Wide Open Are Your Arms

2 Lent C
Luke 13:31-35

A thought experiment: read through the gospel text substituting the name of your town for "Jerusalem" wherever it appears. (You could try "Washington" too, but the US government feels so distant from most of us that it might not have the desired effect.) Does anything about that reading ring true?

In her commentary on Luke, Sharon Ringe writes, "When God's gracious will is thwarted by human refusal to accept it, Jesus' proclamation turns into lament" (192). True. We can see that lament in the story we'll be tracing throughout Lent. Humans reject things like "casting out demons and performing cures" (Luke 13:32) as well as the rest of what Jesus has to do and say. And we misread the story if it only functions to blame someone else for that rejection ("those stubborn, corrupt Jewish leaders" or "that fox, Herod and all establishment power like him" or "those mindless crowds, fueled solely by emotion, who could say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord' one day and 'Crucify him!' the next").

This is one time when we are not hearing the story correctly if we hear in it only someone else's problem. Biblical scholars usually want us all to remember that the scriptures are not just God's word to us, but to all people across centuries. "It's not always about you" is a good reminder for all sorts of things in our lives, Bible-reading included. Yet so-called critical distance with this text creates the problem of blaming someone else for the rejection of God's own servant, Jesus. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins writes, "Christ plays in ten thousand places, / Lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his / To the Father through the features of men's faces" (here's the whole poem). If this is true, then perhaps those ten thousand Christs are traveling to ten thousand Jerusalems and hoping to gather their inhabitants the way a hen gathers her chicks.

It might not work to preach this, of course. (I'm reminded of former colleague Steve Ramp's comment that sometimes you just have to say about a sermon idea, "That dog won't hunt.") The twin dangers of "prophetic preaching" are that (1) the preacher looks like a self-righteous know-it-all and (2) the hearers are not inspired to repentance but just to annoyance, or to a vague feeling of guilt that lasts only long enough to spoil an otherwise perfectly good brunch. Still, I like the idea of working on the question, "Where/how is Jesus trying to gather us closer to him, and where/how are we scurrying out from under those wings and off to danger?" Borrowing some guiding words from the work of Concordia Seminary Homiletics Professor Richard Caemmerer, a sermon like this might make these points:

Goal: to find rest under those wings.
Malady: whatever keeps us scurrying about.
Means: Christ's open arms, widening to gather chicks rather than closing in protect himself. (Maybe Luke's preoccupation with Jerusalem in the gospel and Acts is a way of saying that Jesus is not willing to take "No" for an answer on this gathering thing.)

By the way, the connection between a hen's open wings and the open arms posture of crucifixion is made in a Christian Century piece by Barbara Brown Taylor. Probably six years ago now, she wrote about how a hen's heart and other vital organs are completely exposed to the fox when her wings are open. This is the posture Jesus takes figuratively, even as he is warned about "that fox," Herod. He will eventually take such a posture literally, arms wide open to gather all people to himself.

Comments

[Mary]

On re-reading, I see that I have echoed Matthew (by saying, "to find rest" under those wings) and John (by speaking of Jesus gathering [a.k.a. drawing] all people to himself). My apologies to the Luke purists!

[Terry]

I was thinking along the same lines. We keep scurrying out from under the wings. The narrow door might not be about the size of the door, but the baggage we bring with us. Those things we refuse to give up in order to be a part of the kingdom.

The image of teen agers comes to mind when thinking about scurrying away from protection. The beginnings of independence bear a great resemblance to the chicken and chicks. Talking about growing in independence and discovering where we are dependent, interdependent and independent might be another way of speaking about refusal to find safety.

[Ruth Worman]

You can read Barbara Brown Taylor's article at Religion Online. This is the link:

http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=638

[MARKJDANIELS]

Thanks for the thought experiment and for Caemerrer's approach.