A Word of Comfort
Luke 13:31-35
Preached at Hyattsville Mennonite Church, Hyattsville, MD
February 24, 2013
Yesterday I officiated a funeral. A funeral for my cousin’s son, JT, who just celebrated his 2nd birthday a few weeks ago.
My cousin, John’s, house caught fire ten days ago—they still don’t know the reason for it—and John was only able to get his wife and infant son out of the house. He reach JT in time.
Of all the kinds of funerals you may have to attend in your lifetime, this is among the worst. This is a parent’s worst nightmare—losing a child to a horrific death.
This has been the backdrop for my reading of this Lukan text this week. I can’t get to “Jerusalem, Jerusalem how I long to gather your children together like a hen gathers her brood under her wings….” I can’t get to those words, without thinking about John, Amber and the child that they lost.
But, I don’t think this is the point of the text from Luke. I doubt this image of God as a mother hen is not ultimately the point Jesus is trying to get at when he speaks to the Pharisees. I doubt that Jesus is simply trying to give us a feminine image of God to hold on to in 21st century times. I don’t think Jesus is trying to make some sort of radical theological statement about the nature of God. Jesus seems to be using this image of a hen with her chicks to help us understand what God wants for us.
But, after this week of watching my cousin and his family suffer with the tragic loss of their child, it’s what I’m drawn to. I want this image of God as Mother hen to be the point of the text we read today. Because, quite honestly, it’s the image of God I need to have for my cousin and his grieving family—I want this comforting image to give them hope and comfort too.
Friday morning, on the way to take my nine year old daughter to school, we were talking about the fire and what happened to my family. My daughter, Reba, asked me, “Mom, are you disappointed in God?”
That was not a pre-coffee kind of question.
But, I took a deep breath, and tried to tackle it.
“No, I’m not disappointed in God, because I know that God is with us, no matter what. But I’m sure that some people think that God made this happen, and some people are angry with God.”
That brief conversation with my daughter brought me back to this image of the mother hen, this feminine image of God. How I long for my family to be gathered under God’s wing, comforted by God’s loving embrace.
I don’t think this text is meant—in the context of this gospel story today—to be what it is for me this week. But, this week I need to know and hear that God longs to gather us, to tend us, to take care of us.
But, there’s a little hook to this word of comfort that has been bothering me this week. The mother hen imagery is comforting, but then Jesus turns it. “How often I have desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
And you were not willing?
When I have not been willing to be gathered up by God, comforted by God, loved and cared for by God? I have to say, Jesus offends me here.
It’s certainly not the first or the last time that Jesus’ words will rub me the wrong way. If I’m not offended by Jesus words much of the time, I’m probably not paying attention.
But given this week, I’m angry at Jesus words. Nothing is holding me or my family back from wanting to receive the comfort of God, the mother hen.
Perhaps—before I become too angry and indignant—this would be a good time to step back from the text, and see why Jesus is saying what he is saying.
This is a tricky bit of scripture to preach on—our Lenten text from Luke is a transitional passage. It’s the middle of the book of Luke, so plot-wise, the author is building some tension, pointing to the future, the inevitable result of Jesus’ ministry, while referring us back to Jesus’ purpose for ministry.
In this morning’s text, we have a sense of foreshadowing in Jesus’ words. Today and tomorrow he will be casting out demons, and on the third day he will finish his work. Jesus knew he had work to do, but also knew it would end. In Jerusalem. With his death.
But we also can recall Jesus’ first words as he began his ministry. Jesus—even in the middle of his life’s work—had a clear sense of what he was called to do. Jesus was there to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, and to set the opposed free. The words at the beginning of his ministry—there in the temple, where he opened the scroll and read from the prophet Isaiah–they were no less true at the beginning of his ministry than they were in the middle of his work.
And , as Anabaptists, we know Jesus’ call is not just for him. Jesus is calling us to follow in his way. To do these things with him. To participate in bringing about the reign of God with him.
We aren’t taking the journey to Jerusalem with Jesus. Only he can go there. That’s not what we’ve been called to. But, we are called to follow in the way of Jesus, to set the captives free, to heal, to proclaim, to bring the good news of Jesus.
There’s something very fearless about Jesus’ ministry in this passage today. He knew he would die. He knew that it would not happen right then, but that it would happen in Jerusalem. He knew that his death was inevitable. But he seem to be consumed with fear. In fact, in this text, he dared the Pharisees to go tell Herod the fox about his ministry, his healing, his acts of power. What could this man, Herod, do? Whatever Herod wanted to do now would eventually be accomplished in Jerusalem.
It’s the fearlessness of Jesus that seems to be at the heart of Jesus’ message to the Pharisees and to us. From that place of fearlessness, Jesus wished for a bit of that same spirit from the people of Israel. That they would have the courage to listen, to follow in the way, to live out God’s call on their lives.
Ironically, it seems that in living a life of fearless following, no longer ashamed, that God’s protection is most present. Listening, following, doing the hard things are where God gather’s us like a hen gathers its brood. This is what Jesus was asking of his people in this passage.
And today, Jesus calls us to follow him without fear, and in our following, we are offered the care and shelter of Mother God.
This is a comfort to me today. In doing the difficult work of discipleship, there is a comforting God walking beside us. When we wake up every morning and choose to follow Jesus, there is much we give up. But, we know that what we give up are not the most important things. We gain something far greater than what we’ve lost—a relationship with a God that loves us, nurtures us, gathers and comforts us.
And implicit in this text is a profound notion for me. Jesus makes no promises that in following him we will avoid suffering and death. In fact, Jesus is pretty clear in Luke that his work will lead him to his violent death in Jerusalem. A life of following Jesus will not mean that we will avoid suffering, or that we will avoid our own inevitable end. But it does mean that we are never alone in our joys and suffering—God is always there, and so are all of the other chicks God is gathering and comforting under God’s wing.
This is not the easy answer we may want from God. God’s shelter is not protection from harm, a talisman to ward off evil. God’s shelter is not to avoid the pain, but to be there with us in it. God’s shelter is a journey through our suffering, through our joy, with God’s presence there all along the way.
Perhaps this is—in fact—the point of this text today. To give us, in this season of lent, the season of self-reflection, a way to understand how God is with us. It’s certainly not found in the easy answers, but this image—of a mother hen gathering her brood—gives us a window into how God loves and cares for us.
This is an image I can share with my cousin and his family. This is an image I can give to my daughter, to answer some of her questions about God. God is with us on our journey of discipleship. This is a comfort to me—in my questions, in my anger, and sadness—God is there, with me, gathering and comforting me, as I walk this wonderful, difficult road of discipleship.
Blessings to you on your Lenten journey. AMEN.
Ash Wednesday, Mortality and Children
Every year at Ash Wednesday, a small group of folks from the congregation I pastor gather to give each other ashes, to be marked by each other as a symbol of our humanity, our mortality, our brokenness. And at this service, there are always a few parents that bring their children.
This is not necessarily a service geared toward children, but these families come, because to them Ash Wednesday is one of the most important services of the year.
I respect these parents—this is not a service I had the guts to bring my own children to. The last thing I want to do is take the burned palm leaves from last year’s Passion Sunday service mixed with the oil I use to anoint the sick and hurting, and make the sign of the cross on my son and daughter’s forehead. They are mortal, they will die, but I do not want to think about that right now. I’d like to focus instead on their future and their dreams.
But these families bring their children, and make the sign of the cross on their foreheads. They mark them, and say to them, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.” And, in turn their children mark them, and say those sacred, haunting words.
When I’ve talked to the parents after they have exchanged ashes with their children, I can see the look of pain on their faces, when they say, “That is one of the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” There is such an unspeakable honesty that comes with this ritual between parent and child.
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, and marks a call to recognition that we are God’s chosen people, God’s broken people, God’s mortal people. It’s a painful and important part of our discipleship journey. And it’s a painful reminder of our relationship with our children. They will change and parts of our relationship with them will die. They will die. We—their parents—will die, and they will probably be left on this earth to deal with what remains unsaid and undone between the generations.
In that brokenness and humanity, we rest in that odd comfort that God loves us and is with us, blessing our humanity and our failings, blessing our trying and giving us grace and freedom to keep trying.
That’s an important lesson to learn at any age.
And this year, maybe I’ll have the courage to teach it to my children.
Body Image
Body Image
I Corinthians 12:12-31a
January 27, 2013
In our modern culture, we’ve developed an unhealthy relationship with the body. We’re obsessed with perfecting our bodies, getting the perfect washboard abs, reducing the size of our rear ends, while increasing the size of other body parts.
That obsession with body image has even been transferred to images of Christ. I recently saw an image of Christ on the cross, with well toned abs and pecs, and long flowing, brushed and highlighted hair. Even while being tortured and dying, Jesus’ body looked like he’d just taken a boot camp class at the gym.
I don’t see the obsession with body image play out in this congregation the way it does in our wider community. But, this is a community that tries to stay fit. Some of us adhere to special diets—maybe you follow a low carb, low fat, or low sodium diet. Maybe you are gluten free, or vegetarian, or even vegan. I’ve seen plenty of you headed to the gym, or yoga or aikido, or for a run or bike ride in the park—all in an attempt to keep your body fit and healthy.
We do our best to take care of these bodies of ours, to control these vessels made of tissue and fluids. But, ultimately they are out of our control. Our bodies are our downfalls. They will fail us.
I regret to inform you that no matter what you do, you will all suffer the same fate—you will die. We will all die. We are mortal.
Our text today from I Corinthians feels like a classic Mennonite text. It affirms our belief and practice of mutuality. We all need each other. And we are all needed in the body. It seems like a good text for today, since we are having a potluck, and a congregational meeting. We’ll share our food together, and share our stories over a meal. We’ll taste each other’s cooking, and maybe even share a few recipes with each other. And then we’ll get together and talk about what’s been happening in the congregation in the last year, and where we’re headed in 2013.
What we do in worship, at the potluck, and in our congregational meeting is all about this community—the body of Christ—what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.
This could be an overly warm and fuzzy text—we all need each other. Let’s hold hands and sing kum by ah. But there is a grim truth here. We need each other. We need all the body parts to function.
We need each other, from the big toe that helps us keep balance, to the tiny little pinky toe with the funky nail.
We need each other, from the knee that gives out, to the hip that gets creaky in rainy weather.
We need everything from the muscles that keep the bones together, to the skin that keeps all the inside parts protected.
We need all the organs, from the glamorous heart that keeps blood pumping throughout the whole body, to the less glamorous intestinal system that….well, you know.
We need all the parts of the brain, from the cerebral cortex to the reptilian brain with its fight or flight responses.
Every part of this body is important in the eyes of God.
And this is what it means to be a part of the body:
If the body is hungry, we feed it.
If the hip is hurting and creaky from the rain, we give it rest.
If the feet are tired and sore, we put them up, allowing them to recline and be relieved from holding up this old body.
While the feet are resting, the back and arms are giving extra—sharing the burden that was once places on those bunions and bones.
And if there is a particular part of the body that is hurting, that is sick or in pain, we direct our resources there.
This is what it means to be part of the body. This is what it means to be in the body.But, the way we treat our body is not always perfect.
We don’t always nourish the body as we should. We eat things that contribute to our body’s ailments. Sometimes we prefer twinkies or cheesesteaks to vegetable.
We take medicines temporarily relieve our symptoms, but don’t get to what ails us.
Or, we outright ignore our body’s problems.
And, we don’t always work our muscles or increase our heart rates with exercise as we should.
We are not a perfect body. We don’t always get it right in caring for ourselves. And we certainly don’t have a perfect body.
But, this is the body of Christ. This is the body—imperfect and mortal—made in the image of God and called to follow in the way of Jesus. This is the wonderfully imperfect body given to us. This community, is made up of many parts, and each little piece is necessary to make the whole thing work.
There is this trend in our culture to do spirituality on our own. We are “spiritual, but not religious” is a phrase I hear…a lot. Especially when people find out that I’m a pastor, and they are worried that I might try to convert them, or judge them for not going to church, or hand them a tract. It’s almost as if people are saying with this idiom, “I can do this on my own. I don’t need a faith community. Thanks.” This phrase, “spiritual, but not religious” implies that we have the ability to live out our faith on our own—in our own individual practices. With the private spirituality, there’s not the accountability of a community, there’s no commitment that needs to be made, and no one to challenge you or push you further. There’s no one there to lift you up in prayer, to tell you the story of faith, when you don’t have one to tell. Spiritual but not religious can be a solitary place.
I’ve met plenty of people who are “spiritual but not religious” because they’ve been hurt by religious communities too many times. We have a room full of folks here today that can probably testify to being hurt by a faith community, maybe even this by this church. This hurt makes people nervous, edgy about being part of something bigger. It’s easier, safer to keep that distance, to prevent any future hurt from taking place.
But, this text tells us what the church has known for centuries. This text tells us what Jesus told us, and what his ancestors for thousands of years said and lived. We need each other.
One part of this body can’t say, I don’t need the other parts. One part can’t say, I’m more important than the other parts. One part of the body can’t say, “I don’t feel the hurt of the other parts of the body.”
We need each other.
But it’s not enough to just need each other. This needing each other is work. Spiritual work. Communal work. Justice work.
We must attend to the body, care for it, feed it well (without needlessly indulging it), make sure it exercises. We must take care of the parts that are ill, and do our best to work off the “wiggly bits.”
But we don’t need to spend so much time focusing on the body’s wellness that we become obsessed with making this body into an unnatural shape. We don’t need rock-hard abs, or a perfectly coifed hair-do. We need to give ourselves the grace to be human, and imperfect, with our moles, scars and imperfect features.
We are human. This body will fail us. This body will not be all that we want it to be. But it is our body. It is this beautiful body, created by God, made in the image of God, that feeds our spirits, that nurtures our hope, and that helps us to see the word made flesh.
Friends, sisters and brothers, this is the body of Christ. This mortal, imperfect body is broken, blessed, and ours to love and share.
Unlike our own bodies, what we have here is a body handed to us by our ancestors, and—if nurtured well, will be here for our descendants, and for generations to come. We are the body of Christ. So let us treat this body well. Because we need each other.
AMEN.
Jubilee Life
Luke 4: 14-30
February 3, 2013
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because God has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
God has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus had just been baptized, and spent forty days in the desert where he was tempted by money, power and resources. From the desert, he went to his home congregation, took the scroll out, unrolled it, and read:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because God has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
God has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Jesus declared the heart of the Hebrew scripture’s instruction. He declared that which the people of God had been instructed but never put into practice. He declared a resurrection of Jubillee.
Jesus read Isaiah’s vision—that which Isaiah hoped but never dreamed could really happen—the vision of all people living in freedom and experiencing good news, experience jubilee healing and hope.
Jesus read this to his hometown crew, then solemnly rolled up the scroll and sat down.
And all of the eyes of the community were on him.
Then came the real zinger—the audacious claim:
Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
And, as you might imagine, everyone freaked out.
But Jesus refused to sugar coat this message. He got the crowd even more riled up. He picked a fight with the entire town, and provoked their anger.
He said, “You have heard what I’ve done in other places, but I don’t know if you can handle this from me, your hometown boy. No one will be happy about this good news in Nazareth.”
Then Jesus told the story of the prophets—of Elijah who—during a famine in the land, was sent to help the widow of Zarephath. An outsider . Jesus told the story of Elisha who healed an outsider, a non-Israelite, while the other people of Israel went un-healed.
Jesus said to the his hometown that no one would be happy with this good news, they would not receive the blessing they were expecting.
The good news, this jubilee, was not so good to the people of God. It was so not good that Jesus’ hometown friends and family tried to kill him. They tried to push Jesus off of a cliff.
This was not good news for Jesus either—a shocking beginning to his ministry. But this little revolt didn’t kill him—yet. But it certainly seemed to be an indication of what was to come for Jesus. He proclaimed good news—the year of jubilee, and it scared and enraged everyone.
So, what is Jubilee exactly?
There are three models of jubilee in the Hebrew Scriptures.
Deuteronomy 14 laid out a 3 year pattern of Jubilee. Every three years, the people of God brought their tithe to the temple (one tenth of all they owned) so that the widows, orphans and aliens could “come, eat and be satisfied.”
Deuteronomy 15 laid out a 7 year pattern of Jubilee. Every year, there was a one year holiday from work. No one worked—the land was not tilled, the slaves did not work, even the animals rested. In the seventh year, all debts were cancelled, and all slaves were made free.
In the 50th year Jubilee—the one we hear the most about—there was a one year holiday. All debts were cancelled, slaves were released, and all the land that people own was returned to their original owners.
That’s a lot of giving.
When the people heard Jesus declaring Jubilee that day in the temple, this is what they heard Jesus talking about.
This did not seem like good news to the people in the temple that day. And it doesn’t feel like good news to me today.
This is a difficult practice to swallow. Jubilee upsets the system we’ve bought into. It means that in order for healing to happen, we must let go of our power, our wealth, our material goods. It means the structure we’ve built our life on will collapse. It means everything changes.
This may not be good news to us.
Or is it?
This jubilee model—giving 10% of what we have, of declaring all debts paid, of freeing slaves, of returning the land—we could look at it as giving up our wealth, of letting go of what we’ve earned, of philanthropy.
But, the heart of it is doing justive, having different relationships with our neighbors, with our possessions, with the way we understand what is ours and what is God’s.
It means changing our model from one of scarcity—where there’s never enough—to abundance—where there is always enough for all who have needs.
To be honest, I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to bring about Jubilee. I spent a whole week with pastors talking about it this week, and I feel like I have more questions than answers. Last night, I went to see Yes, And Collaborative Art’s musical, “The Clean Green Machine”, which in many ways was about jubilee, and I didn’t have it figured then either. I’ve been left wondering how to make this agrarian model work in a 21st century urban environment. I’m wondering how to get started, and how to make it work.
I learned about plenty of models this week that worked for a time, that had the best of intention, but that couldn’t be sustained. Shared community, shared resources, a common purse ideology—all these things worked for a time in community, but could not be sustained . There are some models that continue—like Reba Place in Chicago, Hutterite communities around North America, etc—but most communities struggle to keep doing the radical work of jubilee in their lives. It’s really hard work.
I want to proclaim jubilee, I want to participate in the good news Christ proclaimed in Luke 4, the good news Christ borrowed from Isaiah.
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because God has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
God has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
I want to participate in the radical work of jubilee, but where do we even begin?
In this week of hand-wringing started me down a path of shame. I’m not doing enough. I’m not sharing enough of my resources. I live in a model of scarcity.
But I have to look at this differently. This jubilee doesn’t happen overnight. It is happening little by little. It is jubilee when we know a routine or path hurts our brothers and sisters, and we choose a different way. It is jubilee when we share generously what we have, and learn in the Kingdom of God that there is always enough. It is jubilee when we rest on Sunday. It is jubilee when we plant extra vegetables in our garden, and give their bounty, not to our table or our freezer, but to our neighbors in need. It is jubilee when—in the budgeting process—the call goes out for help, more resources are needed, and all the needs are met.
And every time we do a small act of jubilee, we can learn little by little the lessons that God is teaching—that when we let go of our resources, and share them with others, all are healed. We are healed of our blindness—of thinking that we must hold on to power and resources, because there is never enough. And when we share our resources, others are healed, others have access to what they need. And we learn together, that in God’s reign there is always enough.
This doesn’t exactly look like the jubilee model set forth in the Hebrew Scriptures. But, the jubilee of the New Testament didn’t either. Together, we gather to understand this model, to find ways to practice it in our lives, and to let go of what we think is ours, to be healed and to heal others.
I’ve pondered this week what led the people of Jesus’ home town to try to kill him, to try to throw him off a cliff. It is the same fear that keeps us from practicing Jubilee that led those people to want to kill Jesus. Jesus’ message here, and throughout the scripture is scandalous, it’s impossible, it’s counter-intuitive. And yet, when we let go of that fear and follow Jesus, it is what saves us. It is Jubilee Life.
And today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
AMEN.