Sermon: The Fox and the Hen

Sermon: The Fox and the Hen
Lectionary: Year C, Lent 2
Text: Luke 13:31-35

“No good deed goes unpunished.”

If we were to summarize Jesus’ life in one sentence, that might be a strong candidate for consideration.

We might also say that Jesus was rather familiar with being misunderstood, with being falsely accused of acting improperly and out of wrong motivations, and even of being aligned with the devil.

When, after forty days in the wilderness, Jesus was tempted to take an easy way at the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus remains committed to his path and work. And later, as in today’s reading, he is warned to flee to save himself, Jesus still remains committed to his path and work.

Scholars have noted that the Luke’s gospel is headed toward Jerusalem from the very beginning. Jerusalem is the center of Jewish religion and devotion.  The journey is made explicit in chapter 9, verse 51 and the rest of the gospel is told within a framework of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is where Jesus was presented to God after his birth. Jerusalem is where Jesus went when he was twelve years old and found himself among the teachers in the temple. Jerusalem was the home of Jesus’ divine Father. But it would also be Jerusalem that would be responsible for killing Jesus.

It seems that those more politically connected understood where Jesus’ path would lead, if he chose to keep on it. Some Pharisees come to warn Jesus that he is rubbing the powers-to-be the wrong way. Those who hold power, and especially those who hold it tenuously, are threatened by what they perceive to be competitions and destabilizing forces. Herod Antipas, a son of Herod the Great, was a tetrarch (ruler of a quarter part) of Galilee and Perea. He was only there because only because the Romans allowed it. If they thought he was ineffective or worse, he could easily be replaced. Jesus, with his gospel of liberty and deeds of freeing people from oppression and disease, could easily become a destabilizing entity.

Whatever these Pharisees’ ultimate motivation was, they were correct that Herod was a legitimate threat to Jesus’ safety. The prudent thing would have been for Jesus to tone things down, accommodate the establishment, and perhaps move out of the area for a while, at least until Herod cooled down. After all, didn’t that work for Jesus and his parents when he was an infant, when they fled to Egypt from Herod the Great?

In the Bible, when individuals are faced with threats, sometimes the right decision is to flee. At other times, the correct decision is to stay the course. There is no single correct response. That’s where wisdom, through the Holy Sprit, enters and we are to use the brains God has given to evaluate the situation and come to what we believe is the best response.

In the case of Jesus, in today’s text, he stays the course. Jesus understands the risks.The costs of turning away are greater than costs that would be paid by his own safety and life. He also knows that leaving the region of Galilee will not change his ultimate destiny in Jerusalem. He also seems to understand and know that his life will not end until all the established powers – political, religious, Roman, and Jewish – feel threatened by him and come together to decide his fate. And that can only happen in Jerusalem.

Jesus sends his reply back to Herod, essentially telling him that as destructive (“fox”) as he is, he wields far less power than he thinks he has. Jesus will continue to exercise his power of freeing people from captivity to oppressive powers and physical ailments until he reaches Jerusalem. Jesus may also be indirectly telling Herod that he really should not be worrying about Jesus, because the nature of Jesus’ power is far different from the kind of power with which Herod is familiar. Yet the irony is that Jesus’ power, although not directly threatening worldly power, does undermine and eventually destroy it. For the power of inclusiveness, egalitarianism, and unconditional love ultimately destroys any kind of hierarchy and privilege that are the foundations of worldly power.

It’s about this point in the sermon where I’m supposed to begin talking about how and why all this is relevant to us today. But to be honest, I found it to be difficult to find a point in which to bring it into our context. After all, none of us are Jesus, and prophets are a rare occurrence. I doubt any of us are facing direct threat to life and safety from powerful people. I don’t think any of us are on such a defined and time-limited mission like Jesus was.

But maybe we are like the Pharisees in today’s text. When we encounter someone aggressively pushing against accepted power systems and structures, and forcefully calling for reform and justice, what is our response? We acknowledge to ourselves that their position is right, but also feel that their methods make us uncomfortable. And so, especially if they are close to us, like family or close friends, we advise toning down the rhetoric, perhaps suggest utilizing more traditionally acceptable actions for change, and so on. This wouldn’t be unprecedented: Jesus’ own family thought he had gone crazy and tried to have an intervention to try to get him to act more “normal.”

Maybe we need to ask ourselves why we (I) have such a difficult time with those who believe passionately about something and act accordingly. Is it because they challenge my complacency, or challenge the benefits I receive from being more accommodating and acceptable to societal norms? Am I afraid of what the disruption might result and being caught in any potential backlash?

Maybe we think that because things have always worked that way, whatever “that way” might be, that to try to change it is fruitless, or at least something that can only happen gradually. Maybe in our acquiescence of “how things are” we’ve lost the urgency that real people are suffering from oppression and injustice.

In a different gospel story, when Peter tried to dissuade Jesus from following the path set before him, Jesus rebuked Peter as an adversary. Peter had a vision of where Jesus and his movement would go, but when Jesus told him otherwise, Peter didn’t like it. Maybe we are like Peter more than we’d like — we want to advise a “safer” course when we encounter those who are passionately following the call to bring deliverance and healing to the world.

Could it be that in our desire to live quiet, peaceful lives, we’ve inadvertently become stumbling blocks to needed change? Have we advised caution when instead we should have been encouraging someone to follow their passion for helping people, however dangerous the path might have seemed?

But what if we are that person that is called? And really, in one way or another, aren’t we all? When we choose to take the Christian name and join the community of Christ, aren’t we agreeing to journey with Christ, wherever that may lead?

What kept Jesus on track and not dissuaded from the path he was on? Jesus understood who he was, what his task was, and what genuine power was.

Luke’s gospel is the only one that narrates Jesus’ Jerusalem visit at twelve years, but even at that point, Jesus was on his way to understanding his identity. He already knew his relationship to God. By the time he began his public ministry, even the devil could not sway Jesus from the path he had chosen.

Luke’s gospel also uses words in describing Jesus, in which they describe his developing and maturing understanding of his purpose. In today’s text, when Jesus says that “on the third day I finish my work,” the word “finish” indicates bringing to full maturity and completion. What this tells me is that Jesus’ understanding about where his mission would lead and how his life would end was not necessarily fully known to him from the beginning, but that it developed throughout his life. So when some Pharisees came to warn him, I believe it was a genuine temptation for Jesus to take a different path.

But Jesus also understood what his task was. Jesus came to reveal the truth about God, and that was through his work of bringing deliverance to the captives of the multitudes of demons of life and healing to the sick. Jesus’ relationship with God secured his identity and informed his knowledge about God.

Jesus understood that God’s power is not a power-over, that is power that coerces and controls, but rather, a power-with. Power-with is power that raises all to an equal footing; power that protects, just as a mother hen tries to protect her chicks from a marauding fox; power that will sacrifice itself so that others will have the opportunity to experience liberty and healing.

For Jesus to turn aside and follow a different path, a path of self-preservation, would have been to admit that God’s power was insufficient to heal the ills of this world and save it. It would have been acknowledgment that Caesar and Herod did, in fact, hold the reigns of true power. But just as Jesus did in the wilderness temptations  at the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus stood fast against the renewed temptation to follow a different path.

As we journey through the season of Lent, I suggest we reflect on a few things.

First, have we succumbed to the temptation to play it too safe when it comes to following Christ? Second, have we been stumbling blocks in the path of others trying to follow Christ by advising a “safer” course of action? Perhaps the sacrifice of Lent for some this season is to “give up” the default of choosing the path of apparent safety.

Third, do you know who you are in relation to God? What is your confidence in God? Fourth, do you know what your role is in God’s desire to reveal God’s nature to the world and bring all under God’s wings of protection? Fifth, and final point to reflect upon: are you clear on the nature of the types of power that exist and which one comes from God? Perhaps a spiritual discipline to take up this Lenten season is to reacquaint ourselves with the life of Jesus and relearn how he related to God and to the powers of this world – perhaps by reading through one of the gospel accounts.

Let us be willing to allow God to bring us under God’s wings. Let us be willing to allow God to reprioritize our lives and journeys. May we be among those who gladly say, when Christ returns, “Blessed is the one who ones in the name of the Lord.”