We're All Chickens

Sermon from Grace and St. Stephen's Episcopal Church 3/17/19

I remember the way it glittered in the sun, the gold on the Dome of the Rock reflecting off the cathedral crosses and Temple remains.  The city of Jerusalem was a thing to behold.  Our first glimpse was from our tour bus window, we stared as our Methodist pastor tour guide called out a hymn number to the group of almost all Methodists and I avoided eye contact my Episcopal husband lest I see an eye roll at yet another Methodist hymn.  But he too had his eyes glued to the window and honestly, singing felt like the right response.  It is a place of such story, such legend, such turmoil, such hope, it’s amazing that it is also real stones and roads that you can walk and behold. 

          As we followed tour guides, listened to lectures, touched rocks and worshiped in churches one thing became clear- there is something inexplicable about Jerusalem.  You can hear it in the Bible stories and hymns we sing- a place both longed for and beloved and yet also feared and dreaded.  A place of worship, praise, reunion and stability and yet also a place of battle, war, conflict, separation and change.  It is as if it was placed at the meeting of two tectonic plates that can’t quite come together and so it shifts and rumbles, and you just know that at some point something seismic will happen. 

          It is a city that is in the news headlines we read and the ancient scriptures we read- claimed by different ethnicities and religions, a hot bed of spiritual activity, cosmic encounter and political turmoil.  Three major world religions have deep roots and claims to it and in some places that looks like shared worship spaces with well-respected and understood boundaries and in other places it feels like tension and unrest. 

          As I looked upon this glittering city I remembered the words of the Gospel read today: “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!”  You can hear this tension, this dichotomy in Jesus’s words.  It is his focus, where he is destined to go, the culmination of his journey and yet he knows it is where he will be rejected, despised and suffer.  His words sound like those of someone who is frustrated but also deeply in love.  Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that will let him down, the city that will nail him to the cross and also the city he loves and longs to gather under his wings.  The city of frustration and hope, longing and despair … death and resurrection.

          It’s like our Lenten journey.  We begin with a reminder of our mortality.  Ashes smeared on our head as we are told that one day we will die and all of this around us that we value so much will be dust.  We reflect on temptation, sacrifice and mortality as the darkness of Good Friday comes nearer.  But we also enter our Lenten journey with confession, we kneel together and repent for what we have done and what we have left undone and we gently move our fingers from our forehead to our chest to our shoulders as a sign of our blessedness, our redemption, our forgiveness.  We walk this Lenten journey with Christ knowing that the darkness of Good Friday will not be the end and hoping to better ourselves for life ahead.  It is a time of honesty, vulnerability, darkness, sadness and also hope, togetherness, promise and anticipation.

          It’s complicated ... kind of like gathering chickens.  Up until last summer when I read this passage what came into my mind was this beautiful mother hen, extending her wings as her sweet young sensed her invitation and nestled into her warmth and protection.  But then a friend asked me to gather her chickens for her and it was not at all what I pictured.  Sure, I was not their mother hen, but it was far more chaotic than I had imagined.  Chickens don’t care when you call out to them, they don’t listen to whistles or hand claps, they don’t even seem to have any purpose in where they are going or any plan, they are just running around all feathery and messy.  You just have to be patient, throw that food into the coop and shut the door as fast as you can.  It’s a little crazy, at least for someone like me with no experience.

          So now this is more like what I picture: Jesus with arms extended, wondering what we are thinking, hoping and waiting for us to come while we run around in a hurry to walk in circles making a big mess around us.  We are all just a bunch of chaos full of longing and rejecting, loving and hating, pushing and pulling, peace and conflict, joy and despair … just like that holy and complex city of Jerusalem. 

          A couple of weeks ago I beheld a holy mess from my computer screen as I watched The United Methodist Special Session of the General Conference.  I have been a member of The United Methodist Church my entire life and this June will have been an ordained United Methodist pastor for ten years.  I don’t want to talk about United Methodist polity or the complexities and details of what happened at that conference as much as you don’t want to hear about it.  I am exhausted of all of the commentary and social media posts about it.  But I will say that what I watched unfold was so very human.  It was all these people gathered together trying to be church.  They were praying and singing, holding hands and worshiping and then yelling and shouting, condemning each other and breaking a part.  Apparently an arena full of Methodists that was about to be filled with layers of dirt for a monster truck rally can be as complex and chaotic as the holy city of Jerusalem. 

          But people will and did point to what happened and say “you see!  This is why I don’t go to Church!  They can’t even get along!  They are all over the map!  I would rather just worship God on my own!”  And you know, they aren’t wrong, we do mess it up.  We argue, we push and pull, we are all over the map and we constantly confess that we mess up.  We are frustrating, we are chaos, we are human.  Sometimes we say the wrong thing, sometimes we don’t even know where we are going, sometimes we even hurt each other.  And we all have days where we think it would be easier to just be by ourselves. 

          But there is Jesus … with arms stretched, wide like a mother hen, beckoning us into his warmth and love.

          When those Pharisees come to “warn” Jesus about Herod, they may not have the purest intentions.  They wanted to see what he would do.  It is another instance of people putting Jesus to the test.  If they tell Jesus how much danger he is in will he change his plans and save himself?  Or will he press on, knowing what can happen? 

          Jesus does not turn back.  He presses on.  And not because he doesn’t know the chaos he is about to enter, not because he has false expectations of the people he is trying to save, not because he is naïve, not because he doesn’t see the hurt people cause each other, the ways they reject his love or those who betray him.  Not because he doesn’t know that those who wave palms before him will shout “crucify him!”  not because he doesn’t know that the Church charged with carrying out the sacraments, spreading the Gospel message and being his hands and feet will make mistakes, will hurt each other … will be human.  He presses on because in all the complexity and all the chaos, in all the messes we make and the ways we fail each other- we are God’s beloved children, we are created in  God’s image and longed for by our Savior.  Jesus presses on with outstretched arms beckoning us to come to him because no matter who or where we are, there is a spot for us in the warm, loving and nurturing body of Christ.