night, when our Lenten observance is ended, when we gather around the font, the water of baptism that binds us and makes us the church and we reaffirm our commitment to Christ, to the church, and to one another as we tell our story and remember who we are and whose we are.

And so we sing…

It is truly right and good, always and everywhere, with our whole heart and mind and voice, to praise you, the invisible, almighty, and eternal God, and your only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who at the feast of the Passover paid for us the debt of Adam’s sin, and by his blood delivered your faithful people.

This is the night, when you brought our fathers, the children of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the Red Sea on dry land.

This is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life.

This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell,  and rose victorious from the grave.

How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your mercy and loving-kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you gave a Son.

How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight, and sin is washed away. It restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to those who mourn. It casts out pride and hatred, and brings peace and concord.

How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and man is reconciled to God.

Holy Father, accept our evening sacrifice, the offering of this candle in your honor. May it shine continually to drive away all darkness. May Christ, the Morning Star who knows no setting, find it ever burning–he who gives his light to all creation, and who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen            (The Exultet BCP p. 286-287).

This is What God’s Law, God’s Justice Look Like: A Sermon for Good Friday 2013

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This sermon, preached at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church on Good Friday, March 29th 2013, is based on the readings for Good Friday in the Revised Common Lectionary.

You can find those readings here.

There is a dream that we cling to, one that we long to see come to fruition, a dream so powerful and life giving that we have pursued it for as long as we can remember.  That dream goes something like this”

“The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6-9).

We long for a world where all things, all people live in harmony, where peace reigns and where God is always present.  But it is important to remember that this dream, this vision does not originate with us.

This is God’s dream, God’s vision for creation, for all of humankind and for all things.  God, the one who spoke all things into being; God, who created order from the void, the chaos; God who gives light, life, and meaning to all things; this dream, this vision of the created order comes from the one in whom we live and move and have our being.

This is God’s wish for us.

“They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea”

And to that end…

“from the primal elements God brought the human race, and blessed us with memory reason and skill.  God made us the rulers of creation.  But we turned against God, and betrayed God’s trust, and we turned against one another…  Again and again God called us to return.  Through prophets and sages God revealed God’s righteous law” (BCP p. 370).

But we are a stiff necked and rebellious people.  Again and again we put our own needs, our own desires ahead of God’s dream and ahead of the neighbors we have been called to love.  Our need to be “first,” to be in control leads us to exploit the people around us as we seek our own benefit, the advancement of our own agenda and needs, as we seek what looks and feels to this world like power.

“And so, in the fullness of time God sent God’s only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill God’s righteous law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace” (BCP p. 370)

But…

“He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own and his own people did not accept him” (John 1:10,11).

And so…

“For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried” (The Nicene Creed).

And,

“By his blood, he reconciled us.  By his wounds we are healed” (BCP p. 370).

By “his” blood he reconciled us?  By “his” wounds “we” are healed?  How can that be?  How does that make sense?

He was,

“Incarnate by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, he lived as one of us, yet without sin.  To the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation; to prisoners freedom; to the sorrowful joy” (BCP p. 374).

So how does this death, the death of one who bore no fault, no shame, who lived without sin, reconcile and heal us?  Why is that that we sit here today, at the foot of the cross, an instrument of torture and death – prepared to claim and venerate this moment as our own?  What sense does it make to say that this innocent man died for our sins?

We are the ones who are at fault.  We are the ones who have betrayed God’s trust and turned against God and one another.  We are the ones who should bear the consequences of our choices, out actions, our betrayals because we are the ones who have fallen into sin.

How does this make sense?  Let’s think back a little, to the Gospel of John to that well beloved passage people so often quote,

“For God so loved the world that God gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him my not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Now push on to the next verse, one that is extremely important as we consider the cross,

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).

Jesus came into the world, preached, taught, showed us the way to heaven and then died for us, for our sake, in order that the world might be saved.  “Saved,” that our offense, our betrayals, that our sins be forgiven that we may live in the light of God’s love.

That our sins might be forgiven…   “Forgiven” think about that word for a minute.  What does it mean to forgive?  If I have been wronged then I am entitled to justice.  I am entitled to redress, to compensation.  If I have been wronged I have a right to demand that the one who has harmed me pay a penalty for the indignity to which they have subjected me.  If I have been wronged then it is only fair that the person who has offended me suffer the same hurt that I have experienced.  We would call that fair.  We would call that justice.

To forgive means to forgo the satisfaction that is due the injured party.  To forgive is to receive the hurt, the offense, the injury without retaliating and without nurturing the wound or fostering a grudge.  To forgive is to be willing to suffer at the hands of those who have wronged us and to refuse to inflict suffering in return.  To forgive is to step out side of the “eye for an eye” approach to life and to enter instead into a mutualistic relationship that is transformative for both the offender and the offended.  To forgive is to risk being changed and to risk the possibility that the future might be different than the past.

We have fallen short of God’s vision, God’s dream for creation.  Left to our own devices we have become stuck in a cycle of violence that consumes the lamb, the kid, and the fatling; returning violence for violence, escalating and multiplying the hurt, building pain upon pain.  We have created the world in our own image and our need for power and control has loosed bears who rend and destroy, lions who devour the innocent, and adders who seem to strike without warning or mercy.

God came into this broken world, not to condemn us for our failure to live in God’s light and love; not to demand justice, compensation and ransom; but to lift us out of the darkness by putting an end to our endless cycle of rage, retribution, and violence.  God came into this world to offer us forgiveness, something that would “fulfill God’s law and to open for us the way of freedom and peace” (BCP p. 370).

To fulfill God’s law…  It doesn’t make much sense to us because God’s law and God’s justice don’t look much like ours.  But this is what God’s law, God’s justice looks like…  It looks like Jesus, God on a cross.  God’s law, God’s justice is a love so great, so deep and so wide that it is willing to suffer; to endure hurt, wrong, and betrayal.  God’s law, God’s justice is manifested in a willingness to forgive in the hope that we will choose the way of freedom and peace.  And that transformed by the gift of forgiveness that has been given to us and by the demonstration of the power of love over sin and death we will begin to live out our vocation as the church, “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (BCP p. 855).

Amen.

This sermon is indebted to Charles Hefling and his article “Why the Cross” published March 11, 2013 in the Christian Century.  You can read his article here.

There is Blood on our Hands: A Sermon for Palm Sunday

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This sermon is based on the Readings for Palm Sunday in year C of the Revised Common Lectionary.

You can find those readings here.

There is an audio file of the sermon available here:

Sermon Palm Sunday 2013

It seems like a lot to ask.

I mean, life is hard, there’s a lot going on right now.  The economy is still a little shaky, a lot of us are living in homes that are worth less than when we bought them.  People we know, family friends, neighbors, some of us, have lost our jobs, have had to rethink the future.  Our retirement accounts haven’t bounced back yet, our benefits keep shrinking, and everything costs more than it did yesterday.

It is a lot to ask.

You turn on the news, pick up the paper, talk to your friends, things that we have always been able to count on seem less sure.  It feels like our rights are being chipped away, like someone we can’t quite identify is working to undermine our place in the world, our sense of security and well being.  It turns out that people, structures, and institutions that we thought would protect us are, in the end, only interested in protecting themselves.

It asking too much!

At a time when everything seems to be changing at a dizzying pace, when our children and our children’s children don’t seem interested in the things that we have treasured and maintained on their behalf…  When the validity and relevance of things that we thought would last forever is being challenged.

It’s too much to ask and what a time to be asking!

Here we are, gathered at the foot of the cross, grieving, confused, scared and angry…  And Paul has the nerve to ask us to lower ourselves and to become slaves?

Look.  We don’t need this guy Paul and his insensitive, over reaching, nagging…

What we need is some fresh ideas, some new life, some one to ride in here on a white horse and help us out of this mess that we are…

 

Paul isn’t being insensitive to the difficulties that we face.  He isn’t over reaching by asking us to do too much.  He may be nagging a little, he does that from time to time…  But what he is really doing in this moment is singing a hymn.

We believe that the selection we heard from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi is something that the early church said or sang as part of their liturgy, we call it The Christ Hymn, and Paul is singing it to us today, in the midst of our pain, our confusion, our suffering, and our fear, to help us to understand that we are being confronted with a choice, a choice so fundamental to the way that we understand and participate in the world that it really must be asked now, even as we stand here trembling at the foot of the cross.

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death–

even death on a cross.”

Paul is asking us to set aside our need to be at the center of all things, our sense that we deserve to be first, that our needs are more important than the needs of the people we all to easily see as “others.”

Paul is asking us to see ourselves as part of something greater than the wealth that we have accumulated, the rights and privileges we have won, the benefits that accrue when we pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and declare ourselves to be “self made.”

Paul is singing to us, asking us to put ourselves in service to a radical and subversive view of creation.  It may be our right, we may be entitled, it may even be guaranteed to us by our founding documents and principles, but, Paul is saying, we need to be prepared to let it go for the sake of the greater good, for the sake of our children, for the poor and the widowed, for the people with whom Jesus chose to minister and associate.  Paul is reminding us that Jesus came not to be served but to serve and he is trying to sing us into a new way of being, one where we aren’t as worried about being served as we are about serving others.  Paul is asking us to give up our own, self centered, narcissistic, shortsighted view of ourselves and the world and to choose instead God’s dream, God’s vision for a creation reconciled to one another and to God.

 

It seems like a lot to ask!

And it would be one thing to ask if were are well fed, rested, comfortable in our ability to acquire and provide the things that we and our beloved need and want… when our faith and trust in the institutions we have labored so long to support and buttress were unshaken… when our heritage, our legacy was secure, beloved and well received by those who will come after us…

It would be one thing to ask as we cheer along the parade route, joining our voices with the crowd, shouting with excitement as the one upon whom our hopes rest rides triumphantly into the lion’s den…

It is a lot to ask!

And it gets even harder when the one we had hoped might deliver us is arrested and taken from us, when he seems so small standing before Pilate and the machinery of death that we had hoped to escape.  It gets harder when we see him beaten, spat upon, and rejected by the people who had hailed him as their king!

It is too much to ask!

To ask us to follow him as he carries his own cross through the streets of Jerusalem on his way to a shameful and public end.  It is too much to ask as he is nailed to a tree and the agents of oppression cast lots for his clothes.  It is too much to ask as the tree is hoisted into the air and Jesus agony is apparent for all to see.  It is too much, too much!

Here we are, gathered at the foot of the cross, grieving, confused, scared and angry…  Paul, how can you ask this of us now?

 

Paul is asking us now because this is the moment that the question becomes most clear.  Here at the foot of the cross we see the consequences of our “no” to God’s “Yes” in the person of Jesus.

When we decline the call to serve…  When we place ourselves at the center of all things and set about to defend what we believe is ours, what we believe we deserve, what we believe to be our right and privilege, we put at risk what is “theirs,” what our common humanity says we all deserve, what is ours by right because we all are made in the image of God.

When we say no to Paul, no to Jesus, no to God’s call to service of others, then we are by default, aligning our selves with Pilate, who rode into town this morning with an army of soldiers intent on defending what was his, what was Caesar’s, what belonged to Rome.

Paul is asking us now because the consequences of our “no” are right here before us, impossible to ignore, impossible to dismiss.

There is blood…  Blood in our streets, blood in our schools, blood in our homes, blood on the cross.  Blood on our hands.

Let us pray

“Let the same mind be in US that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death–

even death on a cross.”

 

Amen.

 

On Bended Knee with Our Broken Hearts in Our Hands: a Reflection on the Season of Lent

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This is how we approach the love that we have wounded, the love that we have injured, the love that we have neglected or betrayed.  Filled with remorse for the pain that we have caused, hoping beyond hope for forgiveness, we acknowledge the wrong that we have done, we declare our remorse, we proclaim our love, and we promise to change, to live more fully into the relationship that we long to maintain.  We do everything that we can do to be reconciled to the one whom we love.  It is an all too familiar scenario.  Children and parents, husbands and wives, partners in every kind of relationship find themselves in this place; having hurt one another, desperately seeking forgiveness, hoping for reconciliation, longing to mend what has been broken, approaching on bended knee, broken heart in hand.  This is also the posture in which we approach the season of Lent.

We know that we have sinned, that we have failed to live into the relationship that God is offering us and that we long to experience, in the things that we have thought, in the words that we have spoken to one another, and in the things that we have done.  We know that we have not loved God with our whole heart, and we know that we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.  We know that we have neglected and betrayed the one who loves us beyond all measure, the one with whom we long to abide in peace and trust.  We know that the peace of God, which passes all understanding, has eluded us because we have not sought, recognized, and nurtured the relationship that brings that peace.  This strain in the relationship which should be at the center of our lives is so difficult to bear that we come to church every week and confess our sins, the ways in which we have fallen short of the life and love that God holds out to us.  Every week, again and again we come to the table with our hands outstretched, trembling at the love and grace that endures, the knowledge that God remains faithful even when we are not.   If we are already confessing, on bended knee, our broken hearts in our hands, why do we set aside the forty days of Lent as a time of “self-examination and repentance; of prayer, fasting and self-denial; of reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” (BCP p. 265)?    I would like to suggest that the season of Lent is not a time for seeking forgiveness.  It is a time to turn our hearts, to change, it is a time for repentance and renewal.

The analogy that I set up earlier in this reflection, of approaching the people in our lives whom we have hurt, seeking their forgiveness, hoping for reconciliation doesn’t quite describe our humble approach to God.  When we have hurt the person whom we love we hope for their forgiveness, but there is a chance that they will refuse us the reconciliation we crave.  There is the chance that they will have had enough of the pain that we inflict.  There is a chance that the relationship will have finally been ruptured beyond repair.  But God loves us so much  that God came among us as one of us, and giving God’s self into our hands, allowed us to choose whether or not to love God in return.  God, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, experienced the very worst that is in us when, in our desperation to be rid of God, we nailed him to a tree.  The analogy that I set up at the beginning of this reflection falls short here because, despite our betrayal, God has not abandoned us!  The Incarnation, Life, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Christ has proven to us that nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of God.  Every Sunday when, on trembling knees, we confess our sinful thoughts, words and deeds, the things done and left undone, our failure to love God with our whole heart and our neighbors as ourselves, we do so knowing that God is waiting to forgive us and restore us to the light and love for which we are created.  We hear the words that we long to hear, “Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep you in eternal life”  (BCP p. 360).  It is interesting and important to note that on Ash Wednesday, the day that we venture into the wilderness of Lent, we do not hear those words of absolution.

On Ash Wednesday we confess our sins in the Litany of Penitence (BCP p. 267-269), and then  “the Bishop, if present, or the Priest stands, and facing the people” … declares that God “has given power and commandment to his ministers to declare pardon and pronounce to his people, being penitent, the absolution and remission of their sins”  (BCP p. 269).  And then…  that absolution is not conferred!

Just before the peace is exchanged, at the conclusion of the Litany of Penitence, the confession, the Bishop, if present, or the priest says:

 “Therefore we beseech him to grant us true repentance and his Holy Spirit, that those things may please him which we do on this day, and that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy, so that at the last we may come to his eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen” (BCP p. 269).

Here on Ash Wednesday, as we begin our journey through the season of Lent we are praying for repentance, a turning of the heart, away from the things that damage our relationship with God toward the things that are life-giving, that deepen and nurture that relationship.  Here at the beginning of the season of Lent we are praying for the Holy Spirit, for help and strength as we, acknowledging the great gift that God gives us by lifting the burden of our sins, work to repent, to change!

We all long to hear the words of absolution, to know that we are forgiven, to hear that the relationship is still intact, but absolution is only the beginning of something even harder than asking for forgiveness.   The human analogy will serve us well in this moment.  When we go to our love with our broken heart in our hands we may, on the surface be craving their forgiveness, but what we really are afraid of is the loss of relationship.   What we really long for is the wholeness that comes from being one with another.  Forgiveness, absolution, allows us to remain in the presence of the one we love without shame or fear, but the relationship is only made whole if we repent, turn away from, whatever it was that caused the relationship to be ruptured or strained in the first place.  If the thoughts, words, or deeds that caused the breach continue, then the relationship will continue to be deeply wounded and forgiveness becomes nothing more than a topical analgesic.  We set aside the season of Lent, the forty days preceding Holy Week and the Resurrection as a time for deep healing and true reconciliation.  Lent is a time for change… and that is why, when we ask God to grant us “true repentance” we also ask for God’s Holy Spirit.

The kind of change we are talking about here isn’t something that we can do by force of will, commitment, or by working harder.  The kind of change we are talking about here is only possible through the Grace of God and our Lord Jesus Christ.  It is only in knowing that we are forgiven, that nothing we can do will ever separate us from the Love of God, that we can set our hearts and minds to the work of repentance, of change.  It is God’s gift, loving us even before we can love God in return that sets us free to acknowledge our faults and shortcomings, our betrayals, our sins, and ask for forgiveness.  It is God’s gift, the presence, guidance, and grace of the Holy Spirit, that helps us to know when we have failed to hit the mark, that helps us to get back on target.  It is only through the strength and courage we receive in knowing that God, through the Holy Spirit, continues to walk this journey with us that we are able to begin the hard work of repentance, amendment of life, of change.

“Therefore we beseech him to grant us true repentance and his Holy Spirit, that those things may please him which we do on this day, and that the rest of our life hereafter may be pure and holy, so that at the last we may come to his eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen” (BCP p. 269).

Peace,

Andy+

A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent

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This sermon draws on the readings appointed for use on the Second Sunday in Lent.  It is focused on Luke 13:31-35.

You can find those readings here.

Jesus said that he longed to gather the children of Israel under his wings like a mother hen gathers her brood under her wings…  Is Jesus really talking about… chickens?

I grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC.  I don’t know a lot about chickens.  In fact, the summer after I graduated from college, the little bit I do know about chickens only served to cement my status as a “city kid” with my co-workers in central Pennsylvania.  Having spent the whole summer trying to disabuse them of that notion I completely blew it one day when, confronted by my first flock of live chickens I stood there, fascinated, trying to figure out where the drumstick was!  A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing!

I don’t know a lot about chickens but I do have a pretty good idea of what happens when a fox gets into the hen-house.  a Fox in the hen-house means panic, voices raised in terror and pain.  A fox in the hen-house means the sound of running feet, carnage, blood, death.

And when a fox enters the hen-house there is nothing a Mother Hen can do but rush to her chicks defense, sacrificing herself to save them from the jaws of the destroyer.

In today’s Gospel Jesus is responding to a group of Pharisees who have come to tell him that Herod wants him dead.  Jesus’s response to that threat is dismissive.  He doesn’t seem to be worried about his own life.  But the language that he uses, the pictures that he invokes, his cry of lament over the children of Jerusalem, tell us that there is a greater threat here than the one posed by Herod.

Jesus is pointing out that the children of Israel have a choice to make and that they have, for a long time, chosen to follow not the loving mother hen, but the fox!

Herod Antipas, the fox who wants to kill Jesus, rules Galilee as a client sate of Rome.  He is a traitor, a collaborator, a participant in the oppression of his own people.  He is also the son of Herod the “Great.”  It was Herod the “Great” who had the innocents slaughtered in an attempt to eradicate the newly born King of the Jews that the Magi were seeking.  Herod the “Great” had his own children executed for fear that they were plotting to steal his throne.  So, Herod Antipas came from a long line of people willing to do anything, including killing their own chicks and the chick of others to maintain their hold on status, rank, privilege and power.  You would think that a threat from this man would be enough to grab the attention of an itinerant preacher as he makes his way through Herod’s domain and yet even here, with his life threatened by the “fox,” Jesus keeps himself focused on a much larger concern.

When Jesus refers to himself as a mother hen, and laments the history of Jerusalem as “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it” (Luke 13:34), we realize that the “fox” he is referring to is something bigger than Herod Antipas, first century Palestinian Jew.  Jesus is really talking about an understanding of the world and it’s power structures that stands in opposition to the vision, the dream of God for creation.  The “Fox” in this parable represents our tendency to take what we need and want, to subjugate others to our agenda, to marginalize and to ride roughshod over the poor, the weak, and anyone else who doesn’t have or can’t wield the power that we think we have and deserve.  Jesus is telling us that the “fox” is already in the hen-house and that there is a choice to be made.  Are we going to align ourselves with the fox in the hopes that we might be spared by the preservation of the status quo, that we might be allowed to continue to run our own corner of the hen-house; or are we going to cast our lot with the mother hen who has been trying for so long to gather us under her wings and shelter us from the power that would destroy us?

There is a choice to be made and, given the choice between the fox and the Mother Hen the fox might seem like a better choice.  On the surface the Fox seems more powerful and attractive.  The Fox offers perks and benefits, privilege and status, rank and recognition.  The Fox would seem better equipped to defend itself and us.  Surely we can cultivate and tame the fox’s rage and penchant for blood, using it to our own benefit.

But there is that little problem with putting your trust in the Fox.  The Fox has a tendency to sneak in when no one is looking, in the dead of the night, seeking to slake its hunger.  When we finally wake up and take stock we will see that some of us are missing, or injured, trampled into the hard scrabble of the hen-house floor by the Fox’s destructive rampage.  Once we have let the fox into the hen-house there is just no telling who might be deemed disposable, be discarded, be left out or even go missing altogether.  Yes, the fox is powerful, but in the end, no one is safe when there is a fox in the henhouse.  But here Jesus is, telling us that our hen-house is “left to you,” another way of saying “left desolate” because we have refused to shelter in the shadow of the wings of the mother hen.  Why are we so unwilling to turn our backs on the fox and cast our lot with the love of the Mother Hen?

It is a frightening thing to reject the fox.  It is even more frightening to step into the shadow of the Mother Hen’s wings because, as Jesus is pointing out when he shifts the definition of “fox” away from Herod towards a view of the systems and structures that dominate and shape our lives, the choice we make will ultimately define the way that we live together.

In an article published by the Christian Century in 1985 Barbara Brown Taylor, one of our most gifted and treasured preachers asked,

“If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world –wings spread, breast exposed — but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand.”

Hmmm…  one of our most gifted and treasured preachers asked?  That quote didn’t end with a question mark.  It ended with a period.  But then, the question in this morning’s story about Jesus and the Pharisees didn’t end with a question mark either.  Did it?  The question was implicit in the clear distinction between two ways of seeing, and living in the world.

Jesus is asking us to turn from the way of the fox; to stop participating in structures that oppress, crush and destroy; to recognize that the fox under whose standard we stand will not recognize our past loyalty and support but will destroy as all without regard or distinction.  Jesus is asking us to take courage from his example; to have faith in God’s love and promise; and to stand, as he did, wings spread, breast exposed, and to gather his children under our wings.  To fly at the fox in defense of the weak and the poor the widow and the orphan, the forgotten stranger, the marginalized, the other…  Jesus is asking us to gather under the shadow of his wings and to let him rescue our humanity from the hard scrabble of the hen-house floor.

Amen.