Gn 15:1-12,17-18
Ps 27
Phil 3:17-4:1
Lk 13:31-35 or Lk 9:28-36
(Genesis 15:1-12)
After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, "Do
not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great."
But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless,
and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You
have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir."
But the word of the LORD came to him, "This man shall not be your heir;
no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." He brought him outside
and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to
count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be."
And he believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness.
Then he said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans,
to give you this land to possess." But he said, "O Lord GOD, how
am I to know that I shall possess it?" He said to him, "Bring me
a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years
old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." He brought him all these and
cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut
the birds in two. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram
drove them away. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram,
and a deep and terrifying darkness descended upon him.
(Genesis 15:17-18)
When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming
torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with
Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land, from the river
of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates,
(Philippians 3:17-21)
Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according
to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ;
I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end
is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame;
their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and
it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He
will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the
body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject
to himself.
(Philippians 4:1)
Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown,
stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.
(Luke 13:31-35)
At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, "Get away from
here, for Herod wants to kill you." He said to them, "Go and tell
that fox for me, 'Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today
and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow,
and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet
to be killed outside of Jerusalem.' Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills
the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired
to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,
and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you,
you will not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is the one
who comes in the name of the Lord.'"
Psalm 271The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
2When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh— my adversaries and foes— they shall stumble and fall.
3Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.
4One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.
5For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will set me high on a rock.
6Now my head is lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the Lord.
7Hear, O Lord, when I cry aloud, be gracious to me and answer me!
8“Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!” Your face, Lord, do I seek.
9Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!
10If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.
11Teach me your way, O Lord, and lead me on a level path because of my enemies.
12Do not give me up to the will of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen against me, and they are breathing out violence.
13I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.
14Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!
A unified focus results in restful joy: "One thing I ask of the Lord." In a world where we have thousands of options and tens of thousands of choices, joy comes to those who know and who choose one thing. One of the reasons we feel frazzled by life and unable to trust is that our lives have become a haphazard collection of activities with no organizing principle or common rationale. We dash from one thing to another, and even if all of the activities are good and necessary, we still can feel divided and empty....Jesus knew that only one thing was truly important in life:
"Seek first his [God's] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you as well" (Mt. 6:33).
Paul perceived the importance of only one thing:
"But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toard the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:13-14).
Can we select the one necessary thing for us?
An eloquent reflection upon the thin places comes in the form of a Celtic prayer which invites our consideration of where we can go to be close to God. The prayer begins by asking:
"Where is my home?
Is it the house where I live,
The garden where I sit in summer,
The country where I roam,
Or the church where I worship?
The place I call home
Is where my heart is at rest.
And my heart is most at rest
When it turns to God in prayer.
So wherever I pray is home."
Today's psalm invites us to pray
Barbara Brown Taylor has a great sermon making use of
this connection, entitled “As
a Hen Gathers Her Brood.” Jenee Woodard has chosen it as her site of
the week (for March 11, 2001) on her incredible lectionary preaching website
“The Text This Week.” Here’s an
excerpt:
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.
Given the number of animals available, it is curious that Jesus chooses
a hen. Where is the biblical precedent for that? What about the mighty
eagle of Exodus, or Hosea’s stealthy leopard? What about the proud lion
of Judah, mowing down his enemies with a roar? Compared to any of those,
a mother hen does not inspire much confidence. No wonder some of the chicks
decided to go with the fox.
But a hen is what Jesus chooses, which -- if you think about it --is
pretty typical of him. He is always turning things upside down, so that
children and peasants wind up on top while kings and scholars land on the
bottom. He is always wrecking our expectations of how things should turn
out by giving prizes to losers and paying the last first. So of course
he chooses a chicken, which is about as far from a fox as you can get.
That way the options become very clear: you can live by licking your chops
or you can die protecting the chicks.
Jesus won’t be king of the jungle in this or any other story. What he
will be is a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean
to do them harm. She has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles. All she
has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body. If the fox
wants them, he will have to kill her first.
Which he does, as it turns out. He slides up on her one night in the
yard while all the babies are asleep. When her cry wakens them, they scatter.
She dies the next day where both foxes and chickens can see her -- wings
spread, breast exposed -- without a single chick beneath her feathers.
It breaks her heart, but it does not change a thing. If you mean what you
say, then this is how you stand.
Dr. Eugene Brice once read an account written by a woman born near
the turn of the century. She wrote of raising a family on a farm
during hard, hard times. She told about one terrible winter when
their 18-month-old daughter came down with a cold, then flu, then
pneumonia, then diphtheria. Living 18 miles from town, they
resorted to home remedies and the help of neighbours. The baby's
condition, though, went downhill rapidly and they grew more
desperate. The worst night, the woman wrote, was when snow fell,
making any more travel to town extremely difficult. That night the
baby lay virtually lifeless. The baby's father wrote in his
journal, "Heavy snow. How can we bury our baby in this? The
blackest day of my life thus far."
The next day the doctor came out from town, making the last 8 miles
of the trip on horseback over terrible roads. He said that the
infection seemed to be lessened, but that the child was still very
near death. If they could just get some nourishment of some kind
down her, with a bit of strength and a lot of luck, she might make
it. Maybe, he said, an egg would help.
An egg! Simple suggestion, but it was the dead of winter and the
hens were not laying and there was no way to get to town. Someone
went to the recently installed rural party line and rang the
neighbours. The word went out quickly. Did anyone have an egg?
The baby's life depended on it. Fortunately, one distant neighbour
did! One egg was found, and the neighbour rode over with it. Into
the house he came as they rejoiced. The baby was given an eggnog
of sorts, and continued her improvement. The crisis was over, and
the baby was soon well again.
The woman who wrote that account of life on an East Texas farm was
Eugene Brice's mother; the baby was his twin sister. Brice says he
thinks of this occasionally when he opens the refrigerator door and
sees eggs stacked there in every season of the year. He often
compares his life, all that he has, with theirs in those far more
difficult days when, in comparison to us, they had so little. And
yet, he occasionally wonders if in his entire life he has ever felt
the depth of joy they felt when that one egg was brought carefully
into the house on that snowy December day of 1932.
"A person's life," Jesus said, "does not consist of the abundance of his
possessions."
Indeed not. Our possessions are but a temporary illusion,
a package of materials that can not and will not accompany us to heaven,
and whose weight, in fact, might help hold us back from taking that trip.
It is all a question of focus - a question of faith,
of what we seek.
These “enemies of the cross of Christ” are not just
the false teachers and radical sectarians whose theology is in opposition
to the teachings handed down to us. They are also those “whose god is
their stomach,” and whose “glory is in their shame” (v.
19). In other words, these enemies of the cross of Christ are people who look
just like some who work with us, go to school with us and maybe even sit in
church with us. They seek their own walk instead of the Jesus walk we’ve
begun talking about during this Season of Lent. They are motivated by whatever
fulfills their immediate needs (“their stomachs”) instead of by
what fulfills the call of God. They are shameless when it comes to flaunting
their own wealth and worldly wisdom.
In the movie A River Runs Through It, Norm Maclean (the narrator
and protagonist) states that his father was a Presbyterian minster, which
meant that the world was “a [darn] mess,” and that the grace and
beauty we have lost must be restored. The mess we have gotten ourselves into
is the result of our own selfish desires and of our shameless arrogance. These
choices make us enemies of the cross. When we receive the grace of God and
enter into a relationship with Christ, we are called to burn bridges between
that old way of living and where we are now, so that our focus is on Christ.
On the way to Jerusalem ... It's more than just a place that Jesus was
going. It was a purpose; a final destination. Jesus was headed to Jerusalem
to die and he knew it. When he said "On the third day I finish my
work" he was thinking about the resurrection which would finish his
work in Jerusalem.
He also knew that it was God's will that he die there. Sure, Herod had
motivation to kill Jesus. He had killed John for causing trouble. Jesus
seemed to be cut from the same cloth. If he would behead John he might
do the same to Jesus.
But we're not finished with Genesis 15 yet. The promise of the child is just half of
God's deal with Abram. The matter of having a land to call home is still unresolved, too,
and that's what is taken up in the second half of this chapter. Strikingly, although Abram had
already accepted God's promise of offspring, nevertheless just one verse later when God
reiterates the promise of the land, Abram is skeptical all over again. "How can I know that
this part of the promise is true?" Abram asks God.
In reply, Yahweh issues those instructions about cutting up some animals and laying
them out on the ground. Abram does so and then waits. And waits. Enough time passes that
some crows and vultures sniff the already-decaying goat and ram and cow flesh and so
swoop in for a bite. Since the first part of this chapter must have taken place at night (Abram
had some stars to look at, after all) and since verse 12 talks about the setting of the sun, we
assume a whole day has passed.
It was a long time to sit and watch animal carcasses deliquesce in the heat of the day.
Finally Abram falls into what looks like not just sleep but some God-induced trance in what
is described as a kind of "thick and dreadful darkness." While in this state, Abram hears God
preview the next few hundred years of history. Then, in the oddest twist of them all, God
appears to pass between the animal pieces in the form of a smoking pot and a flaming torch.
Apparently, this signified some form of covenant.
But what does it mean? What are we supposed to learn from this bloody, smoky,
fiery vision?
n response the Lord revealed Himself more fully by the strange ceremony that took place between the carcasses of a heifer, goat, and ram.
We need to see the ceremony as a covenant ceremony. The ceremony described is one that was commonly used in the ancient Middle East. Animals were cut in half, and the halves were placed opposite each other. The contracting parties in the covenant then passed between the pieces, vowing to keep their word to each other and calling upon themselves the fate of the dead animals if they were to break their word. In other words, they asked to be torn in two like the dead animals if they did not keep their word.
Abram was not required to pass between the animal halves. Instead, in his vision Abram saw a "smoking firepot with a blazing torch" pass between the pieces by itself. That smoking firepot with a blazing torch represents God. So God alone goes through the covenant-making procedure. Abram plays no role in keeping the covenant and its promises. God alone makes the promises. God takes upon Himself the task of fulfilling the duties or obligations of both sides. God alone is the one Who guarantees the covenant promises will be kept.When you take out a mortgage the bank agrees to loan you a certain amount of dollars. In return you promise to pay back so much a month with interest. Failure to pay results in certain penalties – higher interest, loss of property, bad credit rating, and so on. God, so to speak, not only agrees to give you the loan, but He also agrees to make the monthly payments and to suffer the penalties if payment is not made.
Think of what this means. It means that from beginning to end the covenant is one of grace. God makes the promises. God gives the guarantee. God puts Himself under a curse, so to speak, if the promises are not kept.
The full significance of what God did for Abram is not really seen until the New Testament. There, in Christ, the covenant of grace reaches its highest expression. In Christ God keeps the covenant promises and suffers the covenant penalties. For it is Christ Who perfectly obeyed the law in our place and it is Christ Who also bore the curse of the law in our place.
A. V. 9-10 The Challenge Of Preparation - God's request is for Abram to prepare a sacrifice. This whole event was how men in
ancient times made a covenant with one another. They would cut
animals in half and arrange the pieces several feet apart and walk
between the pieces together. It symbolized the sacredness of a
man's word. It said, "May I be like one of these animals if I break
my part of the covenant." For Abram, it took a lot of costly, hard,
bloody work to prepare things like the Lord wanted them to be. (Note:
Friend, we need to remember that when the Lord makes a
requirement of your life or mine, it will often require us to commit to
some hard work on our part. The great things of God do not come
easy, they do not come cheap, nor do they come to the lazy. God's
best is reserved for those who are will to pay the price. What is that
price? Pray, holiness, separation, obedience, etc. Ill. Wood, hay,
stubble, gold, silver, precious stones, 1 Cor. 3:12.)
The smoke
and the fire represent God’s awesome presence, just as it did
in Exodus as the descendants of Abram were lead through the desert by
fire and smoke (13:21; 19:18; 20:18).
Since
only God walks between the pieces, God is the one committed to
fulfilling it and God is the one who stands in danger of judgment is
he doesn’t keep the covenant. According to Jeremiah 34:18, God
is invoking a curse upon himself if he does not keep his covenant.
The use of the animals conjures up imagery; once the animal was
killed, the one making the covenant could expect the same fate as the
animall if he broke the covenant.
|
September 24, 2006
Dear friends of Jesus Christ,
This passage we just heard is an amazing and extremely vivid passage. It has an eeriness or an otherworldliness about it - after all, what it describes is called a vision. The events it describes see to take place over the course of at least two nights and the day in between. And a lot of the things that happen are let's say unusual. They almost have to make a deep impression on you. But about this passage makes the deepest impression on you? What strikes you the most?
I'll tell you what it is for me. It's a kind of disconnect that I notice between what God says in verse one and what Abram says in verse two. Start with verse one, the word God speaks to Abram: "I am your shield; you reward shall be very great." I actually prefer the NIV's translation, "I am your shield, your very great reward." (Making both of those descriptions and promises focus on God as shield and reward). But for once, don't let me get bogged down in grammatical niceties. God makes a promise or an affirmation to Abram, "I am your shield."
(Footnote: in Melchizedek's brief speech, which we studied last week, he blessed God who shielded Abram from his enemies - 'el `elyon asher miggen tsarekha beyadekha).
And what is Abram's response? "What is that to me? I don't have any children!" And it seems even more like an accusation the second time Abram speaks: "you have NOT given me any offspring." The one thing I really care about, and you haven't delivered. And you said you would. What about that?
If we follow this passage like well-trained theologians, we might expect a sort of, "Who do you think you are, mortal, to speak like this to God?" Our theology reminds us that we deserve only wrath from God. And it's correct.
But Abram's objection is not based on what he deserves, I think, but rather on what God himself has promised. Abram is bothered because God has not done what he said he would do. It's not quite as strong as Abram saying, "hey, I don't want to hear any more promises until you deliver on the ones you already made." But is it a somewhat exasperated reminder that Abram is still waiting for the most important part of the promise to come true.
So yes, God is a shield and a reward, God promises security and hope. But for Abram, there is not much security and not much hope if it all ends when he dies, and all his possessions pass out of his family. As Abram is painfully aware, he has no family to pass it on to; in his own eyes, he is a fruitless branch of the human family tree. God sort of promised that he would be the trunk of a great tree, and so far he doesn't have any branches, let alone fruit on the branches.
That is Abram's objection. And God allows it. Not because Abram has an inherently just claim based on his actual merit, but because Abram understands very well what God has promised. It may seem strange to us, but God actually seems to be pleased when people understand his promises, and when they expect him to deliver on those promises. That is believing God, and it's what God wants.
In fact, I think that if we want to understand what this passage is teaching us, we have to think about both what Abram wants from God, and what God wants from Abram - or, it would probably be better to say what God wants FOR Abram.
Let me explain that. What Abram wants is pretty clear. He wants what most people eventually want. He wants children. He wants that not just for the psychological or emotional satisfaction that child-raising can bring, but he wants to leave descendants behind. For him, there is not much point in having the land if none of his descendants will plant gardens there and raise children of their own there.
And in this, I think Abram is acting on a God-given desire. God wants to bless us, and I think God created us to want to be blessed in this way. God said to the first people, "Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and exercise dominion over it." That is actually, if you think about it, a way of being like God, of bearing God's image. It's what we were made for, and it's what Abram wants to do. It's a healthy ambition. It's an expression of that yearning for eternity that God our creator has set in our hearts. That's what Abram really wants.
What does God want? What is in it for God, to do anything for Abram. What is God hoping to accomplish? Well I think it's already clear from the book of Genesis so far, including this part of it, that God wants the creation to be populated with the creatures he made in his own image. And even when we go wrong, even when humans fall into sin, God doesn't just say, OK, that's obviously a bad design. Let's start over. I can probably make a better creature to bear my image. That's not what happens, is it? God keeps making new models of the old prototype. No design change.
But God does seem to be trying to make a change in programming, you might say. God wants to reorient our ambition and our yearning. What God wants, in the big picture, is for the creation to be populated with creature who are like God, who live in a harmonious relationship with the creation, with each other, and with the Creator. That is an inference you can draw from the early part of Genesis, don't you think?
But think a little further. Living in a harmonious way with Creator and creation and fellow-creatures is a pretty good definition of righteousness. Righteousness is a word that comes and goes fairly quickly in this passage, but it's one that leaves a pretty deep impression not only here, but in the whole Bible.
Part of that righteousness, the part that mainly pertains to God, is living in humble, trusting dependence on the creator. That's the part the original man, the prototype, got seriously wrong. And every model after him. We not only don't obey God, but when you get right to it, we don't trust God.
Now, with Abram, God is trying to do something amazing. It's not just that God is trying to rewrite and correct the program, to use a figure of speech, but to teach the creature, the man, the ultimate piece of artificial intelligence, to reprogram himself so that he will be able to do something very hard and absolutely essential: trust God.
Abram is on a course of guided self-education, doing an independent study with God does with Abram. Trust is the thing Abram needs to learn.
One way you can define trust, based on this passage, is recognizing that there is no real gift apart from God, the giver, whether that gift is security, hope, or offspring, or anything else. But there is an even deeper dimension of this trust. It is recognizing that the Giver is greater than the gifts. If you have the Giver, then the gifts follow sooner or later, because the Giver wants to bless. But usually people seem quite willing to settle for the gifts, and forget the Giver. Ultimately, Abram will be faced with the terrible choice between the gifts and the Giver, and he will have to choose. But that will come.
For now, we can safely say that Abram is not quite 'there' yet. He still has a lot to learn. But he does believe God. It may not be a full blown trust yet, the kind that can sacrifice everything if necessary. Abram's ongoing efforts to jump-start the blessing production will show that, and we'll see that next time. But what he does have, the faith he does demonstrate, is enough, for now, that God credits it to him as righteousness.
But this passage is not just about words; it is also about actions. Faith is not just about words either. Abram's actions will be an important and essential manifestation of his faith.
But God also acts as well as speaks, and that has something to do with faith, too. Really it has everything to do with faith. We trust that God will act according to his promise. On that note, let me come back, for just a second, to that strange ceremony at the end of the chapter. If we needed to label this, we would call it a covenant-initiating ceremony, and we would note that it is sealed with a very graphically acted out self-maledictory oath. In effect, God is saying to Abram not only "I will keep my promise," but adding the oath, "Let a curse fall on me; let me be like these dead animals, if I do not keep my promise." God, visible in the form of the smoking pot and the blazing torch, walks between the halves of the carcasses to take that oath upon himself.
Jewish readers of this chapter would surely read this covenant story and its symbolism in light of the Exodus, where God, as a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, led the people between the two halves of the Red Sea, out of Egypt, into the very land God promised to Abram. They will understand that God keeps his oath-bound promises.
As Christians, we re-read this covenant story in the light of Jesus Christ, the one who bore the glorious and fiery presence of God in his own flesh, and who took on himself all of the curse for all of the sin of the whole human race, and so brought us over from death to life. And this is a greater expression of God's promise. |
Here's what Abram did. He questioned God. You would think that this would be something that God would discourage, but that's not how this story plays out. For the first time, the relationship that had started as a monologue became a dialogue. God told Abram not to be afraid. Abram dared to respond to God and ask him a question:
O Sovereign LORD, what good are all your blessings when I don't even have a son? Since I don't have a son, Eliezer of Damascus, a servant in my household, will inherit all my wealth. You have given me no children, so one of my servants will have to be my heir. (Genesis 15:2-3)
"O Sovereign LORD" is a term worth noting. This is the first time anyone addressed God this way in the Bible. It's a term that's used infrequently to refer to God. It's not the usual name (YHWH). It's one that signifies Abram's submission to God, suggesting a master-servant relationship. So Abram addresses God in the most respectful terms.
 Genesis 15 God's Blood Covenant with Abraham
Understanding The Abrahamic Covenant is essential to understand what is happening in the Middle East especially as it concerns Israel. Who owns the Land? Learn why it's so important to know you have a Blood covenant relationship with God though Christ.
In the ancient world of Abram, legal and binding agreements were not put on papers written by lawyers and signed by the parties involved. Instead, the two parties would arrive at a mutually acceptable agreement, and then they would formalize it in the form of a covenant.
The covenant was sealed by the dividing of an animal (or animals). In fact, the technical term literally means ‘go cut a covenant.’ The animal(s) was cut in half and the two parties would pass between the halves. It seems that in this oath, the men acknowledged that the fate of the animal should be theirs if they broke the terms of their agreement.
So we see that these verses do not describe the process of animal sacrifice, but the legal act of making a binding agreement. Verses 9-11 set the stage for the final ratification of this covenant.
Must, impossible, necessary, definite plan, foreknowledge,
predestination--what are we to make of these words? Has God predestined the
death of Jesus and the place where it must take place? Was the death of
Jesus predetermined by God and written in the annals of eternity long before
it unfolded in the affairs of this earth? If so, can anyone who was involved
in the events that resulted in the death of Jesus be held accountable for
their decisions and actions?
Jerusalem is very important to Jesus - so important that he weeps and
laments when he senses the foolishness, the impotence, the
self-destructiveness of Jerusalem's people. Nothing that happens in
Jerusalem is insignificant. When Jerusalem obeys God, the world spins
peacefully on its axis. When Jerusalem ignores God, the whole planet
wobbles. If the city were filled with hardy souls, this would not be a
dangerous situation. Unfortunately, it is filled with pale yellow chicks and
at least one fox. In the absence of a mother hen, some of the chicks have
taken to following the fox around. Others are huddled out in the open where
anything with claws can get to them. Across the valley, a white hen with a
gold halo around her head is clucking for all she is worth. Most of the
chicks cannot hear her, and the ones that do make no response. They no
longer recognize her voice. They have forgotten who they are—they are not
willing.
And yet, Jesus was willing, willing to pay the ultimate price, be the
ultimate sacrifice for even those of us who are so often unwilling to listen
and follow. And so, in this willingness we find the most important word of
Jesus for us today from this passage—a word that appears again and again in
Luke's intense narrative. The word is MUST: “Nevertheless I MUST journey on
today and tomorrow and the next day”. Jesus Must be on his way - he Must go
to Jerusalem, he MUST go to the Temple, he MUST go to Gethsemane, he MUST go
to Calvary. This mission is not negotiable, it is not tentative, it is not
changeable depending on how he feels. There is a passion burning in Jesus'
soul, a mission, a call, a vocation - that defines the very heart of who he
is. And nothing and nobody can dissuade him - not crafty, foxy, Herod, not
the curious Pharisees, not even the hurting, scared, needy people hanging
off the edges of Jerusalem - those strangers trying to stop Jesus - begging
him to save them, to fix them, to heal them.
The passage is saying that Jesus had to do this! He must do it. It was God’s
will for our sake! In the controversial novel, The Last Temptation of
Christ, the final temptation was for Jesus to avoid the God-assigned role of
suffering on the cross to overcome the sins of the world. God's redemptive
plan conflicted with Jesus' natural desire to lead an ordinary human life -
having a family, a job and a reasonable long life. What we see in our Gospel
account is that Jesus willingly gives up all for us. He must get to
Jerusalem. He must be betrayed. He must be sentenced to death. He must be
crucified. He must die.
The stories we often reserve for children save their most profound meanings
for adults. We tend to forget that Aesop wrote his fables for adults, not children,
and that Lord of the Rings , hugely popular with children, has depths
of meaning only adults can fathom. The same may be true of Luke's telling of
this snippet of his Gospel which is today's Lenten text. In the first place,
if you take Luke's Gospel as a whole, you can't miss the fact that everything
is moving, inevitably, toward a destiny. This is a goal-oriented mission. There
may be circuitous routes taken along the way, and we may be allowed to learn
more of what's going on behind the scenes than we need to know, but Jerusalem
is where we're heading. That's clear in today's text as well. In the second
place, the text reveals more than a mere warning about a potential trap from
Herod and Jesus' response and lament over the Jewish people. This is a reversal
story about leadership and power in which those whom we might think have control,
surely don't, and the way in which control is exercised will surprise all who
pay attention. It's the old story about the fox and the hen, told with a twist
which only Luke could have mastered.
The metaphor for gathering often used in the Bible is that of a shepherd gathering his flock, but not always. Jesus' use of a hen to evoke the same image is not without precedent. The psalmist appeals to God, "Hide me in the shadow of thy wings." (Psalm 17:8) "In the shadow of thy wings I will take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by." (Psalm 57:1, RSV) "Oh to be safe under the shelter of thy wings," says another psalm. (Psalm 61:4, RSV) "In the shadow of your wings I sing for joy," says yet another. (Psalm 63:7) "Under his wings you will find refuge," says Psalm 91 (91:4), bringing to mind the old gospel song:
"Under His wings I am safely abiding;
Tho' the night deepens and the tempests are wild,
Still I can trust Him; I know He will keep me;
He has redeemed me, and I am His child.
Under His wings, under His wings,
Who from His love can sever?
Under His wings my soul shall abide,
Safely abide forever.
...
Sheltered, protected, no evil can harm me;
Resting in Jesus, I'm safe evermore."
("Under His Wings," words by William Orcutt Cushing; music by Ira David Sankey)
One of the most striking images in the New Testament is the one Jesus uses here. Jesus is warned that he might be killed by Herod if he keeps doing what he's doing. Jesus then notes that he is not in Jerusalem yet, so it is not the place for him to die. Jerusalem is the Big Shot place, the home of the Temple and headquarters of the authorities, the ones who usually do such killings. (Keep in mind : that is where he ended up dying. But that is yet to come.)
Then, Jesus lets his emotions out. "How I'd love to gather you under My wings", He says, "but you would not be gathered." This is God the Mother Hen, trying to hide the chicks from the fox (the Herods of the world). Most sermons nowadays make so much of the feminine imagery, though God is treated as Jerusalem's mother in Isaiah 66 -- or the image of God as a bird, though in Ezekiel 10, God's far from being as puny as a chicken.
Important as that is, the main thrust of Jesus' saying is not in the image of God he uses, it's in what the little chicks do. They refuse to be guarded. They won't stay under the wing! The result is that they will be left "desolate". Maybe the fox will have little chicken nuggets for lunch; or, they'll just get lost in the cold world and freeze or starve. Their survival depends on the mother hen, but these bird-brains want nothing of it !
The Prayer of the Day suggests the theme for
the day is "to embrace in faith the truth of your Word and to hold it
fast." Abraham is identified as one who did that, who believed the
Lord, and his faith was reckoned as righteousness.
Last Sunday Jesus was tempted to proclaim his Sonship
through means that would draw people to him. Instead he chose the way
of the cross, the way of conflict and confrontation. Jesus was
governed by divine plan, not by human expediency. He left Galilee, not
because of the warning of the Pharisees but because he must go
to Jerusalem to die.
The Church also has to choose between expediency and
confrontation, between conforming to the ways of the world and being
governed by God’s plan. So, too, the individual Christian.
In the final analysis what is done depends on how we
view the nature of God, the purpose of the Church, the goal of the
Christian life. If God’s purpose is to make us happy and comfortable
and successful in this life, if the Church is to cater to human ideas
and ideals, if the Christian life is to be one of self-satisfaction
and self-indulgence, then the expedient road will be walked. If God
and the Church and the Christian are seen to be at war with the world,
the temptations of the flesh, and the wiles of the devil, then the
only way is confrontation, conflict, death and resurrection, the way
of the Cross.
I have decided to follow Jesus,
I have decided to follow Jesus,
I have decided to follow Jesus,
No turning back, no turning back.
When my friends and I sang this song at church camp, we sang sincerely, often teary- eyed, seated on the ground with the cross illumined by candlelight in front of us. In those emotional moments, I imagined myself to be standing firm in the Lord as the Philippians were urged to do by Paul, who reminds them, "Our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ." In those moments, I was determined to set my face toward him. But my single-mindedness never lasted. It was mostly the allure of gossip or boys that sidetracked my determination then. I stopped so often along the way of following that I lost my way. Occasional flashbacks to those times and to the words of that song turned my attention to Jesus, but I have moved in fits and starts through adolescence and adulthood -- sometimes toward, and often away from, singleness of purpose.
Some grow in their faith by imitating the faithful. Some enhance their faith through study. But today’s lessons suggest that faith involves discovery. Discovery happens in the moment when we shout, "I see!" In that moment we not only learn what was discovered, but we make our own discovery.
The apostle Paul was trying to express this when he asked Philippian Christians to "join in imitating me." His suggestion did not arise from a satisfaction with himself. He writes of his anguish when people live as "enemies of the cross" -- an experience he had known firsthand.
But the Philippian Christians had to do more than hear the phrase and follow instructions. "Join in imitating me" involved challenging all the allegiances that laid claim to their lives. Only as they discovered who they were in their own integrity -- apart from external pressures -- could they move toward saying, "I am a citizen of heaven."
LIFE IN THE first century must have been confusing. Individuals accustomed to local traditions and patterns of life were regularly thrown together with people from other localities. Political affairs were handled not by familiar figures but by Roman authorities--often with a ruthless insistence on loyalty to a distant and strange overlord. The commercial life of one locality was linked to that of others, bringing people into contact with a widening array of outsiders. Moreover, each locality had its own religious traditions. As long as these diverse regional religions remained under the umbrella of loyalty to Caesar, the Romans allowed them all to flourish. Given all of these perplexing encounters and the confusing array of religious answers available, how was a person to understand the purpose of life?
The text in Luke is a microcosm of this confusion. The story is full of conflicting intentions and conflicting interpretations of events. First "some Pharisees" warn Jesus of Herod's desire to kill him. Their warning seems well intentioned (something worth noting, given the tendency in other Gospels to heighten and to generalize the antagonism between Jesus and the Pharisees), but Jesus sees this concern about political danger as a distraction from his religious calling.
But a hen is what Jesus chooses, which -- if you think about it --is pretty typical of him. He is always turning things upside down, so that children and peasants wind up on top while kings and scholars land on the bottom. He is always wrecking our expectations of how things should turn out by giving prizes to losers and paying the last first. So of course he chooses a chicken, which is about as far from a fox as you can get. That way the options become very clear: you can live by licking your chops or you can die protecting the chicks.
Jesus won’t be king of the jungle in this or any other story. What he will be is a mother hen, who stands between the chicks and those who mean to do them harm. She has no fangs, no claws, no rippling muscles. All she has is her willingness to shield her babies with her own body. If the fox wants them, he will have to kill her first.
Which he does, as it turns out. He slides up on her one night in the yard while all the babies are asleep. When her cry wakens them, they scatter. She dies the next day where both foxes and chickens can see her -- wings spread, breast exposed -- without a single chick beneath her feathers. It breaks her heart, but it does not change a thing. If you mean what you say, then this is how you stand.
Jesus called Herod a fox after some Pharisees reported
that Herod wanted to kill Jesus. Jesus' response challenged any such plans:
"Tell Herod I've got work to do first." Jesus was not implying that Herod was
sly, rather he was commenting on Herod's ineptitude, or inability, to carry out
his threat. Jesus questioned the tetrarch's pedigree, moral stature and
leadership, and put the tetrarch "in his place." This exactly fits the second
rabbinic usage of "fox."
When Jesus labeled Herod a fox, Jesus implied that Herod was
not a lion. Herod considered himself a lion, but Jesus pointed out that Herod
was the opposite of a lion. Jesus cut Herod down to size, and Jesus' audience
may have had an inward smile of appreciation at a telling riposte. |
|
